Why Should You Care About Connected TV? ROKU’s Jordan Rost Shares His Take

It’s tough out there for B2B marketers. 

It’s getting harder to sell because of uncertain economic times, so B2B buying cycles are longer and more complex. You’re also being asked to do more with less. 

Every dollar you spend is getting scrutinized under a microscope and needs to drive ROI. 

Jordan Rost, Head of Ad Marketing for streaming/connected TV provider Roku, understands your pain. He leads Roku’s advertising business, which helps B2B marketers like you better target and execute their ad spend to drive ROI. 

In a recent Sunny Side Up podcast episode, Rost explained how connected TV can help B2B marketers get the most bang (ROI) for their B2B advertising buck. 

Connected TV’s growth and the “best of both worlds”

People are increasingly cutting the cord and watching more content on multiple streaming services (Netflix, Apple TV, Roku, etc.) and devices. Last year, “more people spent time streaming TV than watching a traditional television set,” said Rost. 

 Rost views CTV as combining the best of traditional TV and digital advertising. “TV has always been about great storytelling on the biggest screen in the home,” he explains, “and digital advertising has always been about precision, accountability, and measurement. Streaming combines the best of both those worlds.” 

B2B advertisers have multiple ways to take advantage of the growth of streaming/CTV and to measure the impact of their ad spend on CTV.

Ad-supported streaming, for instance, where viewers “pay” for content by watching an advertisement, is growing as fast as streaming subscriptions. “This ad-supported model may overtake subscription viewership in the next two years or so,” says Rost. 

Measuring Connected TV ads

Targeting and measurement were huge problems with traditional TV advertising. 

You paid your money to buy an ad during some golf tournament because you were hoping to reach Fortune 500 business executives, but measuring your ad ROI was a messy game of pin the tail on the donkey. 

CTV takes the blindfold off and lets B2B marketers see their target audience and place the pin precisely on the donkey’s backside.

Streaming and connected TV have become “performance marketing” media, like other internet-based advertising channels. B2B advertisers can see if a CTV viewer visits their brand website as a result of watching a CTV ad. They can connect specific ad spend to specific customer engagement and revenues. 

The “measurability” of CTV is gold when it comes to proving and improving the ROI of your B2B ad spend. 

Rost also sees CTV becoming a place to make actual purchases. “We’ve been making connected TV advertising more shoppable. With a click of their TV remote control, ad viewers can get more information (or a product demo) about an offering and even put items into a shopping cart right from their screen.” That enhanced ad interactivity is the holy grail of B2B advertising.

How CTV killed the million-dollar sock puppet

Traditional TV ads were generally too expensive for most B2B marketers. Targeting audiences was speculative. Tracking impact was harder still. 

B2B marketers never want to put all their chips down on a single, make-or-break bet, as Pets.com did back in 2000 when it bought a massively expensive Super Bowl ad (with its famous sock puppet) only to go out of business a few years later. 

Blowing your B2B ad budget on huge bets that lose is a great way to blow up your career.

 “CTV changes the whole B2B advertising playbook,” says Rost, “because everything B2B marketers have learned through digital is applicable to TV streaming.” With CTV, B2B advertisers can leverage their first-party and third-party data to precisely target the right audience at the right time with the right message. 

“You can target audiences based on what people are streaming or other behavioral signals,” driving relevant messaging, says Rost. 

A Word on DSPs

Using a demand side platform, or DSP, B2B advertisers can use their data to target certain buyer personas and audience segments, then make ad purchases. At the end of the day, CTV is a great place to put your ad spend. It offers B2B advertisers more analytics, better targeting, measurability, segmented audiences, and more ROI. 

The days of million-dollar sock puppet ads that break your whole company are over. You actually can do more with less. The solution is targeted, measurable B2B advertising on CTV that can prove and improve your ROI.

Learn more about CTV and the Demandbase Advertising Platform built exclusively for B2B.