OTT Measurement Metrics Advertisers Must Know in 2025

With online shopping on the rise due to COVID-19, your ability to track and attribute sales to your OTT campaigns is more important than ever. March and April 2020 saw triple digit increases in online purchases compared to last year. Increasing online shopping behavior means your campaigns could be missing the mark if you’re not tracking, optimizing and reporting toward the goal of increased e-commerce revenue metrics.

We understand the challenge. With OTT ads being inherently unclickable, it feels impossible to attribute online purchases back to your campaigns. At Strategus, elements within our six-solution Attribution Suite solve this problem by allowing online retailers to match purchases back to their OTT ads. With our proprietary tracking methodologies and our robust network of data and attribution partners, we can close the loop between view, visit and purchase.

UNDERSTANDING THE BUYER JOURNEY HELPS CLOSE THE LOOP

Jill is watching her favorite show on SlingTV via her Roku streaming stick. She understands her subscription comes with ads, and she expects to see them. After being served an individually targeted Casper Mattress CTV ad, she remembers she needs to buy a new mattress for her spare bedroom, and visits Casper’s website to make the purchase.

At the point that Jill was exposed to the Casper ad, Strategus ingested a small digital packet of anonymized information that included Jill’s Roku streaming stick ID. Later, when Jill went to the Casper website and made the purchase, Strategus’ pixel fired and captured another anonymized packet of data. Those points are mapped into Strategus’ cross-device identify graph to connect Jill’s purchase to her earlier OTT/CTV ad exposure.

By linking ad exposure to subsequent online purchase activity, the Strategus team analyzes and aggregates the data to paint a clear attribution picture between who saw your OTT/CTV ad, and who took action. Also, by segmenting certain data points, we can optimize the delivery to produce more favorable results. For example, if Jill saw this ad on a Monday evening and purchased from her phone, we know to make adjustments in delivery to this particular day and time in the future, and make similar targeting decisions with people who make habitual purchases on their mobile devices.

OPTIMIZING OTT

OTT/CTV is a mid- to high-level funnel tactic. It’s akin to traditional television advertising, but instead leverages the benefits of digital targeting and attribution. These enhancements, in turn, have a positive impact on conversion rates within the more low-funnel direct-response tactics like paid search.

It’s less about generating high-volume conversions by OTT/CTV alone, and more about optimizing overall marketing campaigns, supporting the direct response tactics that build the brand itself.

Attributing and measuring online purchase results can help your campaign come out a winner, especially with TV viewership up, and online purchasing as the new normal. Though this is bound to change, new e-commerce habits are forming fast, and now is the time to enhance your OTT/CTV campaigns.