Reach & Frequency Across YouTube and CTV: How Pixability Helps Minimize Waste and Drive Incremental Reach

The pendulum is swinging away from Linear TV, as Pixability’s proprietary research shows that 75% of US consumers will not subscribe to a cable subscription in the next few years. As a result, this shifting consumer behavior is also causing advertisers to rethink their Linear TV ad investments. In fact, Linear TV ad spending fell by 23% year-over-year, according to Standard Media Index. 

However, this leaves many advertisers asking, “Where should I reinvest?” To be successful in today’s media landscape, advertisers need to take an audience-first approach and be present where their consumers are. And that’s on both YouTube and CTV.

A Winning CTV Strategy Starts with YouTube and Extends Across Platforms

Many advertisers today think about Linear TV and CTV in the same bucket. However, at Pixability, we take a different approach, and instead, blend YouTube and CTV strategies to expand an advertiser’s reach across their target audiences. 

Why? According to research, 92% of households are reachable by CTV advertising, and YouTube has the highest share of streaming viewership than any other streaming platform. As a result, the expected viewing experience across YouTube and CTV is more similar than you’d think. In most cases, viewers watch both channels on the biggest screen in the house and are proactively searching for premium content they want to watch on-demand, such as documentaries, movies, or TV shows. 

Unlike CTV and Linear TV, CTV and YouTube also leverage similar targeting tactics, as both can be purchased programmatically. When advertisers strategically buy YouTube and CTV together, advertisers can learn from their consumers on YouTube and apply those audience insights across CTV platforms.

The Frequency Challenge: Wasted Media and Frustrated Viewers

But we know that comes with its challenges. One of the biggest challenges advertisers face in the CTV market is the exponential increase in services and devices, which has caused siloes and fragmentation. As a result, buying CTV is a confusing process for advertisers, as many struggle to find the right way to reach and measure their audiences across so many different DSPs or buying platforms. 

One significant result is the repetitive nature of ads shown across CTV apps. 55% of US households use multiple streaming services. This means the likelihood that one user will see the same ad over numerous apps is extremely high, which can have disastrous effects on your brand perception and engagement. In fact, 67% of viewers say they’re annoyed by seeing the same ad more than once within the same ad pod. 

Beyond negative brand perception, when advertisers buy YouTube and CTV separately, they risk significantly wasting their investments due to audience overlap. Say you want a consumer to see an ad 6 times per week, so you set your Frequency goal to 6 for YouTube, 6 for your Roku inventory, and 6 for your FireTV inventory. As a result, a consumer sees that ad 6 times each from the app, content owner, or device. However, you only wanted the consumer to see the ad 6 times, which means you’ve wasted 12 impressions that you could have spent driving reach among incremental audiences. 

Pixability Helps Maximize the Investment of Multi-Screen Campaigns

Hitting the sweet spot between reach and frequency is critical to driving brand recall while maximizing campaign impressions. Pixability’s Advanced Cross-Platform Reach & Frequency offering consolidates frequency management and in-flight optimization across YouTube and CTV into one campaign to ensure advertisers minimize audience overlap to reduce wasted impressions and drive incremental reach. 

Unlike other third parties who focus only on CTV, or focus on YouTube and social platforms, Pixability brings together Reach & Frequency across both YouTube and CTV to drive the success of the two most important video platforms. 

Pixability’s Cross-Platform Reach & Frequency includes: 

• Our proprietary Cross-Platform Reach & Frequency methodology leverages Ads Data Hub, which provides an accurate view of Unique Reach and Frequency while staying privacy-safe to ensure success in a cookie-less world. 
• Consolidated frequency capping and in-flight optimizations to ensure you’re avoiding audiences with prior ad exposure and maximizing reach. 
• Unique Reach overlap reporting across YouTube and CTV and recommendations to ensure your future YouTube and CTV campaigns complement each other. 

Ready to learn more about Cross-Platform Reach & Frequency? Reach out today!