ABM is a proven marketing approach that has been a viable option for targeting B2B brands (and their purchasing committees) for decades. CTV is one of the newer marketing channels around and adoption, especially for B2B brands, has been modest enough to stave off the rapidly inflating engagement costs of channels like Google, Meta and LinkedIn.
The intersection of the two is relatively unexplored, but I’ve seen it work beautifully for B2B brands with the right goals and expectations. Below are some practical steps to help B2B brands incorporate CTV into their approach to ABM. Those fall into the following initiatives:
- Know your use cases.
- Define your lists.
- Coordinate CTV with your full channel mix.
- Measure impact.
CTV for ABM: Use cases
We’ve all seen those strange Salesforce commercials with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, but CTV works for more than software behemoths. I’ve helped clients in a few B2B industries realize CTV-fueled growth gains. Those are, in no particular order:
B2B SaaS companies
- Build awareness in competitive categories.
- Support expansion into new markets or verticals.
- Influence large deals with extended sales cycles.
- Challenge bigger competitors.
Professional services firms (agencies, consulting firms, legal firms, etc.)
- Promote thought leadership.
- Reach decision-makers at target accounts.
- Support product or service line launches.
- Build brand recognition before sales outreach.
Manufacturing and industrial B2B (supply chain management, building supplies and equipment, logistics)
- Reach procurement and operations leaders.
- Support channel partner recruitment.
- Build awareness for new product lines.
- Strengthen trade show and field marketing efforts.
Financial services and fintech
- Build trust with CFOs and finance teams.
- Introduce innovative solutions to traditional audiences.
- Support account-based campaigns to enterprise prospects.
- Establish differentiated positioning.
Dig deeper: Why impression-based advertising will redefine search and CTV
ABM lists for CTV
Once you’ve identified when and why to deploy CTV, it’s time to define your list of targeted accounts. The right CTV partner or platform will allow you to upload company lists (which is in line with privacy regulations, since individual contacts aren’t involved). It will then match those lists to households associated with employees at those companies.
Matching rates aren’t perfect — you can expect roughly 40-70% of those accounts to get good household matches — but the matches you do get are of exceptionally high quality.
When you’re just starting with CTV, be judicious with your list and lead with the biggest opportunities. For example, if you have 500 accounts on your list, start with 100 accounts where CTV has a chance to influence active deals or warm prospects.
Dig deeper: 4 CTV challenges for B2B and how to overcome them
Coordination of CTV and other ABM channels
Both ABM and CTV require a lot of cross-channel touchpoints to close any deals. CTV will rarely take an ABM account from zero to close in a few commercials, so make sure you’re integrating it into a carefully orchestrated ABM strategy.
A simple sequence might look like this:
- In the first three weeks, launch CTV campaigns to target accounts. (This may take longer if you need to spin up creative.)
- A couple of weeks after launch, deploy LinkedIn and display ads to retarget accounts that were exposed to CTV ads.
- A week or two after your retargeting ads run, empower your sales team to reference your recent TV campaign in outreach.
This sequenced approach creates multiple touchpoints throughout the purchase journey while keeping your brand top-of-mind with big-screen-level positioning.
Measurement of CTV’s impact in ABM campaigns
Powerful as it is, CTV rarely leads to direct conversions. Measurement needs to focus on metrics that actually reflect CTV’s impact, including:
- Account engagement lift: Did more target accounts visit your website after seeing your CTV ads?
- Pipeline velocity: Are accounts exposed to CTV moving more quickly through the pipeline?
- Deal size influence: Are CTV-exposed accounts signing bigger contracts?
- Brand awareness: Do target accounts show higher brand recall? (Surveys are a great tool for measurement here.)
- Sales conversation depth: Do prospects go into calls more educated — or even mention seeing your ads?
One of the best measurement tools in your arsenal here is geo-holdout tests, which you run to compare markets exposed to CTV with similar markets that were not and measure the overall deltas in pipeline and revenue.
Dig deeper: 7 barriers advertisers need to overcome to grow CTV
Why early adopters of CTV in ABM will win
CTV won’t be all the rage in ABM campaigns for a while, but that means aggressive brands will have plenty of time to reap early-adoption advantages. As with any other facet of ABM, first-party data and nuanced measurement will be crucial to realizing and quantifying the impact of CTV campaigns.
It’s not a linear path, but there’s a pot of growth gold at the end of it for brands willing and able to do the work.
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