Blog Get the skinny on smart TV attribution f...

Get the skinny on smart TV attribution for app marketers

Micah Motta, Senior Content Writer, Adjust, Oct 30, 2023.

The ways in which viewers consume television have changed drastically over the last ten years. Linear viewership, or traditional TV viewership, has declined in recent years, and for the first time, non-pay viewership surpassed that of pay TV this year. Although more viewers are switching to streaming on their connected TV (CTV) devices over broadcast TV, local linear TV ad spend is expected to continue its growth to hit US$97.73 billion by 2027.

Your ad spend budget, target audience, and desired targeting capabilities will likely determine which type of TV advertising is best for your app marketing. As you consider your options for your TV marketing campaigns, it’s essential to first understand how TV attribution works.

So, curious to learn how to measure TV commercial effectiveness? Read on.

Refresher: TV attribution definition

Television attribution is defined as the process of identifying and reporting on the effectiveness of a TV ad to drive specific user actions, such as a mobile app install, a website visit, or an online purchase.

How to measure TV commercial effectiveness

The type of TV attribution model you use to measure the impact of your TV ads depends on where you place your television ads—on CTV or linear TV.

CTV vs. linear TV advertising

CTV advertising: A CTV device is any TV set connected to the internet, and advertisers can place ads that are delivered via over-the-top (OTT) technology to these devices. Advertisers can utilize consented first-party data, third-party data, contextual and lookalike targeting, geotargeting, retargeting, and device type to pursue their target audiences.

Linear TV advertising: The traditional form of TV, linear TV delivers advertisements with its scheduled programming over satellite or cable. As the programming on linear TV is for mass appeal, advertisers can only target users with linear TV ads based on channel type and the prime viewing time for a particular demographic.

Connected TV attribution

There are several types of CTV attribution models marketers can use to determine the success of their CTV campaign.

First-touch attribution

As the name suggests, the first-touch attribution model for TV marketing campaigns gives total credit to the first touchpoint of a user’s conversion. The hope here is that the ad will be impactful enough to get the user to take the desired action. However, most users require multiple interactions with a brand before engaging, and this method doesn’t provide measurement for the touchpoints following the initial one.

Last-touch attribution

In contrast to the above, last-touch attribution works the opposite in that 100% of the credit is given to the last touchpoint before user conversion. The challenge in last-touch attribution is the same as first-touch attribution: quantifying the exact impact of each touchpoint proves difficult as the emphasis is only placed on one touchpoint. This is why many marketers choose to implement a multi-touch or assists (omnichannel uplift) based framework to impression-based channels like CTV when performing attribution or broader campaign analysis.

Linear attribution

Not to be confused with linear TV, linear attribution for CTV is a TV attribution methodology that shares the conversion credit equally across all customer interactions. This is a type of multi-touch attribution.

View-through attribution

One of the most common CTV attribution methods is view-through attribution (VTA), by which an app marketer can attribute any install or in-app action to a CTV ad if the user does it within a certain time period following the ad. This can be done in addition to last-touch attribution. For a deep dive into VTA, check out our ebook Gaining visibility with view-through attribution.

Linear TV ad attribution

Historically, linear TV ads have predominantly been measured by viewership, that is, how many people saw the ad. However, viewership does not tell advertisers whether these viewers took any action to engage with their brand after this ad.

App marketers desiring to advertise on traditional TV can do one of two things to measure their TV ads’ impact on user behavior.

Monitor ad exposure over time

Invest in measuring individuals’ media exposure over weeks or months across all channels, including location data and purchase behavior, when available. Doing so will allow marketers to better understand what led to a specific outcome in terms of timeliness and ad frequency. Going a step further, marketers can use media mix modeling (MMM) and input this specific data to examine seasonality and other external factors impacting their TV campaigns.

Drill down to user trends

Mobile app installs due to TV commercials can be measured by examining the organic installs that occur in the region and time zone in which the TV commercial was broadcast. Then, marketers can pursue more granular attribution insights by looking at user trends such as billing rate, user retention, and user lifetime value (LTV) provides rich insight into a TV ad’s effectiveness.

Adjust and TV advertising attribution

As a cross-device measurement and analytics platform, Adjust provides TV advertising attribution for app marketers in the following ways.

Linear TV attribution with Adjust

Adjust offers linear attribution with several of our partners, by which attribution is made retrospectively.

For example, Adjust clients who also partner with Video Research can analyze the impact of linear TV ads and see the number of app installs derived from TV commercials. Through this partnership, clients can also follow users’ retention rate and LTV to best optimize their campaigns. Within the Adjust platform, clients get an overview of their digital media, TV commercials, and organic installs and can compare advertising effectiveness across them.

Real results: Ponos used Adjust and Video Research to analyze average revenue per user (ARPU), billing rate, retention rate, and LTV. The company could compare the LTV of users by program within Adjust and, therefore, measure the effectiveness of its TV commercials across each. Ponus discovered that compared to organic installs, installs attributed to TV commercials had up to 3.4 times the LTV on the seventh day.

“We have used Adjust to measure the effectiveness of digital advertising and analyze user trends across multiple platforms and channels. We decided to implement the TV commercial effectiveness measurement function because we judged that there was virtually no additional work required and the hurdles for test implementation were low.”

Yoka Kikuchi

Marketing Office Digital Marketing Department Leader, Ponos Co., Ltd.

CTV attribution with Adjust

Adjust’s award-winning CTV AdVision was the first comprehensive CTV measurement solution for mobile marketers and continues to be the leading CTV solution on the market. With CTV AdVision, marketers can link app conversions and post-install events to CTV ads and determine the impact a CTV campaign has on their user journey and other ad channels. With CTV AdVision, app marketers can access CTV to mobile and CTV to CTV attribution.

CTV to mobile attribution: Measure the performance of your CTV ads that appear on mobile apps.

CTV to CTV attribution: Measure the effectiveness of your CTV ad campaigns for CTV devices.

Real results: Magic Tavern utilized CTV AdVision to optimize ad placement by examining install, ad exchanges, ad placements, and the gain visibility into what pushed user action. As a result, the brand decreased eCPI by over 65% and quadrupled day zero return on ad spend (ROAS).

“We use Adjust reporting to really break down the data—to see what exchange drove which installs and revenue, down to ad placements. It’s very clear with Adjust reports to see what’s working and what isn’t to easily make changes. We immediately saw great results by optimizing the placements.”

Jasmine Cao

Growth Manager, AppLovin

So, ready to supercharge your app marketing with TV campaigns? Get your Adjust demo now to see how our TV attribution measurement solutions can amplify your overall marketing efforts.