The Best Way to Reach Modern TV Audiences: TV Everywhere & Your Local Business

As TV viewers—and TV-viewing experiences—have changed in recent years, so have the advertising channels that help local businesses connect with this audience. While the traditional television advertising space now has to “share” with digital ad channels, modern TV advertising and these consumer behavior changes can add more value to small businesses looking to reach their customers.

Cox Media’s streaming solutions offer innovation that benefits both TV-viewing audiences and local advertisers. Whether your own target audience prefers live TV shows or on-demand streaming content, streaming gives you access to both.

New to streaming? Here’s how it can help you grow your business among today’s TV audiences.

TELEVISION VIEWERSHIP IS ON THE RISE

Over the past few months, the complications of an ongoing public health crisis and social distancing guidelines forced people to spend more time in their homes. Naturally, this led to a rise in TV viewership across both traditional TV channels and streaming services.

According to Nielsen, peak TV viewership saw an increase of 1 billion hours viewed on a weekly basis in the United States. While traditional TV ratings have calmed down slightly since reaching this peak, TV streaming remains well above typical viewership rates—and total TV viewership is still far above the numbers seen before the onset of the public health crisis.

In addition, co-viewing sessions—involving at least two audience members sharing a screen—have seen a sharp rise over the past three months, which means that traditional TV ratings and other viewership metrics could be underestimating the total number of TV viewers at any given time. For local TV advertisers, these trends reflect a prime opportunity to build awareness and drive engagement with your local consumer base.

CONNECTING WITH TRADITIONAL TV VIEWERS AND STREAMING AUDIENCES

If you’ve explored TV advertising options in the past, you’ve probably found traditional ads on cable TV are great at engaging audiences that regularly watch live TV programming. But what about consumers who prefer on-demand streaming, and the flexibility that comes with it?

Streaming advertising solutions offer a simple solution to this fragmented advertising approach, allowing small businesses to engage both a live TV audience and viewers who prefer streaming. Increasingly, today’s TV audience doesn’t fall into just one of these segments. Instead, they move back and forth between live content and on-demand streaming. Despite the popularity of the term “cord-cutting,” the reality is that U.S. cable TV subscriptions have remained stable in recent years. As streaming services have taken off, overall consumer trends show that consumers aren’t ditching cable for streaming—they’re combining these services together to maximize their flexibility and choice when watching TV.

Streaming bridges these two experiences from an advertising perspective, allowing businesses to reach relevant local viewers in a new way. This approach expands your ad capabilities while optimizing your targeting, which results in better value for each ad you run.

USING TVE AS A CENTERPIECE OF YOUR ADVERTISING STRATEGY

Most businesses recognize that TV ads offer excellent awareness-level opportunities. In terms of moving prospects through the purchase journey, though, traditional TV ads often aren’t enough. Successful advertising in today’s digital age requires a multi-touch approach that leans on a combination of awareness-level advertising with further down-the-path campaigns aimed at driving referrals and conversions for your business.

Streaming solutions make this multi-touch approach possible by coordinating TV ads with other digital ad campaigns, including those running on search, social media, mobile, and audio. By using streaming ad campaigns as part of a larger, multi-channel strategy, small businesses can create a cost-effective ad strategy that accounts for the full customer journey, bridging the gap between offline awareness and online engagement.

If you’re interested in TV advertising but don’t know where to start, we’re here to help. Contact us today to find out how streaming can help you reach your audience better than ever before.