Set Up Your TV Campaigns for Success

With Google TV Ads, you have access to detailed reports based on second-by-second data from millions of set-top boxes, and you have the flexibility to adjust your campaign on the fly. But how can you take advantage of these benefits to optimize your campaigns for the best ROI? It starts with how you structure your campaign. Here are a few key points that you may want to consider when creating your TV campaign(s) to learn what works best and optimize accordingly.

Include a specific call-to-action in your commercial.

• Your call-to-action should be what you plan to measure when evaluating the success of your campaign or specific targets within your campaign.
  

• Ideally, your call-to-action should direct customers to a unique behavior that they wouldn't perform unless they'd seen your TV ad.

• For example, you may direct customers to call a unique toll-free number that only appears in your TV ads. Learn how to create free toll-free numbers.

• Or you may direct customers to visit a unique URL. Read the FragranceNet.com success story that shows how they were able to successfully track and optimize their campaigns using a unique URL.
  

Make sure you have enough airings to elicit response.

• To know what's working, you'll want to reach enough viewers so that the level of response can be observed. We recommend that you spend at least $150 on at least four ad airings in a given day to ensure that you're reaching enough viewers.

• We recommend running your campaign for a minimum of four weeks so that viewers have the opportunity to see your ad a few times.
  

Create separate campaigns with unique phone numbers for each network target.

• Review the call and order logs for each campaign (network). If you have one phone number, you can isolate the response by network by rotating the spots at different dayparts, different days of week, or different weeks.

• Compare orders placed vs. impressions delivered to find most efficient placements.

• On networks that drive more orders per impression you may want to increase your CPM bids to clear more spots on these high performers. Likewise, you may want to decrease CPM bids on those networks that deliver less call volume per impression.
  

Target multiple networks with multiple creatives, and make each creative/network combo have a different phone number.

• Review call logs / order logs for each creative version and placement.

• Compare orders placed vs. impressions delivered to learn which ad is most effective at driving calls and where its version is relatively most effective.

• Refine the campaign's structure to place each creative version on the more responsive network.

• Drop non-engaging ads from rotation.

By keeping these points in mind when creating your TV campaigns, you can evaluate the data in your reports to know what is working best and then use the flexibility of our platform to make changes that can optimize your campaigns.

Posted by Diane Chour & Meredith Papp for Google TV Ads