It may be time to take advertising targets home. That's the word from a digital expert who believes many brands can benefit from targeting consumers literally where they live - at home.
Kristina: What are the benefits of household targeting and how does this positively impact the customer journey?
Tim Sleath, VP, product management, VDX.TV: Household targeting has the key benefit of including the internet-enabled TV in the customer journey, acknowledging that many purchase considerations take place as a household and offering a post third-party cookie technological solution.
Kristina: How do personal devices and CTV play into this approach?
Tim: CTV would be considered the core of the household, while personal devices constitute part of the household. Through a household targeting approach, advertisers would be able to reach consumers across all the devices within the household, driving maximum impact with all members of the household.
Kristina: What are some of the verticals that are more heavily impacted by a household decisioning process? Are any of these new verticals because of the pandemic?
Tim: Travel, QSR and new vehicle purchases are all joint family and joint household decisions. Resulting from the pandemic, we've also seen an uptick in home improvement and new furniture considerations, as consumers have needed to repurpose existing living accommodations into work and learning spaces.
Kristina: How has the pandemic contributed to the growth of household targeting since homes are now also offices and classrooms?
Tim: Three factors have come together - streaming services hitting their stride at the same time as post-cookie technologies needing to be evaluated. The pandemic has turbocharged the appetite for subscription video on demand (SVOD) and advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) content, as well as refocusing the household as the entire user environment. This last piece will start to change as offices reopen but, in large part, this is now an unshakable change as new behaviour patterns have emerged and taken root.
Tyler Greer, VDX.tv 18 Jul 2019
Kristina: How have purchase decisions changed for the consumer since the onset of the pandemic and how has this affected the consumer journey?
Tim: It's a tale of two halves. On one hand, some consumers have accrued more disposable income since the onset of the pandemic and are able to make quick decisions about new purchases (whether that be home improvement, restaurant deliveries, grocers, etc.) with family members in real-time, due to people working from home and spending more time in the household. On the other hand, many workers have lost their jobs or had their ability to work restricted as a result of the pandemic, which affects purchasing behavior. Needing to be careful about spending may mean requiring more buy-in from the household or longer purchase consideration timeframes.
