Ask us about VPA (volume purchase agreement) pricing.

Yes, we have a budget calculator that can provide guidance on spend levels given certain parameters, such as audience and geotargeting.

The costs associated with CTV advertising can vary depending on factors such as ad inventory availability, targeting options, ad formats, ad length, and the demand for specific audiences or content. CTV advertising can be priced on a CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) or a fixed-rate basis, and the overall costs should be assessed based on the campaign goals and expected returns.

An optimal campaign has an average frequency of between 7-12 ad exposures, or impressions, per campaign for each targeted household. According to our consumer behavior research, this frequency achieves optimal brand saturation, and we also implement frequency caps to prevent ad fatigue. If the budget deviates from our proposal recommendation, then it will alter the frequency, given that the number of times we can reach our audience is determined by the size of the market (geo-targeting) and the prescribed budget to fund these impressions. A reduced budget will mean less frequency than we prescribe, an increased budget will mean more frequency than we prescribe.

Yes. However, we do not have a curated, prepared recommendation for any verticals other than automotive. That being said, we have acquired a host of best practices which could be applied to other verticals.

Each recommendation is a unique calculation and can vary based on each dealership’s individual market and brand index. Dealerships with larger brand indexes in more populated markets will require larger budgets to reach their sales market than dealerships with smaller brand indexes and/or in less populated markets. The geo-targeting radius recommendation depends on the dealership’s sales penetration. We recommend the zip codes the dealership has successfully and frequently sold vehicles in, according to DMV data, so dealerships will each see different radii depending on the sales penetration of their store.

Yes, you can create custom targeting and adjust budgeting to your liking. However, strategies that do not follow our recommendation will not have a correct “Geo-Budget Fit” and can negatively impact campaign performance. This means the campaign’s geo-targeting strategy incorrectly represents its market, and/or is not funded with the appropriate budget to properly reach every vehicle owning, streaming household within that market at the optimal frequency.

Considerable data and market research goes into each dealership proposal. CaptiveStream considers a given dealership’s sales penetration, market strategy, brand index, streaming and vehicle penetration, and CaptiveStream’s historical data to predict (1) potential market share improvement and (2) anticipated arrivals. This allows us to generate an appropriate geo-targeting radius and exact budget recommendation with our automated proposal tool.

CaptiveStream does not advertise on traditional radio stations because they have no modern targeting capabilities and are less performative. However, we support various digital audio platforms that have live broadcast features, along with audio on demand.

We highly recommend that a streaming campaign advertises on the audio channel as well as Connected TV and display. Why? CaptiveStream sees a noticeable performance difference between campaigns that run only CTV and campaigns that run CTV with supporting audio. This is because digital audio is an excellent “lift channel,” meaning it effectively supports the primary CTV channel through engaging audio content, creating a diverse range of ad exposures, and reaches viewers during their everyday routines.

To put it simply, performance. CTV combines the performance power of cable TV with the technological capabilities of digital advertising. While advertising on a highly engaged performance channel, CTV gains advanced, household level targeting capabilities, hosts the majority of the television market (56%), is cost-effective, can deliver to the entire addressable streaming inventory, and receive deterministic measurement and reporting features tying exact impressions to online and offline conversions.

CTV and OTT (Over-The-Top) are related but have different meanings. CTV refers specifically to the television aspect, while OTT encompasses professional video content delivered over the internet to any internet connected device, without requiring a traditional cable or satellite subscription. CTV is a subset of OTT, focusing on professional video content streamed exclusively to connected TV devices.

While you technically can, CaptiveStream highly recommends running on the entire 100+ ad-supported CTV apps. Since we use an audience first strategy, allowing us to first identify the targeted individuals then find them across any inventory, the inventory itself is less significant. Restraining the campaign to one or a few streaming apps will significantly limit the campaign's ability to reach those viewers, risking under delivery.

Although certain streaming apps (Netflix, Max, etc.) have introduced ad-supported tiers, they do not allow their ad inventory to be bought programmatically. CaptiveStream only places media programmatically, as it is the most advanced targeting approach available, so we choose not to purchase their ad inventory as it will be far less performative. However, as these streaming apps settle into the ad-supported space, we expect programmatic abilities will be supported soon.

CaptiveStream has 200+ individual inventory contracts with every major operating system, streaming device, app, and network. This gives us access to 20,000 individual path to supply nodes that allows us to reach almost 100% of the addressable streaming market on every content available. Our data scientists filter and optimize these supply pathways to ensure every inventory path gives the advertisement the best possibility to reach an awake, engaged human being.

Our GMS iQ Report includes the most granular segmentation we can provide, as we cannot break down conversions by inventory or audiences. However, we can report top platforms by impressions, media spend per channel, audience allocation, and other important tactics. Our team is happy to discuss our reporting capabilities more granularly to accommodate your requests.

Campaigns begin to receive a GMS iQ Report after their second full month running on streaming. CaptiveStream's GMS iQ Report requires a certain amount of data to calculate accurate performance metrics, which is not sufficient in a singular month's data generation.

The GMS iQ, short for Geographic Market Share iQ, is an CaptiveStream-invented standout feature in our performance reporting. This index represents each dealership’s foot traffic market share attributed to their streaming campaign. This allows marketers to understand how their dealership’s arrivals are performing relative to competitor dealerships.

CaptiveStream attribution is a constant pursuit of the truth. CaptiveStream data scientists ensure dealership location records are exact via match back mapping and custom conversion zone generation, and conduct a routine data filtration procedure, requiring dwell times and recency standards to remove potential employees, delivery drivers, drive bys, pick ups, and street traffic interference. Unlike many other solutions which can only approximate an arrival, CaptiveStream’s one-to-one attribution puts us in a position to perform optimizations on our models to drive superior performance and report deterministic arrivals.

We track every arrival to every dealership, so long as the individual tracked has completed an impression from said dealership. Once an individual completes that dealership's ad, we can track them to whichever dealership they enter, whether it is to the campaign’s personal dealership, or another dealership. This data allows us to calculate proper market share penetration (via our GMS iQ).

Because Connected TVs and Bluetooth devices are unclickable mediums, tracking conversions gets tricky. To combat this visibility gap, CaptiveStream uses the Household graph (which tethers all internet devices from one household) and display channel (a clickable medium) to deterministically track cross-channel conversion activities (website visits, offline dealership arrivals).

Most of the conversions are logged after their "last touch" with the display channel. However, we refer to our attribution through a campaign-wide lens, considering each touchpoint as a contributor to the conversion. Therefore, we consider our attribution as a "multi-touch" and “multi-channel” model, attributing a conversion to the entire collection of streaming impressions (Connected TV, digital audio, and display).