How Running CTV Ads on Hulu Could Get You More Leads & Leases

How Running CTV Ads on Hulu Could Get You More Leads & Leases

In the world of real estate marketing, video advertising remains underutilized. It’s well-known by experts in the industry that real estate brands tend to be later adopters of digital strategies, so it comes as no surprise that CTV advertising on platforms like Hulu and other streaming services is still catching on.

If you are among the real estate professionals who have recently started to wonder if CTV advertising is right for your brand or you’re completely new to the topic of CTV advertising and want to learn more, this article is for you. We’ll be explaining what CTV advertising is, how it works, and where it excels as part of your real estate marketing plan. As you read on, you’ll learn how running CTV ads on Hulu and other top streaming platforms could earn you more leads and leases.

What Is CTV Advertising (and how is it related to Hulu)?

CTV stands for Connected TV, which refers to today’s Smart TVs and other devices that allow you to stream digital video content on your TV. Popular examples include Roku, Apple TV, Google TV, and Amazon Fire. These Connected TV devices allow users to stream content through a variety of apps such as Hulu.

This is where advertising campaigns come in: ads are shown while users stream content on CTV apps, much like a traditional commercial on cable TV. Hulu is just one of dozens of streaming platforms where CTV ads can be placed. Other popular platforms include Pluto TV, tubiTV, and Crackle.

Because connected TVs have become so ubiquitous in recent years, this form of advertising represents a promising frontier for real estate marketers. In fact, 82% of households in the US have at least one Connected TV device. Millennials represent the bulk of Connected TV users, with Gen X and Gen Z not far behind, making this particularly promising for multifamily marketing and student housing marketing as well as the next generation of active adult and senior housing marketing as older Gen Xers begin to move into these age ranges and younger Gen Xers and Millennials help make housing decisions for their older parents.

infographic showing stats about CTV advertising

Targeting Tactics For CTV Advertising

One of the benefits of CTV advertising is the wide array of targeting tactics available to marketers. Not only do real estate marketers have the usual demographic and behavioral targeting tactics at their disposal (such as specific interests, websites visited, and searches performed), they also benefit from addressable marketing tactics that allow them to target a specific address list or use custom data aggregation and GPS data.

Marketers may also retarget users who have already been served a CTV ad, encouraging clicks and conversions by serving ads on other platforms and devices to an audience that is already aware of their brand.

How Is Success Measured for CTV Ad Campaigns?

Video completion rates, mute rates, pause rates, and impressions are among the key performance indicators (KPIs) for CTV ad campaigns. These metrics help determine the extent to which users are actually viewing your CTV video ad.

When it comes to tracking ad engagement and conversions, online conversions are measured by tracking whether a user visited your website and completed a conversion action (such as a contact form fill or application start) on a device within their household after being served your ad. Meanwhile, offline conversions can be measured by tracking when a user’s mobile device enters a conversion zone (such as your leasing office), which is defined by drawing a micro-geofence around the desired location.

These KPIs can be broken out by channel/app, device, and keyword to provide further insight into how your CTV ads are performing and how to further optimize for your target audience.

How Effective is CTV Advertising?

At Threshold, we’ve seen exciting results from our CTV advertising campaigns, but there’s no need to take our word for it. In addition to strong performance across the KPIs mentioned above, marketers using CTV advertising have also reported a positive impact on brand awareness and engagement, overall conversion rates, and number of repeat customers.

bar chart showing impact of CTV advertising

There are several reasons why CTV advertising is an effective choice for real estate marketers looking to reach more potential renters and increase lease and occupancy rates. We’ll discuss some of the top advantages below.

CTV Advertising As an Awareness Tactic

Awareness tactics are a key part of any holistic real estate marketing plan. These tactics focus on increasing brand awareness among a broad audience in order to reach prospects during the early phases of their housing search so that when they move onto the consideration phase, your brand is more likely to make the cut. In other words, it establishes a strong marketing funnel from the very beginning so that your have a higher chance of finding the prospects for whom your community is an excellent fit.

CTV ads excel as an awareness tactic because they can reach a wide yet relevant audience even when they’re not actively searching for housing. Not only can CTV ads be targeted to reach thousands of potential renters, but because they utilize a more engaging format than static display or search ads and usually reach users during their leisure time, users are more likely to absorb your message and remember details like your brand name and URL once the ad is over.

These factors make users quicker to click and convert when they encounter your brand again during a housing search. In the best cases, users may specifically search for your brand name after seeing an ad that intrigues them, even if considerable time has passed since they viewed your ad.

CTV Advertising As a Conversion Tactic

While CTV campaigns excel as an awareness tactic, they can also be paired with retargeting tactics across other devices to help move your audience further down your leasing funnel as they weigh their housing options.

For example, you might create a display ad campaign that retargets users on their phone or desktop up to 30 days after they first viewed your CTV ad. Now that they are already aware of your brand, you can stay top of mind and give them further reasons to convert by showing off high quality images of your community and incorporating messaging about current specials, available floor plans, or other time-sensitive information.

Interested in learning more about CTV advertising? We’re always available for a no-strings-attached consultation to walk you through this unique marketing tactic. Try using out chatbot, Trent to schedule a call!

Here’s Why Addressable Marketing Campaigns Should Be Part of Your Real Estate Marketing Plan

Here’s Why Addressable Marketing Campaigns Should Be Part of Your Real Estate Marketing Plan

Identifying key audiences is critical to any marketing campaign, and that is even more important when you are attempting to drive foot traffic and the right audience to your website. That’s why real estate marketers are constantly innovating around digital targeting tactics in an attempt to maximize your reach without wasting ad spend on unqualified leads and impressions. Addressable marketing is one of the most cutting edge advancements in audience targeting because it allows apartment marketers to target their audience on a household-by-household basis, achieving a granularity that was previously unheard of in location-based marketing.

If you’re new to addressable marketing and unsure if it’s right for your real estate asset, this post can help you understand what addressable marketing is, how it works, and how it can add to your real estate marketing plan.

What is Addressable Marketing?

Addressable marketing campaigns allow ads and other media to be served to individual households across a number of personal devices—Connected TVs, smartphones, personal computers, etc.  These ads can target prospects based on household location, age, income level, home equity information, number of household members, and a variety of interests, resulting in highly qualified online and offline traffic from prospects who are more likely to convert.

Because it targets your audience household-by-household, this tactic shares many of the benefits of a direct mailer while also saving on design and printing costs and allowing you the flexibility to target your audience with data aggregation tools rather than requiring you to have a list of addresses ready at hand. Think of it like the direct mailer for the digital age.

How Does Addressable Marketing Work?

It used to be that location-based targeting was relatively limited in terms of the specificity it could achieve, but nowadays, it is possible to use GPS data combined with IP information and plat line data to specifically target on a household-by-household level. This image from Simpli.Fi, one of Threshold’s vendor partners, shows the evolution of available technology.

Evolution of Location-Based Targeting for Real Estate Marketing

When creating an addressable marketing campaign, you start by defining the audience you’re hoping to reach across factors like household location, interests, and other demographic information such as age, income level, etc. Then, through data aggregation tools, micro-geofences are drawn around each physical address that meets those data requirements. Next, a conversion zone is drawn around a specific location where you want to measure foot traffic (e.g. your leasing office).

When a prospect enters your micro-geofenced locations (e.g. physical home address), they will be targeted with your ads on their mobile and desktop devices for a set amount of time (30 days is typical). When the customer enters the conversion zone (e.g. leasing office) with their mobile device after being served your ad, the conversion zone recognizes the prospect and attributes their visit as an offline conversion. OR, if a prospect converts online by filling out a contact form, that action is measured as an online conversion.

Who Should Be Using Addressable Marketing Campaigns?

Addressable Marketing tactics can be useful for any real estate vertical, whether it be student housing, multi-family, senior living, or commercial. But in general, the more time your audience spends at home (or at the geofenced location), the more opportunity you have to engage them with Addressable Marketing campaigns. This makes it a great option for multi-family communities with a target audience that includes work-from-home professionals. It also makes addressable marketing a particularly lucrative choice for senior living brands.

In fact, since the COVID-19 pandemic changed how we work, live, and relax, the emergence of addressable marketing as the next frontier of digital real estate marketing has only been bolstered. Targeting users while they are at home has become especially important during a time when going out is no longer the norm. In fact, with fewer prospects visiting leasing offices, addressable marketing is one way to off-set the reduced in-person marketing opportunities.

Simpli.Fi, a leading provider of addressable marketing services, put it this way:

As the COVID-19 outbreak continues and social distancing becomes the new normal, people are spending more and more of their time at home. It is essential for businesses to be able to effectively reach consumers in their homes in order to increase online sales.

addressable marketing tactics for senior living

Furthermore, because addressable marketing is emerging as the direct mailer for the digital age, it is regarded as a particularly excellent choice when marking housing to seniors. Because addressable marketing campaigns use data aggregation tools and fine-tuned targeting factors like age, home equity, and interests, they are able to hone in on senior prospects who may be ready to move, like empty nesters looking to downsize, for example. For more advertising tactics for senior living, check out our post on the Top Digital Marketing Strategies for Senior Housing.

 

Ready to see addressable marketing in action? You can see how an addressable marketing campaign contributed to 165 online conversions for one senior living property by checking out this Senior Living Case Study. And when you’re ready to try it for yourself, you can always reach out for a free consultation on our contact page.