WTF is Automated Optimization?

As Connected TV continues growing in popularity, brands are investing more in CTV ads than ever before. CTV advertising is expected to reach 21.2 billion dollars in 2022—growing 39% compared to 2021. In order to unlock the full benefits of CTV, advertisers need to tap into data-driven, optimized tools, which is where automated optimization comes in. 

Through the power of AI, automated optimization makes real-time adjustments to your campaigns. When done correctly, it can help you reach your performance TV goals. It also frees up time for you and your team to focus on the bigger picture of your advertising strategy.

Let’s explore the basics of automated optimization—what it is, why you need it, and how to use it to drive the best performance for your ad campaigns. 

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What is Automated Optimization? 

When it comes to CTV advertising, automated optimization refers to using algorithms and machine learning techniques to optimize the placement and targeting of TV ads. It’s AI-powered software that hones your ad strategy to help you achieve better results.

Once your campaign goes live, the software assesses hundreds of variables to ensure everything is operating efficiently. The AI can even focus on specific goals for your campaign, like revenue, conversion, or website traffic. 

It also uses performance data from each campaign to constantly adjust campaign performance to create a higher return on your advertising investment. The software changes how your ads are shown, the targeted audience segments, and even the content of each ad.

The Benefits of Automated Optimization 

Most marketers already know how important data is to their strategy. Still, it takes the right automated solution to make the most of that data in your marketing strategy. Here are a few of the top benefits to explore with automated optimization: 

Automated Optimization Is Efficient 

With the rise of data-driven tech in the performance TV industry, you may have heard the term “automated optimization” before. While the right automated optimization software can lead to quick and efficient results, they’re not all created equal. 

Some services don’t really offer automation at all. While they claim to be powered by automation, in reality, people are working behind the scenes to make manual adjustments to your performance TV strategy. 

With truly automated software, you get hundreds of thousands of intelligent, real-time optimizations each day. AI software takes only a fraction of a second to make an adjustment that could take days for a human to accomplish. 

This difference becomes clear when you compare the campaign outcomes. Compared with manually optimized campaigns, automated optimization with MNTN’s Performance TV resulted in a 91% increase in ROAS and a 20% decrease in CPA.

Automated Optimization Improves Scalability 

Automated optimization can help advertisers scale their campaigns more effectively. When campaigns are managed and optimized by the software, marketing teams are free to focus on other tasks, like creating more videos—that can, in turn, fuel even more campaign optimization.

It also enables advertisers to increase the volume of ad placements. Instead of focusing on manual optimization, your team can reclaim bandwidth and invest more time and brain power into the video creation process, allowing you to expand your video inventory. With more content across different channels, you’ll be able to reach more people—all while the automation works its magic.  

In other words, you can run new campaigns more effectively, releasing more ads to reach more people, without putting a strain on resources. 

Automated Optimization Saves Time for Creativity 

When you let this AI-powered tech do the heavy lifting, your marketing team can focus on essential facets of video marketing, like creativity.

By taking time-consuming optimization out of the equation, marketers can focus more on their creative approach. Instead of worrying about whether their ads are viewed on the right networks by the right audiences, teams can spend their time brainstorming ideas—and bringing those ideas to life.

Since automated optimization is always finding the highest performing creative (and putting it front and center within your campaigns), you are naturally surfacing creative insights. These can fuel your creativity and concepting for future videos, ensuring your team always produces content your audience wants to see. 

Automated Optimization Focuses on Quality

With some CTV platforms, the primary goal is to maximize reach. However, focusing solely on impressions can negatively impact your performance. These platforms use a lower CPM to reach as many people as possible. As a result, they can’t bid on high-quality streaming networks and apps. 

The right automated optimization software puts quality first, getting you the best possible results for your campaign budget. You can focus your ads on the most effective networks for your target audience, drawing better viewership numbers and boosting conversion rates. 

However, you can’t make this happen with just any video ad. Since the software focuses on quality placements, your team will need to provide quality video content on par with these networks. 

Automated Optimization Provides Data-Driven Insights  

With automated creative optimization, advertisers can take a deeper look at the performance of their campaigns. As the AI adjusts and improves each campaign, you get access to detailed, accurate reporting, which can help you make data-driven decisions about your upcoming campaigns. 

How To Utilize Automated Optimization

While this technology is designed for hands-off optimization, there are some tasks you and your team need to accomplish before getting started. 

First, you need a clear understanding of your campaign’s goals. When you set clear goals, you ensure that your automated optimization efforts focus on the right objective. In addition, you’ll need to find the right platform to launch your campaigns. Ideally, this will truly implement automated optimization and provide your team with insights to use in future campaigns, like MNTN. 

After you set your campaigns into motion, keep monitoring their progress and testing different approaches. This might involve introducing new ideas into your ads, experimenting with different styles of video content, and targeting new audiences. 

Drive Results With Optimized Video Content 

When it comes to video marketing and CTV success, automated optimization is only half the battle. While this AI-powered tech can help get your campaigns seen by the right people at the right time, it’s still up to you to deliver top-notch video content. At QuickFrame, our agile video creation platform helps you produce insight-driven content to meet your goals.

Tap into our network of content makers and production teams to unlock compelling, high-quality custom videos for your business. See what QuickFrame can help you create.