How Halloween CTV ads can start your Q4 campaigns off right

Could this be the year kids no longer have to get their Halloween candy from the bottom of a 5 foot long cardboard tube taped to a banister to avoid germs?! Happy day! You know what that means? Folks are ready to fully invest in the holiday again. Now of course we’d all love to pretend the last two years never happened, but reverting back to 2019-style ad campaigns isn’t the way to go. After all, so much has happened since then: Apple product signal loss, a 3rd party cookie phase out by Firefox, Safari, and soon Chrome, stringent GDPR policies in Europe, dramatic consumer habit shifts, and ground-breaking ad tech innovation.

Now is the time to innovate

Advertisers are finding themselves in an interesting position as they contend with the challenges mentioned above while also dealing with the pressures of rounding out the year on a strong Q4 performance in the middle of an increasingly uncertain economic landscape.

Now is the time to invest in low cost, high reward innovation like Connected Television advertising, which can help brands capitalize on a TV-focused celebration like Halloween with channels that typically see an audience surge during the holiday, like AMC, Cartoon Network, TNT, TCM, etc.

With CTV, advertisers get the benefit of engaging, big screen storytelling and the targeting/tracking granularity of traditional digital channels like social media or Google Ads, while maintaining similar or lower CPMs.

Because CTV audiences mainly consume on-demand content, their engagement rates are unparalleled: streamed ads are unskippable and boast a 97% VTR (View Through Rate), which didn’t mean much in 2019 when only a fraction of US consumers streamed their content, but today a staggering 87% of US households own at least one Connected Television device, and advertisers are taking notice: by 2025, spending will reach $34.49 billion, more than double the 2021 total of $15.2 billion.

The beginning of Q4 is a strategic inflection point - don’t miss it

Fall is the perfect time to lean into television advertising, as audiences return to their shows and devices after a summer spent outdoors and networks roll out new premium content, especially as the weather starts to turn and seasonal programming picks up: hello Hocus Pocus, It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, and Simpsons Halloween episode marathons! Audiences are projected to be especially enthusiastic this year, as trick or treaters and partiers can finally enjoy the holiday together safely, for the first time in three years!

Even more interesting for our purposes: CTV is an especially compelling medium for young families - a prime target for this holiday.

ACCORDING TO MEDIA POST, FAMILIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN ARE BY FAR THE MOST ENGAGED AUDIENCE SEGMENT IN CTV, WITH “NEARLY ALL (98%) OF THE FAMILIES POLLED SAYING THEY “LOVE” WATCHING TV, AND 81% AGREED IT’S THEIR FAVORITE FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT. ACCORDING TO PARENTS’ REPORTS, 60% OF KIDS WHO SEE ADS — EVEN ADS IN CATEGORIES BROADER THAN KID-SPECIFIC PRODUCTS, LIKE TRAVEL, RESTAURANTS, FOOD AND EVEN INSURANCE AND AUTOMOTIVE — TALK ABOUT THE ADS AFTERWARDS.”

That’s right: lest you be tempted to dismiss Halloween advertising as too niche, remember it is the gateway to holiday shopping and travel planning, so advertisers need to engage holiday-frenzied audiences early and consistently.

Capitalize on context targeting

Besides the signal loss leading to unprecedented CPM increases, digital marketers are reallocating significant portions of their budgets to CTV because of the premium content their brand gets to be associated with that medium. After all, for the same price, would you rather have your ad run next to a Tim Burton movie marathon on some grainy UGC (User Generated Content)?

IN 2021, SEARCHES FOR FUNNY HALLOWEEN MOVIES GREW 300% IN LATAM MARKETS.

After all of the work brands put into their Q4 strategies and creative, wouldn’t it be a pity not to place it in a brand-safe and contextually relevant environment? With Vibe.co, advertisers get premium mid-roll ad placement delivered to the right audiences, at the right time, on the right channels.‍