What you need to know: 

• Roy Morgan Research has partnered with Switch Digital to add postcode-level data to its CTV platform, EngageTV.
• Real estate agents and other medium sized businesses are starting to channel some of their ad budgets into connected TV, according to Switch Digital CEO, Lee Stephens.
• One $10 million home in East Melbourne was recently sold after the agent voiced her own ad, targeted to specific areas in the city.

Connected TVs could be the new frontier in localised advertising, with data partnerships meaning small businesses like craft brewers can affordably enter the TV market to target specific postcodes.

In the upmarket suburb of East Melbourne, one $10 million property recently sold after the real estate agent placed a short walkthrough of the house on CTVs in specific suburbs through Switch Digital’s platform, EngageTV.

“I even did the voiceover,” Sarah Case from RT Edgar said. “We were quoting $10 million, and we sold it for north of that. It’s hard to quantify, but I had clients who did see it on the TV and commented on it.”

Roy Morgan Research and Switch Digital are attempting to scale the market. The two today will formally announce a partnership that integrates Roy Morgan’s Single Source consumer data with the digital media agency's CTV platform, EngageTV.

The partnership has already been used to target residents living near major retail stores, Switch Digital CEO Lee Stephens said.

“Roy Morgan has incredibly deep first party consumer data that’s initially linked on a postcode level,” Stephens said.

“Say, for example, you’ve got a small company that wants to launch a craft beer and they want to specifically target Stone & Wood drinkers. Roy Morgan’s Single Source can give me those exact people. They give me postcodes where they are likely to be found: Bondi, Marrickville, the Northern Beaches – the more obvious ones, but also Cronulla.

“Previously, the only way this small company could do TV was through a metro campaign. Now they can get into the right suburbs, right frequency, and it’s 12 times more cost effective.”

TVCs get people out of the house

Sarah Case, the real estate agent turned voiceover artist, said she’ll consider CTV campaigns in the future – not something she ever thought she would say.

“It was our first time, it was a really unique property,” Case said. “It probably won’t work for lower-priced apartments, but for a really unique property, you want to find that passive buyer. Get them out of the office, out of the house, and get them to come and have a look.

“It’s a very powerful medium and we were really able to personalise it to suburbs where we believe the buyers were coming from. And it has great reporting capabilities and targeting.”

Roy Morgan Research’s CEO, Michele Levine, hopes other small businesses grasp the growth opportunity presented by localised targeting on CTV.

“Through our EngageTV partnership, our consumer data can now be deployed through Australia’s fastest growing media channel, Connected TV,” she said in a statement.

“This means that thousands of different target audiences across travel, finance, automotive, telecommunications, property, retail and FMCG sectors can now be deployed.”

The IAB’s Online Advertising Expenditure Report shows the share of video inventory watched on a CTV grew from 38 per cent to 50 per cent between the December 2019 and December 2020 quarters. A report from PwC estimated the broadcast video on demand ad market would reach $640m by 2024.  

The return of super local TV advertising

The goal is to move into the hyper-local, affordable digital advertising space currently dominated by Facebook and Google.

“We’re seeing this very much as a replacement for local area marketing, particularly where newspapers have collapsed,” Stephens said.

“[Facebook and Google] have got their advantages, but they’re a one-to-one comms medium. A TV is 65 inches, and its strength is simultaneous impact.”

Recently, CTV interest has been from the retail and travel sectors, he said.

“People trying to get different parts of Sydney go to different parts of NSW on holiday,” he said.

“The Northern Beaches and Castle Hill go to Orange. Natural visits come from those areas anyway. The Great Ocean Road and targeting certain postcodes in Melbourne. On the retail side, Batteryworld has 120 stores up the coast. Instead of a national buy, we can target CTVs around five kilometres of each franchise.”

EngageTV has access to inventory from all major networks through 25 private deals. It uses The Trade Desk as a data management platform to enhance the media buys.