CTV campaigns are available for US, Canada, and Australia audiences
Your CTV target audience must be located in the US, Canada, or Australia. You can physically be located anywhere in the world, though your audience must be in one of the aforementioned regions.
AdRoll Connected TV (CTV) campaigns combine the storytelling power of TV with the targeting precision of display advertising to deliver high-impact video ads through streaming apps, either built-in or through devices like Roku, Apple TV, and gaming consoles. For an overview of AdRoll's CTV offering, see our CTV Overview Guide.
Maximize Conversions on CTV puts your video ads in front of your highest-intent audiences - people who are closest to buying, and customers who have already bought from you. Use it to increase conversions based on behavior and to strengthen customer loyalty.
We recommend launching CTV campaigns alongside your Web Build Awareness and Web Retargeting rather than on their own.
Drive Engagement is also available on CTV. Because both objectives bid on impressions on this channel, your choice between them comes down to which audience you target rather than how the campaign bids. Choose Maximize Conversions when your audiences show clear buying signals, and CTV Drive Engagement when you are working with broader groups of past visitors.
Who can access
CTV campaigns are available for all AdRoll packages - Ads Only, Advanced, Agency, and the legacy MAP, Starter, and Growth plans.
To find your current package, log in to AdRoll and navigate to Settings > Billing & Subscriptions > Plan & Usage.
Requirements to launch a CTV campaign
A $165/day minimum budget is enforced for each individual CTV campaign. For budget and audience size requirements based on your AdRoll package, see CTV budget and audience requirements.
For the best results with CTV ads, we recommend following AdRoll's CTV Ads Format Guidelines, which cover ad duration, resolution, format, bitrate, file size, and creative best practices. Keeping CTV ads within the suggested duration and loading the most impactful content in the first few seconds can significantly improve performance.
Our guide to CTV creative best practices covers creative strategy in depth, whether you are new to CTV advertising or refining an existing approach.
Launch a CTV Maximize Conversions campaign
- Log in to AdRoll and go to Campaigns on the left side navigation menu.
- Select Create, then Ad Campaign.
- Select Maximize Conversions as your campaign objective, then select Next.
- Choose a clear Campaign Name to easily identify it in AdRoll reports and dashboards. We recommend using a consistent naming convention.
- Under Campaign Settings > Channel, select Connected TV. Learn more about our CTV offering in the CTV Overview Guide.
Choose a campaign schedule
- Start immediately upon approval, or select a future date and time.
- End on a specific date and time, or run indefinitely.
- Times are set in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
- After you submit, there is a review period of up to 48 hours before your campaign goes live.
- We suggest launching with AdRoll's default settings. To restrict delivery to specific days or hours, expand Advanced Options and configure dayparting.
Bid settings and advanced options
Under Bid Settings and Advanced Options, CTV campaigns use the following:
- Optimization Goal: Impressions
- Bid Strategy: Automatically optimize CPM
These are the only options on CTV, whichever retargeting objective you selected. Due to the nature of CTV campaigns and how users interact with them, performance cannot be measured through Clicks, CTR, or CPC, because click data is not collected for CTV.
- Leave Target CPM blank to let BidIQ automatically maximize impressions within your budget.
- If you set a Target CPM, we suggest a target of $15 to $32 for CTV. We optimize toward your target, though actual CPM may vary.
- We suggest launching with AdRoll's default settings. To customize Frequency Capping, expand Advanced Options.
Configure your ad group
By default your campaign has one ad group called Ad Group 1. Ad groups are containers within your campaign that let you serve different ad sets to different audience segments, with their own schedules and content categories. You cannot set individual budgets per ad group.
- Select the pencil icon to choose an Ad Group Name that is easy to identify in reports and dashboards.
- Optionally select Use custom ad group schedule if you are running multiple ad groups at different times. Leave it cleared and the ad group follows the campaign schedule.
Choose your audience
Under Targeting > Audience, select an existing audience segment, or create a new one. Maximize Conversions works best with audiences that already show buying signals. Recommended audiences include:
- High-intent audiences, including cart abandoners and past purchasers
- Frequent website and app visitors
- Customers who have previously converted, if your goal is loyalty rather than a first purchase
Locations
CTV is available in the US, Canada and Australia
The reach of CTV campaigns is restricted to the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Set Locations to Automatic and we target the best locations within the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Set it to Manual to choose your own locations within those three countries, including country, state or region, city, or zip code. You can also apply exclusions. In the example below we are targeting the United States, excluding the state of Hawaii.
Contextual categories
You can narrow where your ads run by selecting CTV content categories, so your video ads appear during programming that suits your brand. This is optional, and it works alongside the audience you selected above.
- Choose from our 90+ curated CTV content categories.
- Some categories are country-specific. Ensure the correct location is selected to use them.
- Available categories differ between the Web and CTV channels, so a category you use on Web may not exist for CTV.
Confirm your estimated audience size
Once you have set your audience, location, and category filters, the estimation panel shows the reach available to your campaign. On CTV it reports impressions only - no click-based figures are shown, because click data is not collected for this channel.
Select your ads
Add your video creative in the Ads section. On CTV you have two options:
- Choose - Select existing creative from your Ad Library.
- Upload - Upload finished video ads directly to the campaign.
Ensure your ad creative follows the technical requirements and creative best practices outlined above.
Set your budget
You can use Ad Credits for CTV campaigns
If you have Ad Credits as part of your contract, they can be used towards your CTV campaigns.
Enter your budget and billing information. For details on choosing between a daily and monthly budget, see Campaign Budget & Spend.
- A $165/day minimum budget is enforced for each individual CTV campaign.
- Your budget is automatically allocated among your ad groups by BidIQ.
When you have finished, scroll to the top of the page and select Submit. Select Finish Later to save your campaign as a draft instead.
Measure the impact of your CTV campaign
CTV campaigns bid on impressions, and clicks, CTR, and CPC are not available on this channel. Measure delivery on impressions and reach. Read our CTV Overview Guide to learn which CTV reports are available to you and which metrics to use.