Optimal, Civolution sync TV and Facebook ads
October 23, 2013
Civolution and Optimal, Inc., the leading social advertising and analytics platform and maker of Open Signals, announced a partnership allowing brands and agencies to buy Facebook ads in complete synchronisation with TV commercials.
Optimal and Civolution worked together on the first campaign using this product for a client’s upcoming entertainment launch.
“We were blown away by seeing a 60 per cent lift for the Facebook News Feed ads that were synchronised to our advertiser’s TV ads, compared to a control group running the same day. With tens of millions of Facebook users logging onto the platform during prime time hours there is a tremendous opportunity to break through clutter and amplify TV commercials with a timely and direct advertisement on Facebook.” said Rob Leathern, Optimal founder and CEO.
Civolution’s ad-triggering service, SyncNow, which monitors nationally and internationally hundreds of cable and broadcast channels to identify TV ads in real time, was integrated with Optimal’s Open Signals and its Real Time Bidding (RTB) platform to automatically buy ads via Facebook Exchange within seconds of when the ad spots aired on TV. The pilot program found that Facebook News Feed ads that were synced in real-time to the TV broadcast spots experienced over 60 per cent lift in consumer clickthrough rate (CTR). In addition, News Feed ads synchronised to competitive ads saw over 35 per cent CTR lift compared to the control group.
“The connection of our ad triggering service with Optimal’s real-time bidding on Facebook proved to be a significantly powerful combination,” said Alex Terpstra, CEO, Civolution. “Brands can receive higher engagement from their digital spend by syncing those ad units to the TV spots, while in turn increasing the return on investment from their TV spend by making broadcast spots actionable on digital.”
These results show that RTB platforms, when paired with TV content identification, can provide a powerful platform for brands and agencies to deploy high value tactical buys that run for a limited time once a TV spot airs.