CTV Retargeting Campaign Guide

What are CTV Retargeting Campaigns

AdRoll ABM Connected TV (CTV) campaigns combine the storytelling power of TV with the targeting precision of display advertising. This allows you to deliver high-impact video ads through streaming apps, either built-in or through devices like Roku, Apple TV, and gaming consoles.

Once you install the Pixel, the AdRoll ABM platform will track your website traffic. You can then launch a CTV Retargeting Campaign to stay top-of-mind by retargeting people who have visited your website but not completed your desired conversion action (like submitting a lead form).

When a visitor submits a lead form tracked as a conversion audience, AdRoll ABM will not automatically stop serving them ads unless you manually exclude them in your AdGroup settings.

We recommend launching CTV campaigns in conjunction with other Campaigns or Playbooks simultaneously.

Who can access

Step 1. Essentials before you start

Here are the essentials to prepare before launching a Retargeting Campaign for the CTV Channel.

• Install the Pixel to track visitors.
• Create at least one conversion audience. We recommend creating one conversion audience for each single form submission.
• Create at least one set of CTV video ads. Your ads must meet AdRoll’s CTV Ads Format Guidelines.
• Your target audience must be located in the United States, Canada, or Australia.
• The minimum daily budget for each CTV campaign is USD $165. We strongly recommend running CTV campaigns for at least one month for optimal results.
• If a visitor from your target audience completes a conversion, AdRoll ABM will keep targeting them with ads. To avoid this, manually exclude all conversion audiences by selecting your defined Conversion Audience as exclusions.
   

Step 2. Create a Retargeting Campaign for CTV

• Click here or go to Advertising > Campaigns & Playbooks.
• Click Create and select Ad Campaigns in the dropdown.

• Select Retargeting as your Campaign Goal and Click Next.

Step 3. Configure your Web Campaign Settings

In this step, you will configure the settings that will be applied to your campaign, including when it will run, how you would like us to prioritize your bid strategy, advanced bidding options, and placement exclusions.

Campaign Name

Click Edit Name at the top of your campaign and choose a name that will be easy to identify across AdRoll ABM reports and platform features. We recommend following a consistent naming convention for all your campaigns.

Campaign Channel

Scroll down to the section called Channel to select the channel where you wish to run your ads:

• Web: Your ads will be served on the Web (Desktop and Mobile) and Apps.
• Connected TV: Your CTV video ads will be delivered through streaming apps, either built into smart TVs or through devices like Roku, Apple TV, and gaming consoles connected to a TV.

If you want to run the same campaign both in Web and CTV you will need to launch two separate campaigns, one for each channel.

Please note that this article will guide you through launching a Web Channel campaign.

Campaign Schedule

Scroll down to the section called Choose your Schedule. The schedule you select will be applied to all AdGroups within your campaign, unless you set up Custom Schedules for specific AdGroups.

• Specify your Start Date:
  • Here you can specify if you want to launch your campaign Immediately or on a specific date.
  • Please note that all campaigns will go through a 48-hour review period before they are approved and go live.

• Specify your End Date:

  • For evergreen campaigns, select No end date.
  • For time bound campaigns, set up a specific end date.

   

Please note that all dates and times you set are expressed in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), this default time zone cannot be changed.

Default Start and End Dates	Specific Start and End Dates

CTV Bidding Settings

Under Bidding Settings > Bid Strategy you can only choose Impressions:

• Due to the nature of CTV campaigns and how users interact with it, performance cannot be measured through Clicks, CTR, or CPC. 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'll optimize for your target, but actual CPM may vary.
• We suggest skipping Advanced Options and launching your campaign with AdRoll's default settings. Learn how to customize Day Partying and Frequency Capping.

Step 4. Configure your AdGroup Settings

An AdGroup is a fundamental organizational unit within a campaign. Creating multiple AdGroups within one campaign lets you select specific ads for a specific audience, environments, locations, and custom schedules.

• At a minimum, a campaign will have one AdGroup; you can add more as needed.
• You can measure performance for each individual AdGroup.
• Your Campaign budget is automatically allocated across all the AdGroups in your campaign; you can't set specific budget allocations by AdGroup.

AdGroup Name

Choose a naming convention that is easy to recognize in AdRoll ABM reports and dashboards.

AdGroup Schedule

If you want this AdGroup to run on a different schedule than your main campaign schedule, toggle on Use Custom AdGroup Schedule and select your start and end dates.

AdGroup Audience Included

Choose any Website Audiences or Contact Lists you want to target or exclude. If you haven't created your Website or Contact Audiences, follow the instructions below:

Website Audiences introduction guide
Contact Lists introduction guide

Please note that this is an AdGroup setting, and you can have multiple AdGroups within one campaign targeting different audiences with different ads.

AdGroup Audience Excluded

If a user in your target audience completes a conversion on your site, we will keep serving them ads. To avoid this you must manually exclude all conversion audiences from your campaign. Read this article to learn how to exclude audiences from campaigns.

Scroll down to Configure AdGroup > Connected TV Audience > Exclude

• Filter by Conversion Audiences only and select them all, then click Choose. Conversion audience names include a dollar sign $ prefix for easy identification.

AdGroup Audience Location

By default, our AI-powered BidIQ algorithm will choose the best locations for you to optimize campaign performance based on where the users in your target audience are. We recommend using the automatically targeting the best locations to cover 100% of users in your audience, regardless of where they are located at the moment. This is especially crucial in today's remote work environment.

Adjusting geo targeting limits the locations of users seeing your ads. If you want to select specific audience locations, read this article to learn more.

Please note that this is an AdGroup setting, and you can have multiple AdGroups within one campaign targeting different user locations with different ads.

Confirm your Audience Size Estimation

After selecting your audience segments and location filters, this widget will show you the estimated size of the number of households eligible to see your CTV ads. These numbers may change over time depending on how many users do we track in your selected audience and the audience duration.

Select your Ads

Ensure your ad creative follow the technical requirements and creative best practices outlined here.

Create more AdGroups if needed

Add additional AdGroups to your campaign as needed by clicking New AdGroup and repeating the prior steps to define: AdGroup Name, Custom Schedule, Location, and Ad sets.

Step 5. Choose your budget and Payment method

Enter your daily budget, billing information and click Done.

• A $165/day minimum budget is enforced for each individual CTV campaign.
• Your budget will be automatically allocated among your AdGroups by BidIQ.

Once you're done setting your campaign, scroll up to the top of the page and click Submit. You can also click Finish Later to save your campaign as a draft.

Step 6. Finish later or launch

Once you have completed all the steps in this guide, you can:

• Click Finish Later to save a draft. This allows you to save your work in progress and return later to finalize and submit for launch.
• Click Submit if you are ready to confirm the campaign should launch on the Start Date. Launch date is subject to our ~48 hour ad policy review period.

Measure the impact of your CTV campaigns

Read our CTV Overview Guide to learn what CTV reports are available to you and what metrics you should use to measure the success of CTV Campaigns.