June 4, 2025 • 9 min read

Using Connected TV to Drive Full-Funnel Marketing Performance

Message impact and accuracy are two of the most important factors in marketing effectiveness. While many tactics naturally emphasize one or the other, connected TV (CTV) has both — it brings your brand to the biggest screens in target households and turns top-of-funnel attention into full-funnel results, combining the power of video messaging with hyper-focused targeting to maximize performance.

In this article, our media marketing agency breaks down why CTV in advertising and marketing is critical for converting prospects into customers — and why you should use it in your media campaigns. Let’s get started.

Why CTV matters to brand awareness

In a classic marketing funnel, brand awareness sits at the very top. It’s here that consumers first learn about your brand, form impressions, and start to build the mental associations that could guide their future behavior.

In other words, it’s where every new customer relationship begins. Without awareness, there is no consideration — without consideration, no conversion.

That’s where connected TV shines. Well-made CTV ad messaging can deliver cinematic, emotionally resonant storytelling in high-attention environments that are perfect for grabbing the awareness of audiences. And, because CTV advertising enables uninterrupted viewing experiences, it’s often more impactful — more likely to leave a lasting impression — compared to messaging in more cluttered digital environments where attention is fragmented.

The bottom line? CTV has high top-of-funnel impact, and it doesn’t exist in isolation. A strong awareness marketing campaign through CTV enhances every interaction that follows — on social, search, display, or email — making each of those efforts more likely to succeed. In this way, CTV marketing can become the foundation you build upon for the rest of a strong marketing funnel.

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The benefits of connected TV advertising

High-impact placement

Where you see a message matters just as much as what the message says. Fortunately, one of the defining advantages of connected TV ads is their placement.

CTV ads are typically delivered in full-screen, non-skippable formats, so they’re usually placed alongside long-form, professionally produced content — think streaming dramas, documentaries, live sports, or prestige entertainment that drives conversations at the proverbial water cooler.

This format naturally commands higher attention. After all, when viewers are engaged in whatever they’re watching, they’re also more likely to engage with CTV ads placed alongside that content. Thanks to this advantage, CTV ads enjoy significantly higher viewability and completion rates compared to many other standard digital marketing tactics.

Premium message quality

Of course, the what of your messaging is also crucial — and it’s another place where CTV marketing excels.

From a creative perspective, CTV offers a premium canvas for storytelling. The high-definition quality, immersive sound environment, and (except for CTV ads delivered to mobile devices) large screens on which CTV is displayed collectively empower brands to deliver emotionally rich, carefully polished messages that elevate brand perception.

There’s also a “value by association” effect that occurs with many CTV messages. When an ad appears on the same screen or in the same context as a high-quality video, series, or film, it inherits some of that same value in the eyes of the viewer. “Piggybacking” off the prestige of other digital content is a cost-effective way to strongly position your brand and catch the attention of your target audience.

Precision targeting and focused spend

Compared to traditional TV advertising, which broadcasts much more broadly and (in many cases) inefficiently, connected TV offers practically surgical precision. Brands can target audiences based on demographics, interests, behavior, household income, location, and even device type with their CTV campaigns.

This hyper-specific targeting means every marketing dollar spent goes further and means more to your overarching performance. Rather than paying to incidentally reach viewers outside your target market, you invest only in the audiences most likely to convert.

CTV advertising’s precise targeting not only reduces waste but ensures that your top-of-funnel impressions are tightly aligned with your bottom-of-funnel goals, turning awareness into meaningful performance.

Broader audience reach

At the same time that it offers high marketing precision, CTV advertising also enables you to reach broader audiences, depending on your goals — specifically, audiences that may no longer watch “traditional” TV.

Each year, more and more households cut their cords and convert to streaming-only subscribers. This large and growing segment of the population, which especially includes younger, tech-savvy consumers, can’t necessarily be reached by classic broadcasts. If your target audience includes these prospects, connected TV ads are excellent vectors to reach them.

Even if your audience isn’t primarily comprised of streaming-mostly or streaming-only customers, extending your brand into streaming environments can only help your long-term business growth strategy. By expanding your total addressable market at the awareness stage, you also create a larger and more diverse pool of prospects for downstream marketing efforts, like remarketing and conversion campaigns.

Immediate feedback from data

The more you know, the faster you can grow — and with CTV advertising, you can learn a lot very quickly.

Unlike traditional TV, which doesn’t always have meaningful brand performance data to measure, CTV campaigns yield real-time insights for each ad, view, and conversion.

In fact, with CTV ads, you’ll gain immediate access to metrics like:

Impressions
Reach and frequency
Video completion rate (VCR)
Engagement (especially in interactive ad formats)

These data points empower agile decision-making. If certain creative isn’t performing after launch, for instance, it can be swapped out mid-flight. If one audience segment is engaging more than others, targeting can be optimized in real time.

All in all, CTV’s inherently more dynamic approach maximizes the impact and efficacy of your brand awareness efforts, plus gives you tools to refine and improve them throughout a campaign instead of waiting until it ends.

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How connected TV ads drive down-funnel success

Inspire consideration via sequential messaging

CTV supports full-funnel performance through sequential messaging, a technique where you structure your marketing messages to deploy in a specific order over time, guiding the consumer toward conversion. Imagine:

A viewer sees a compelling CTV ad that introduces your brand
Later, they find a follow-up video on YouTube that dives deeper into your product benefits
Then, they see a testimonial in their Instagram feed
Finally, they decide to visit your site and convert into a customer

In a sequential plan like this, each touchpoint is strategically planned and builds on the one before it — and CTV is the starting point that primes consumers for the rest of the buying journey.

By teeing up strong awareness of your brand right at the beginning, you set up your playing field for higher engagement across other platforms. When you use CTV marketing in concert with your other campaigns and smart retargeting efforts, you’ll be more likely to see better mid-funnel engagement rates, improved click-throughs, and more qualified leads — not to mention better low-funnel conversions and other results.

Increase conversion probability

Part of the power of CTV marketing lies in the longevity of its impact. A well-crafted, strategically placed CTV message doesn’t just make someone aware of your brand — it can also go a long way toward convincing them to convert.

When someone sees a high-quality, emotionally resonant message from your brand, they’re:

More inclined to trust you
More likely to remember you
More likely to act on a conversion-focused offer later

To get a little more into the marketing weeds, CTV impressions play a vital role in multi-touch attribution. When you pair CTV ads with lower-funnel tactics, such as search engine marketing or social retargeting, they can significantly boost performance throughout the funnel. A user who’s already seen a CTV ad is more likely to click, convert, and become a customer when they see a follow-up message on another channel.

Seen in this light, CTV messaging is a benefit to your marketing throughout the funnel…

Enhance retargeting pools

… Including your retargeting efforts.

Thanks to IP-level and cross-device tracking, you can use CTV to identify households that are ideal candidates for re-engagement, then deploy retargeting ads to those viewers across desktops, mobile phones, and over-the-top devices like smart TVs.

In effect, CTV advertising enriches your retargeting pool with users who already have some level of brand awareness or interest: people far more likely to engage with your business than cold prospects. When you follow up with tailored, action-oriented messaging, these viewers are already primed to convert — and that might just lead to higher engagement rates and stronger ROI.

Boost branded search and site traffic

Exposure to CTV ads has a well-documented halo effect that enhances your core marketing metrics. After seeing a CTV spot, consumers are more likely to search for your brand, visit your website, or explore your offerings. This surge in curiosity can easily drive performance in several major respects, including:

Branded search volume: A higher search volume means more people are actively looking for you, which signals interest and intent.
Direct website traffic: When your direct website traffic rises, more users are typing your URL directly — a strong sign of awareness and consideration.
Time on site and pages per session: As visitors spend more time exploring, they engage more with your brand.
Cost per completed view (CPCV): CPCV indicates how effectively your budget delivers full views, which can inform future strategy and better performance.
Brand lift: The higher your brand lift, the higher awareness, recall, and favorability are, too.

Each of these metrics points to the deeper funnel value of CTV. It’s not just about reach, although it certainly helps there — it’s also about sparking the kinds of interactions that lead to conversions, purchases, and long-term brand loyalty.

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Amplify your brand’s performance with CTV advertising

When used strategically, advertising via CTV is far more than just a top-of-funnel tool. It’s a full-funnel performance engine, powering awareness, consideration, and conversion in a cohesive, measurable way. If you’re looking to maximize marketing results, it’s time to take advantage of CTV advertising.

And we can help you do it. Get in touch with us today and see how we can take your business to the next level (and many more customers) through full-funnel integrated media campaigns.