First-party purchase data coupled with CTV solves challenges that have historically plagued both linear TV for decades and CTV more recently. The pairing provides two major benefits that unlock a host of capabilities. The first is providing a persistent, cookieless ID, that consumers typically use across all CTV platforms—an email. The second is the ability to link a campaign exposure to a sale using that first-party identifier.

By utilizing in-house first-party data from a brand, or working with a data partner who has first-party purchase data, savvy marketers can start advancing their CTV strategies in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

Precise targeting

It’s no secret that linear TV is exclusively a reach play. If you and your next door neighbor are watching the same show at the same time, you will get the same ad, even if you’re from dramatically different demographic groups and have very different interests. First-party purchase data plus CTV provides marketers with targeting gold: using verified purchases to segment and deliver ads with surgical precision. This equates to less ad dollars wasted and better performance.

Simplified path to purchase

CTV falls prey to fragmentation because it’s consumed across numerous devices, platforms, and services—making the path from viewing an ad to making a purchase convoluted. This hinders the ability to accurately attribute conversions to a particular ad and measure the true impact of a campaign. By using first-party identifiers and purchase data, much of the messy middle of matching cookies across platforms is eliminated, making sales attribution a much lighter lift.  

Unified measurement methodologies across platforms

There’s a major lack of industry-wide standardization for measuring CTV advertising, making it harder to compare performance across different platforms and channels. Compared to other digital channels, there are significantly less engagement signals available with CTV. First-party purchase data allows for sales attribution, ROAS and incrementality to be used as outcome metrics, a standard and widely accepted form of campaign measurement.

Deep insights on consumers who’ve converted

The same purchase data that is used for attribution can be used to tell you more about who has converted. What competitors do they shop with? What was their purchase behavior leading up to the sale? This allows you to derive insights about the precise “conditions” in which a purchase was made, and weave that into your strategy on the go-forward.

A data strategy that prioritizes first-party purchase data allows marketers to maintain precision when targeting and measuring in today’s challenging landscape, even when activating against something as complex as CTV.