The Head And The Heart: How B2B Brands Finally Found A Reason To Love CTV

The great promise of CTV was that it would finally open up television to more and more advertisers.

For years, TV had been dominated by the same cabal of major national brands. But with CTV and its superior targeting and emphasis on hitting the right viewers (as opposed to just the most viewers) we would soon see thousands of new brands advertising on TV.

And it has been happening. Slowly, because everything in this industry happens slowly, but it has been happening.

SMBs, small and medium businesses, were among the first wave. They could target customers locally or by interest, often using video they’d created for social media like Instagram and YouTube. 

Then a new wave of companies opened shop, using AI to get them past the big hurdle—the cost of creating an actual commercial. 

Were the AI commercials genius? No. But they were better than most local car dealer ads. 

The industry—both big players like Amazon and Paramount and small startups like Vibe and Waymark—has dreams of stealing away a good chunk of Facebook’s self-serve business.

And I think they may just be able to do that. There’s something about the sight, sound and motion of a TV spot that moves people, that allows for an emotional connection with the viewer.

Maybe that’s just me wearing my old Creative Director hat, but I think there’s something to it, to the way people remember TV commercials they saw 20 years ago but are hard pressed to remember a banner ad they saw 20 minutes ago.

Which brings us to the next group of companies embracing CTV: B2B brands. One of my favorite jobs in my ad creative days was at a boutique shop called Anderson & Lembke that focused on B2B brands. Their motto was simple: just because someone was thinking about business didn’t mean they wanted to be bored.

That meant B2B ads that entertained, made people smile, laugh, grow wistful. Ads that connected with them emotionally, something most B2B brands had never considered.

So it has made me exceedingly happy to see today’s B2B brands begin to embrace TV. To think about where a CTV commercial can fit into their marketing mix. To use words like “branding” and “emotion.”

Part of that is due to a changing business climate and changing consumer, who had become inured to traditional methods. But the other is better targeting as provided by a number of players, most notably, LinkedIn.

That’s not actually a typo. LinkedIn is using the fact that almost every executive in the world has a LinkedIn profile in order to help brands reach the decision-makers they need to reach.

This is not a reach play, however. It’s anything but. 

For most B2B brands, the audience is small—it can literally be 50 people sometimes.

But if LinkedIn data can help them to target these consumers on TV, with commercials that give the brand a personality, then CTV is money well spent.

The idea is to keep the brand top of mind. To have the target thinking of them in a favorable light. To make sure they think of the brand—and thus the people who work there—as “someone I’d want to hang out with.”

We used to refer to it as “capturing their heads and their hearts” and it’s more valid now than ever.

B2B brands can still rely on the lower funnel formats that have always worked for them—email, trade shows, industry publications, digital. But by adding in the ego to the id, they now have given their target a more complete view of who they are and what they’re about.

So that when the time does come to narrow the target list or even to make a choice, the heart is going to want to have a say and the brand is in that much better a position.

Creative is, of course, the wild card here. Not every TV commercial is great or even good. (Bet you didn’t need me to tell you that.)

But for brands willing to go out on even a bit of a limb, the rewards are tremendous. You will stick in your targets’ minds.

They will feel like they know you.

You will have a personality.

You will have a campaign that all the rest of your marketing material can flow out of. Everything from your website to your emails.

This is not something I could have written ten years ago. Or even two. 

It really is all about the targeting, the ability to deliver that message to the people who need to see it. Even if there are only 50 of them. 

That’s a huge shift and it’s giving B2B brands a seat at the CTV table, along with something far more valuable: a voice.