Optimal, Civolution launch Facebook/TV-synced ads
Editor | 23-10-2013
Aiming to tap into the dynamic of synced social advertising delivered within seconds of a commercial starting leading to ‘powerful results’, content monetisation firm Civolution has inked a partnership with social advertising and analytics provider Optimal.
“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 Optimal founder and CEO Rob Leathern.
Civolution’s ad-triggering service, SyncNow, which monitors hundreds of cable and broadcast channels nationally and internationally to identify TV ads in real time, has been integrated with Optimal’s Open Signals and its Real Time Bidding (RTB) platform to automatically buy ads via Facebook Exchange (FBX) within seconds of when the ad spots air on TV. The two companies aim to allow brands and agencies to buy Facebook ads in complete synch with TV commercials, and say that a pilot programme found that Facebook News Feed ads that were synced in real time to the TV broadcast spots experienced over 60% lift in consumer click-through rate (CTR) compared with a control group running the same day. They say, by contrast, news feed ads synchronised to competitive ads saw over 35% CTR lift compared with the control.
“The connection of our ad-triggering service with Optimal’s real-time bidding on Facebook proved to be a significantly powerful combination,” added Civolution CEO Alex Terpstra. “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.”