The Ad Council uses CTV to increase awareness around mental health during the pandemic

84%

Video completion rate (VCR)

0.48%

Click-through rate (CTR)

77%

In target with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR)

2020 was a challenging year for many, and well-known U.S. nonprofit, the Ad Council, aimed to raise awareness of the importance of reaching out to friends who may be struggling with their mental health.

To achieve this goal, the Ad Council teamed up with Criteo and Nielsen to support their Seize the Awkward campaign and reach users in their homes with connected TV (CTV) advertising to share this important message. With more people sheltering at home, the CTV streaming space has experienced significant growth since March 2020 and was an excellent and direct way to address users and encourage them to reach out to a friend who may be struggling.

Combining best in class relationships

By teaming up with Criteo, the Ad Council was able to build audiences leveraging Criteo’s granular shopper data, based on more than 35 billion daily historic browsing and transaction events, ensuring the campaign was reaching the right audience. Criteo was also able to measure the success of the campaign and validate the audience reached using Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR), showing the percentage of the audience that were in-target.

Targeting on CTV can often pose challenges to advertisers as these devices do not rely on third-party cookies, and are also household devices rather than personal devices, so multiple people can be watching on CTV device. But the combination of Criteo audiences and Nielsen DAR meant the Ad Council could reach a higher percentage of the target audience on CTV with their message.

Finding success while seizing the awkward

The CTV campaign was a success, and according to Criteo’s performance data, generated a video completion rate (VCR) of 84% and a click-through rate (CTR) of 0.48%, which are higher than the most recent industry benchmarks. It also reached an in-target audience of 77% according to Nielsen DAR.

Criteo looks forward to their continued partnership with the Ad Council to help them share critical messages with people across the country.