Everything Your Agency Needs to Set Your TV Campaign Up for Success

Every day, your customers leave digital breadcrumbs. They visit your website, engage with your emails, and make purchases. According to Domo, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day globally, including on your customers' behaviors, preferences, and decisions.  

This data is why you know your customers better than anyone. And why, when working with an advertising agency, sharing what you know can make or break the planning, strategy, and measurement of your campaigns. Especially for a marketing channel as big as TV. 

A Kantar survey of 670 advertisers found most advertisers want their partners to have better access to their data. 76% said they believe data should be used by everyone—themselves and their agencies. The challenge is knowing exactly what's worth sharing. So here’s what matters most for success on TV. 

 

Your website and app traffic are the first stop for TV attribution.

Your website and app traffic are the first and most important resources for TV attribution.  Reviewing patterns before launching your campaign will help analysts set baselines. After launching, traffic spikes can be matched against TV spot airings to gauge short-term response using a pixel. Even metrics like new versus returning visitor ratios can help clarify TV's role in driving first-time site visits. And landing page performance shows how TV drives traffic to specific campaign pages or products. 

How to share: Grant your agency analyst access to whatever tool you use to track traffic, whether that’s Google Analytics, Adobe, or something else. Then, work with them to place a pixel on your website and app. This provides real-time insight into traffic patterns while maintaining your account security. Real-time access helps your agency spot and act on trends as they emerge. 
 

Conversion data shows the quality of customers driven by TV.

Understanding how and when customers convert is essential. Online form submissions and ecommerce transactions during and after TV airings demonstrate the quality of the traffic you’re driving. Cart abandonment patterns might indicate messaging disconnects. If you have physical locations, in-store purchases can show similar trends. And comparing the value of TV-driven conversions against other channels helps optimize your media mix.  

How to share: Tracking pixel events is the best place to start here. But reports on sales metrics like average order value, conversion rates by channel, and customer acquisition costs can provide even deeper insights. 

 

First-party customer data helps you find your core audience.

Your CRM data, including customer demographics and engagement history, helps identify valuable audience segments. Transaction patterns reveal customer lifetime value and purchase frequency. This information can guide everything from targeting to creative development. And while a good agency will also do their own research, sharing this data makes sure their work supplements what you already know, rather than duplicating efforts. 

How to share: Work with your legal team to establish a secure data-sharing agreement. Then, share aggregated insights like customer demographics, purchase patterns, and engagement metrics.  

 

Big-picture measurement models require marketing spend across channels.

Your current marketing mix tells an important story. Understanding where you're investing helps establish baselines. This context ensures your TV campaign complements existing efforts rather than competing with them. It also makes it easier to identify TV's impact on other channels—like improvements in branded search or direct traffic—once your campaign launches. This information is also required for attribution models like MMM (Media Mix Modeling). 

How to share: Discuss quarterly marketing budgets and any seasonal patterns with your agency. And keep them informed of changes that could affect their ability to read TV’s performance. For example, they should know if you’re planning to launch an out-of-home campaign for the first time or dramatically increase your digital budget so they can prepare for how that might affect web traffic. 

 

Past TV assets and learnings can kickstart your next campaign.

If you've advertised on TV before, those learnings are invaluable. Previous creative, performance data, and test results provide insight into what resonates with your audience and ensures we learn from the past rather than repeat it. Viewer feedback from past campaigns can inform new creative development. Brand tracker results showing the impact on awareness and consideration help set realistic expectations for your next TV initiative—and benchmarks to beat. 

How to share: Make sure to send any previous TV commercials, media buys, and performance reports to your account team before getting too deep into the planning of your next campaign. That way we can repeat what went well and plan strategic tests to improve what could’ve been better. 

 

Customer research reveals what drives your ideal audience to act.

To craft a compelling TV message, your agency needs to understand who your customer is and what motivates them to buy. Customer personas and research provide crucial insight into their decision-making process—problems they're trying to solve, questions they ask before purchasing, and what ultimately drives them to act. While your agency should conduct their own research to verify, deepen, and scale what you already know, sharing any existing customer insights gives their work a head start. 

How to share: Provide any customer personas and market research you have. Include both quantitative data like survey results and qualitative insights like customer testimonials or sales team feedback. Your agency can then validate these findings and add depth as needed for success on TV. 

 

Providing existing creative assets will jumpstart pretesting and production.

Sharing any existing creative assets or commercials allows your agency to pretest materials before investing in new production. This process identifies which elements drive response and which may benefit from adjustment. And learning this before taking the time and money to produce a spot that isn’t as effective as it could be is always a good thing.

How to share: Gather existing brand assets, commercials, and creative guidelines in one place. Share these through a cloud storage service or your agency's preferred platform. The more comprehensive this library, the better equipped your agency will be to create effective new work. 

The best TV campaigns aren’t born in isolation. They're built on a foundation of data-driven insights and strong partnerships. By sharing data with your TV agency before launching a campaign, you’ll get the full most out of your first-party data, create more targeted and effective advertising strategies, and drive more measurable business outcomes. Which is what we all want—isn't it? 

Ready to set up your TV campaigns to win? Connect with our team to learn more about what launching a data-driven campaign looks like or keep reading about how to plan TV for clear results.