If your cost per lead has crept up even though nothing about your business has changed, the instinct is to blame the channel. Search got more competitive. Social got more expensive. Whatever you’re running just isn’t performing like it used to.
Here’s the uncomfortable reframe from our recent webinar on Connected TV (CTV); most local and home service brands don’t have a channel problem. They have a demand problem.
Every competitor in your market is bidding on the same demand, chasing the same finite pool of people already looking, which is exactly why that pool keeps getting more expensive to reach.
Our team and Jeff Katz from Roku sat down to talk through where that extra demand actually comes from and walked through two client case studies that used CTV to get it.
Here are the five lessons worth taking from that conversation, whether you’re already running CTV or still deciding if it’s worth the budget.
And if rising costs aren’t your issue and conversion is, stick around: our next webinar on September 9 picks up exactly where this one leaves off.
1. CTV can produce real, incremental leads, not just impressions
Start with the number that matters most to a lead gen business: Did this channel bring in customers who wouldn’t have shown up otherwise?
One client built its media strategy around linear TV and paid search for years. When they layered in CTV, a causal impact study found it wasn’t stealing credit from other channels. It was adding volume on top. This was at a cost per lead that held its own against the client’s established performance channels. That confidence eventually led them to increase CTV spend by roughly 5x, and the increase coincided with the highest lead volume month in the company’s history.
A second client ran a geo-based creative test across several markets and found their best-performing message drove 59% incremental lift over a holdout group. And the cost per incremental lead was competitive with any channel in their mix.
These are conversion numbers, not brand lift numbers. That distinction is the whole point.
2. Don’t scale a channel before you’ve proven it works
Neither client got to meaningful CTV spend by making a big bet on faith. Both followed a clear process: first prove the channel drives incremental results, then see how much it can scale, optimize performance, and increase the budget once the data supports it.
That patience is what separates a CTV program that sticks around from one that gets killed after a disappointing quarter. If you’re testing CTV for the first time, give it enough time to prove itself instead of expecting it to perform like channels you already use.
3. The lowest CPM is rarely the best deal
It is easy to evaluate connected TV inventory based on CPM alone and assume the lowest-cost option is the most efficient. But one client test showed the limits of that approach.
Lower-cost remnant inventory delivered inexpensive reach, while premium, more precisely targeted placements consistently drove more leads.
Remnant inventory still has a role, particularly when the goal is to expand reach efficiently. But CPM should not be the deciding factor when higher-quality inventory is more effective at turning viewers into customers.
4. Creative is a performance decision, not a design decision
This is the lesson most CTV conversations skip entirely. Everyone wants to talk about targeting, inventory, and measurement. None of it matters if the message on screen doesn’t land.
In that second case study, six different value propositions ran against identical targeting, budget, and placements.
The three built around trust, community connection, transparent pricing, and customer service outperformed the other three (flexibility, long-term reputation, and generic differentiation) by a wide margin. The pattern held across markets.
In home services, people aren’t only comparing prices. They’re deciding who they trust enough to let into their house. Messaging that answers “why should I trust you?” beats messaging that only answers “who are you.”
If your CTV spot is a repurposed linear ad or a straight lift from your social creative, this is worth revisiting before your next flight goes live.
5. CTV still rewards agencies and teams who know what they’re doing
The inventory exists. The targeting exists. The measurement tools exist. What’s harder to find is the experience to put them together for a local business, especially with no click path to track and no cookies to lean on for attribution.
That’s also why a one-size-fits-all CTV playbook doesn’t really exist. The right starting point depends on your market, your budget, and how CTV needs to work alongside what you’re already doing on linear and search. A phased, tested approach beats copying someone else’s media plan every time.
Quick Answers to Common CTV Questions
Is CTV too expensive for a local advertiser? Not necessarily. Fast channels like Roku, Tubi, and Pluto have made CTV much more affordable while keeping the same full-screen viewing experience that makes it effective.
Does CTV only reach younger audiences? No. Streaming adoption has grown across every age group, including viewers 55 and older, one of the fastest-growing segments on self-serve CTV platforms.
Can I just move my linear TV budget into CTV? Not one to one. Linear still wins on fast, broad reach for big, live moments like sports.
CTV earns its place by reaching the households linear can no longer touch, especially cord cutters who’ve moved off traditional TV entirely. The two channels solve different problems and work best together.
So what do you actually do about rising costs?
You stop fighting only for the demand that already exists and start building the demand upstream of it. That’s the whole case for CTV: it reaches the households your search and social campaigns can’t touch yet, viewers who haven’t started searching for what you sell but will, with a message built to convert them once they do.
It won’t replace linear or search, and it shouldn’t. It fills the gap neither one can reach on its own.
Coming up next in this series: on September 9, we’re covering the other half of this problem, what happens once that demand actually hits your search funnel, and why so many home service brands see lead volume climb without bookings following. If reach isn’t your issue and conversion is, that webinar is built for you.
