We Run Sales-Led Marketing. So Why Are We Running CTV?

I'll be honest: CTV wasn't on my radar for financial services clients.

At FinHive, we run sales-led marketing. Every channel has to connect back to a pipeline signal — a firm on the site, an advisor who engaged, a contact worth following up. TV advertising felt like it lived in a different world: at best, a brand awareness play; at worst, a vanity placement for clients who just want to see their product on a screen. I have kids. I know exactly how many impressions are wasted on a Roku running in an empty living room while nobody's paying attention.

Then we ran a campaign for Quantify Funds, an ETF issuer we work with, and the data changed my thinking entirely.

What Is CTV Advertising, and How Is It Different from Regular TV?

CTV advertising runs on internet-connected televisions — think Roku, Samsung Smart TVs, Vizio, and streaming apps like Philo or Paramount+. Unlike traditional broadcast TV, CTV uses household IP addresses and the same targeting data as your digital display campaigns.

That's the part most B2B marketers miss: your CTV ads and your display banner ads are targeting the same firm. The TV in the office is connected to the same network as the computer where that financial advisor is doing their research. And think about your target audience for a second. What finance professional doesn't have Bloomberg or CNBC running in their office? This isn't a living room play. It's a different screen in the same workspace.

When I explain it to clients, I put it this way: if you or I see our own CTV ad, something went wrong. We're not in the target audience. The whole point is precision.

The Two Biggest Barriers to CTV for Financial Services Firms

1. Creative

This is the real reason most of my financial services clients aren't running CTV yet. They hear "TV commercial" and immediately picture a $30,000 production budget. That's not the reality.

We ran Quantify Funds' campaign with video assets sourced through their listing partner (a big thanks to Nasdaq for having that set up). It's simple, and the targeting is doing the heavy lifting. One of our next CTV clients is going to market with an animated video that cost a few hundred dollars through a freelance producer. It's not going to win any awards, but it doesn't need to. It needs to get the right message in front of the right buyer.

2. Measurement

The second question I always get: "How do I know it's working?"

CTV doesn't have click-through rates the way display does. That's not a bug — it's just a different medium. You're not measuring clicks. You're measuring what happens to your website traffic after firms are exposed to your ad.

AdRoll's CTV reporting tracks the sales signals that actually matter for a B2B follow-up motion. You can see which firms saw your ads, tie that exposure to which firms are showing up on your website, and use that to drive your next step, whether that's picking up the phone, triggering an email sequence, or having your sales team prioritize outreach. It also breaks down performance by geography, daypart, publisher, and creative, so you know where to concentrate budget.

That data is worth the test budget by itself.

What We Actually Found With Quantify Funds

Here's where things got interesting.

We ran a CTV campaign for Quantify Funds targeting financial advisors and high-intent firms across premium publishers — Roku, Bloomberg, Vizio, Samsung, Paramount, Philo, and others — with video completion rates consistently in the high 90s across most placements.

But the finding that surprised me most: CTV drove a higher view-to-website visit rate than our display banner campaigns.

I did not expect that. My assumption was that CTV would function primarily as brand awareness: impressions served, hopefully some recall, but low direct action. What the data showed was the opposite. When we looked at the firms exposed to the CTV ads, we saw meaningful direct website traffic. People who typed Quantify Funds directly into their browser after seeing the ad.

That's brand recall you can measure. And it changed how I'm talking about CTV with every client going forward.

A few other things the data surfaced worth sharing:

• Primetime and late fringe outperformed other dayparts in response rate relative to impressions. If budget is limited, start there.

• Bloomberg was a standout publisher for financial audiences. Not surprising given the persona overlap, but useful to confirm. It's a good starting point if you're targeting advisors or institutional investors.

• Creative execution matters more than length. We ran a range of video lengths, and performance didn't track strictly with duration. It tracked with how clearly the message landed.

How CTV Targeting Actually Works for B2B Financial Services

One of the most common misconceptions I run into: CTV is a broadcast medium you use when you want to reach "everyone in the US."

It's not.

CTV targeting on AdRoll uses the same audience data as your display campaigns. You can target contact lists, firm targets, retargeting pools of past website visitors, or lookalike audiences built from your existing client base.

For a financial services firm trying to reach RIAs, broker-dealer reps, or institutional allocators, that's genuinely useful. You're showing up on the same IP address where that advisor is also seeing your banner ads and email nurture sequences. CTV adds a third touchpoint in a channel with virtually no competition from other ETF issuers or asset managers.

Most of your competitors aren't running CTV yet. That matters.

What You Actually Need Before You Launch CTV

Before recommending CTV to a client, here's what I confirm:

1. A video asset of at least 15-30 seconds in the correct format (MP4, H.264). It does not have to be polished. It has to communicate a clear message.

2. A defined target audience. Contact list, firmographic filter, or retargeting pool. Don't run CTV without a targeting strategy. That's the whole value of the channel.

3. Conversion tracking pixel on the website so you can measure post-exposure site visits and tie CTV exposure to behavior.

4. Realistic expectations on timeline. CTV builds brand recall. Give the campaign at least 30 days before you draw conclusions.

5. A budget that generates enough impressions to be measurable. Check with your AdRoll rep on what threshold makes sense for your audience size. You need sufficient firm reach to see statistically meaningful response data.

The Bottom Line: Try CTV

CTV isn't replacing display or paid search for financial services firms.

The case for testing it is straightforward: same targeting data as your existing campaigns, premium brand-safe placement, high completion rates, and a channel where your target audience is spending increasing amounts of time. The measurement has gotten significantly better — you're not flying blind on outcomes.

What changed my thinking was seeing Quantify Funds' data and realizing the view-to-website rate from CTV was outpacing what we saw from display. That's not what I expected going in.

If you have video creative and a defined audience, there's no strong argument not to test it. Start small, measure the response rate and direct brand traffic, and let the data tell you whether to scale.

Your competitors probably aren't running it yet, but that window won't stay open forever.

Last updated on June 24th, 2026.