1. Connect your measurement
Link the measurement partner you already use and turn on cross-device tracking, so a living-room impression can be tied to a conversion that happens later on a phone. Most advertisers complete this step in under a week.
ORCA Ads · Performance CTV
Connected TV, run like a performance channel.
Most CTV is sold on reach. ORCA Ads runs it on outcomes — bidding toward the households most likely to convert and measuring results through your own attribution stack, so television earns its place next to your other performance channels.
01 · A performance mindset for television
Make CTV accountable to more than reach.
Connected TV gives marketers a powerful way to reach audiences in a high-attention environment. For performance teams, the challenge is turning that exposure into decisions they can evaluate alongside other growth investments.
ORCA Ads brings performance advertising principles to CTV: begin with a defined business outcome, use campaign signals to inform delivery, and evaluate how television contributes to customer acquisition. This gives teams a clearer framework for deciding where CTV belongs in the media mix.
- Which business outcome should the campaign support?
- How will CTV exposure connect to downstream customer activity?
- What controls are available for audiences, inventory, budgets, and creative?
- How will performance be evaluated alongside other acquisition channels?
- What evidence is needed before increasing investment?
02 · From campaign goal to learning loop
Build CTV campaigns around measurable outcomes.
2. Set your outcome
Choose the event the campaign should drive — installs, purchases, sign-ups, subscriptions, or another revenue-linked action. You set the target; ORCA bids toward it.
3. Run
ORCA AI scores CTV auctions in under 100 milliseconds, bidding on the households most likely to complete that event rather than on demographic segments. Models retrain on fresh outcome data every four hours.
4. Prove it
Read every result in your own measurement stack, then validate with a holdout test to separate incremental conversions from the ones you would have won anyway. Most CTV campaigns produce a reliable read within four weeks.
03 · Performance CTV capabilities
Three levers that make television behave like performance.
Household-level decisioning
CTV has no device-level identifier, so ORCA predicts at the level that matters: will this household convert? Every auction is scored on predicted 30-day value for that household, with frequency caps, existing-customer suppression, and inclusion or exclusion lists applied before the bid. Demographic segments are an input, never the target.
Independent attribution
Results land in the measurement partner you already use — a 7-day click and 1-day view window by default, with a longer view window available where your partner supports it for CTV. ORCA does not insert a proprietary attribution layer between your spend and your reporting, and raw delivery and outcome data exports into your own BI stack.
Incrementality you can verify
Run geo-split or audience-holdout tests alongside the campaign to separate conversions CTV actually caused from conversions you would have won anyway. Tests are designed with your team up front and typically read within three to four weeks at normal spend levels.
Inventory and delivery controls
Buy across ad-supported streaming apps, free ad-supported TV channels, and smart-TV native inventory, with app-level blocklists, category exclusions, and pre-bid invalid-traffic filtering applied to every auction. Delivery can be scoped by country, region, or DMA.
Creative support
Run 15- and 30-second video with standard CTV specifications, plus companion display units where the publisher supports them. Creative review usually clears within two business days.
Shared ORCA Ads foundation
Outcome-based optimization, real-time bidding, and value-based audience decisioning work the same way here as everywhere else in ORCA Ads. The ORCA Ads overview covers them in full.
04 · What Performance CTV can help teams pursue
Add the reach of television to an outcome-focused growth plan.
Reach households your mobile campaigns miss
CTV opens inventory your app campaigns cannot buy. Advertisers running both typically find that 10–20% of CTV-attributed conversions come from households their mobile activity had never touched.
Judge CTV on the same terms as every other channel
Because outcomes attribute in your own stack, CTV sits in the same ROAS table as social, search, and in-app. No separate dashboard, no separate definition of a conversion.
Connect exposure to action, quickly
Response to CTV is faster than brand-era planning assumes. More than half of the conversions attributed to a CTV impression land within 24 hours of exposure.
Scale on proven incrementality
Expand budget once a holdout test confirms the lift is real. Most campaigns produce a reliable read within four weeks, so scaling decisions rest on evidence rather than on last-click reporting.
05 · Designed for measurable customer journeys
Apply Performance CTV where television can influence digital action.
Mobile apps and gaming
Use CTV to introduce an app or game to new audiences and evaluate its contribution to user acquisition goals.
Financial services
Support awareness and acquisition strategies for eligible financial products while aligning campaign planning with approved customer actions.
On-demand services
Reach prospective users with a high-impact message and connect campaign evaluation to service adoption or repeat engagement goals.
Subscription businesses
Use CTV within a broader acquisition plan designed to attract prospective subscribers and support sustainable growth.
E-commerce
Bring product or brand storytelling to television while evaluating how the campaign supports digital shopping activity.
06 · Start with a clear test design
Know what you need to learn before the campaign begins.
Start every CTV test with the business question, not the media plan. ORCA works with your team to define the target outcome, the comparison group, and the evidence that would justify scaling — before a dollar is spent. That means agreeing on the success event, the holdout design, and the decision threshold up front, so the result of the test is a decision rather than a debate.
- Business objective and primary success event
- Target audience and market scope
- Campaign budget and timing
- Creative availability and specifications
- Attribution and reporting approach
- Test or incrementality methodology
- Decision criteria for future investment
07 · Performance CTV in practice
See how advertisers turn television exposure into business learning.
Turning reach into a household-level acquisition channel
A direct-to-consumer subscription box service selling across North America had treated CTV as an awareness line item, bought and reported on separately from its performance channels. The team moved to household-level bidding, scoring every auction on predicted 30-day subscriber value rather than demographic segments, with existing-subscriber suppression applied before each bid, and results attributing through the retailer's own measurement partner. Within the first two months, CTV-driven signups showed 15–30% higher ROAS than the prior reach-based buy, and more than half of attributed conversions landed within 24 hours of exposure — evidence the team could finally read next to every other acquisition channel.
"CTV used to live in a different spreadsheet with a different definition of success. Once it reported the same way as everything else, we could actually decide how much of the budget it deserved." — Head of Growth Marketing
Proving incrementality before scaling spend
A multi-brand e-commerce retailer running seasonal campaigns across Western Europe wanted to expand its CTV investment but could not separate incremental conversions from the customers it would have won anyway. The team ran a geo-holdout test alongside a live campaign, agreeing on the comparison group and decision threshold before spend began. The test produced a reliable read within three to four weeks, confirming genuine lift and giving the team evidence to scale budget market by market rather than off a single blended attribution number.
"We didn't need CTV to prove it was the whole story — we needed proof it added something the other channels weren't already getting credit for. The holdout gave us that." — VP of Performance Marketing
09 · Publication Checklist
Publication Checklist
10 · FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is Performance CTV?+
Performance CTV buys connected television on predicted business outcomes instead of on reach. ORCA scores each auction on how likely that household is to complete the event you care about, and every result attributes through your own measurement partner — so CTV can be compared directly against your other acquisition channels.
Which business outcomes can ORCA Ads Performance CTV support?+
Installs, purchases, subscriptions, sign-ups, first orders, and other revenue-linked events your measurement partner can pass back. Campaigns generally need roughly 50 of the chosen event per week to optimize stably.
How is campaign performance measured?+
In your stack, not ours. Outcomes attribute through the measurement partner you already use, on a 7-day click and 1-day view window by default, and raw delivery and outcome data export into your BI environment. For a causal read, run a geo-split or audience-holdout test alongside the campaign.
What inventory is available?+
Ad-supported streaming apps, free ad-supported TV channels, and smart-TV native placements, bought programmatically with app-level reporting. Delivery can be scoped by country, region, or DMA, and every auction passes pre-bid invalid-traffic filtering.
What does implementation require?+
A measurement-partner connection with cross-device tracking enabled, the events that define a valuable customer, video creative, and a budget. Most advertisers are live within two weeks of the data connection being approved; regulated categories take longer because of review.
Is there a minimum budget or pricing model?+
CTV tests need enough volume to read cleanly, so minimums are set per market and per test design rather than as a single global floor.
Can Performance CTV run alongside other ORCA Ads campaigns?+
Yes, and most advertisers run it that way. Shared suppression and frequency controls keep CTV from re-buying households your mobile campaigns already converted, and both channels report against the same outcome definition in your measurement partner.
Next step
See where Performance CTV fits in your growth strategy.
Talk with the ORCA team about your audience, business outcome, measurement plan, and market requirements. Together, we can assess whether Performance CTV is the right next step for your acquisition strategy.