Beginning in 2023, performance agency Tinuiti tapped Roku to drive brand lift and lower-funnel metrics for clients like e.l.f. Cosmetics. By combining Roku’s ability to find incremental audiences with Tinuiti’s measurement capabilities, the partnership has fueled greater investment in Roku and elevated client campaigns to new heights of streaming effectiveness.
As the largest independent full-funnel performance marketing agency in the
US, Tinuiti delivers full-funnel performance for digital-forward brands using holistic media planning and innovative measurement methods. Tinuiti's deep understanding of campaign performance and efficiency for each of its media and platform partners gives brands an edge in – and across – every channel, supercharging their growth.
We sat down with Shasta Cafarelli, SVP of Media Investment at Tinuiti, and Harry Browne, VP of TV, Audio, and Display Innovation, to discuss how streaming TV advertising can meet performance-based and full-funnel advertising goals.
What is Tinuiti's overall approach to media and streaming media?
Tinuiti’s full-funnel, integrated approach to media planning starts with identifying the audiences it aims to reach. The agency then determines the most effective context and appropriate pricing strategies to engage audiences. Though Tinuiti remains channel-agnostic in its media decisions, streaming TV has increasingly become a focal point as its reach expands.
"I'm a believer that understanding our core audience and how they consume media is key to success, and more often than not, that includes streaming TV,” Cafarelli said. “Streaming TV has undeniably become a mass reach medium. It provides the power of television, but with the technical capabilities of digital media, so it's truly the best of both worlds.”
Tinuiti’s tactics include sophisticated first-party audience targeting. This strategy aims to upsell new products or suppress audiences who have already been exposed to a client’s ads on other channels. The agency also executes campaigns featuring broader targeting, efficiency plays, and high-profile events.
Once campaigns are live, Tinuiti’s proprietary measurement approach, Bliss Point by Tinuiti, is activated. This methodology involves direct measurement of individual media partners, enabling clients to track metrics that were previously unmeasurable. The objective is to ensure all channels work in concert and that each individual inventory source delivers results.
“It is a set of integrated tools that we use to track and measure performance across channels and stages of the funnel,” Browne said. “That includes a high-velocity media mix model that gives clients holistic campaign results quickly. The goal is to allow them to make decisions and use it as a forward-looking predictive approach so they can not only grade campaigns historically but also optimize for the future.”
What has Tinuiti learned about the performance of streaming advertising?
Streaming TV has increasingly become a multi-dimensional tool, Cafarelli said.
“It's not every day that you find a channel that can accomplish campaign goals up and down the funnel,” she explained. “But depending on how we strategize our buys and the targeting and the tactics we use, it's doable, which is so exciting. It's always been a strong channel for performance marketing in our experience, especially as pricing continues to favor buyers, and now has also become increasingly viable for upper funnel with its enormous adoption by viewers.”
How does Tinuiti think about traditional creative formats in TV alongside newer, streaming-only formats?
Traditional TV formats such as 15- or 30-second ads provide an opportunity for consistency in how brands and ads show up, Cafarelli said. This helps build familiarity with viewers as they jump between different publishers and content types. But as consumer behavior changes, there are exciting opportunities for new interactive formats that can collapse the funnel and make it easy for consumers to buy products.
How has Tinuiti’s partnership with Roku evolved?
“The way that our buying portfolio tends to work is when we can get a few proof-of-concept tests underway and gauge performance, it's as if the floodgates open,” Cafarelli said. “That is definitely what we've experienced with Roku.”
Roku’s unique advantages have made it easy to justify accelerating Tinuiti’s efforts. Cafarelli cited Roku’s massive reach among U.S. households, nearly 120 million people daily, and the precision and performance the platform offers.
And she added that clients have embraced the unique opportunities available via the Roku Experience: a growing live sports footprint, innovative ad formats, and integrated placements via The Roku Channel.
“We have dozens of clients who have come onboard,” she said. “They have increased their spending, and many are now experimenting with the innovative targeting and tactics Roku offers.”
How do streaming TV advertising and Roku help marketers meet their top- and bottom-funnel goals?
Browne notes that Roku has a particular advantage in full-funnel advertising because it combines audience reach and precise targeting.
“We can reach millions of viewers on Roku to drive brand awareness, consideration, and familiarity, and then convert them,” he said. “We can layer in precise targeting and increase frequency for those most likely to convert. It’s a holistic approach: using the same channels, mediums, and platforms to drive actions at every stage, from the first brand interaction to subsequent purchases.”
Roku and Tinuiti teamed up with e.l.f. for a fun “Judge Beauty” campaign with talent from Judge Judy and Suits. The brand wanted to extend the momentum of its second Big Game ad. The campaign included a home screen takeover and appearance in Roku City. A brand awareness study found the campaign drove an 11-point lift in message association with e.l.f.
Roku also partnered with a top daily fantasy sports advertiser that ran a Roku Live Channel Playlist activation, targeted towards the NBA finals. It appeared as a banner ad on Roku’s home screen with the ability to click through to a microsite showing the full ad. This activation drove substantial down-funnel KPI volume and cost-per-action that outperformed other similar single day activations.
Additionally, this advertiser’s campaign drove significant brand lift results on the Roku platform for this advertiser. This activation drove statistically significant brand lift across numerous key metrics for the brand against their target audience.
What are Tinuiti’s 2024 priorities?
Tinuiti is focused on helping their clients make better marketing decisions and drive faster business growth, but the how behind this has changed a lot in 2024. Tinuiti’s Machine Learning-powered suite of products is designed to measure what marketers have previously struggled to measure in a highly visual and digestible way, so they can quantify holistic marketing impact, uncover insights in real time and gain decision-making confidence to drive meaningful business growth.
"Our whole approach for this year is about synthesizing our strategy and campaigns across all of those different elements so that we can really lean into that full-funnel integrated approach that we think is so valuable for our clients.” Browne said.
Extra: What are you streaming?
Cafarelli is enjoying the second season of “House of the Dragon” and recently rewatched the last few episodes to refresh her memory. “They are intense and can be tough to watch, so I usually follow with ‘The Great British Baking Show’ to lighten things up.”
Browne is streaming “The Bear.” “I know I'm late to the party, but it is so good.”
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