Dive Brief:

• Carl’s Jr. is finding success using artificial-intelligence-enriched contextual targeting for connected television (CTV) advertising, according to a case study. A recent campaign was conducted via IRIS.TV’s private marketplace and delivered promising results.
• Working with agency PMG, the quick-service restaurant ran an effort aimed at specific regions in the U.S., with the goal of driving in-store visits and sales. The brand leveraged contextual targeting data to realize a 35% lift in incremental visits, a 152% increase in incremental sales and a 2.2 times return on ad spend.  
• The results demonstrate the potential for a private CTV marketplace to overcome channel-specific challenges, including a fragmented supply chain, the absence of identifiers like cookies and the perceived inability to target down to the individual level. 

Dive Insight:

Advertisers are justified in their concerns about CTV. Attribution and measurement remain a work in progress, brand safety guardrails are questionable and siloed platforms can hinder analysis. IRIS.TV’s case study for Carl’s Jr. attempts to address at least a few of those concerns and emphasizes a higher level of precision available when taking advantage of contextual targeting via a private programmatic marketplace.  

“We are always looking for new ways to advance our ability to serve current and potential guests messaging in relevant communications channels, particularly when those strategies can drive business outcomes at scale,” said Jennifer Tate, CMO at CKE Restaurants, Carl’s Jr.’s parent company, in a statement attached to the case study. “We’ve been encouraged by the performance of our IRIS.TV partnership. This is a unique combination of targeting ability, contextual relevance, high ROI, and scale, which will always be important for us.” 

Carl’s Jr. and agency PMG worked with IRIS.TV to engage young men through contextual data, with a focus on shared characteristics and interests such such as Hispanic, anime, gaming and sports content, as well as an eye on competitors’ logos. IRIS.TV’s data partners Captify, GumGum, Kerv, Pixability and Silverpush used AI to analyze CTV content frame-by-frame and break out segments that would resonate with Carl’s Jr. message. The approach allowed Carl’s Jr. to reach not only the right households, but also the right individuals within those households, according to Tate.

The effort was executed across millions of impressions on IRIS-enabled CTV inventory, including thousands of streaming apps and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels. Results were tested alongside standard digital video and CTV targeting tactics, including first-party identity and graphic data, as well as other publisher-declared targeting methods.  

“IRIS.TV enables us to scale beyond human-centric curation and audience-based targeting alone,” said Michael Treon, head of CTV strategy at PMG, in a statement. “The scale and segmentation across FAST inventory not only offers incremental delivery against our audience and strategy but affords us the ability to message within key environments and alongside relevant content. It's delivering results that drive direct business outcomes for our clients.”