In today’s advertising landscape, integrating upper-funnel media channels such as Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH), Connected TV (CTV) & Audio into your media mix is essential for building brand awareness and engaging consumers early in their purchasing journey. These platforms offer specialized advantages that can significantly enhance your marketing strategy. The next time you’re evaluating your media investment mix, consider the following advantages that upper funnel channels provide.
The Importance of Upper-Funnel Media in the Media Mix
Upper-funnel media focuses on creating awareness and interest among potential customers. By incorporating channels like DOOH, CTV & Audio brands can reach broader audiences and establish a strong market presence. As brands move further up the funnel, they unlock the opportunity to expand creatively and reach audiences in fresh, unexpected ways. This not only helps campaigns stand out in a crowded media landscape but also builds stronger brand recognition and affinity by engaging consumers with messaging they haven’t seen before. According to Forbes, upper funnel ensures brand awareness among prospective buyers, setting the stage for deeper engagement and conversion.
Understanding the Path to Conversion
Comprehending the customer’s journey from awareness to conversion is vital for crafting effective marketing strategies. A conversion path encompasses the sequence of steps a potential customer follows, from discovering your product to completing a desired action, such as making a purchase or submitting a lead on the advertiser site. By analyzing these paths, businesses can identify touchpoints that influence decision-making and optimize them to enhance the user experience.
Unlocking Reach: How Upper-Funnel Channels Connect You to the Right Audience
DOOH leverages digital displays in public spaces—such as billboards, transit shelters, and airport lounges—to deliver dynamic content to a broad audience. A notable innovation within DOOH is airport lounge targeting and ski lifts, which allows advertisers to reach affluent and captive audiences in a relaxed setting, increasing the likelihood of message retention and engagement.
Connected TV (CTV) continues to be a powerful channel in the upper-funnel media mix, especially because of its access to premium, live content like March Madness, the US Open, Sunday Night Football, and the Olympics. These cultural moments draw massive, engaged audiences, offering brands an unmatched opportunity to build awareness at scale. Studies from The Trade Desk showcase the ability of CTV to not only increase brand awareness but also help improve metrics such as ROAS and transactions.
Audio advertising delivers an optional screen-free way to engage audiences both streaming music & podcasts. Whether listeners are commuting, working out, or relaxing at home, audio connects with them during highly engaged moments, fostering a personal and immersive brand experience. With inventory sources like Spotify, Pandora, and iHeartRadio, advertisers can access premium audio environments across devices such as smart speakers, mobile phones, tablets, and desktops—driving upper-funnel awareness and influencing mid- and lower-funnel actions like consideration and purchase intent.
Measuring Upper-Funnel Media Effectiveness
Tracking the impact of upper-funnel media has become increasingly sophisticated. Brand lift studies assess changes in consumer perception metrics—such as awareness, consideration, and intent—resulting from ad exposure. Foot traffic studies analyze the increase in visits to physical locations following a campaign, providing tangible evidence of its effectiveness. For instance, Vistar Media highlights that foot traffic studies measure lift in visits to a brand’s brick-and-mortar locations driven by DOOH campaign exposure. Programmatic media channels can also demonstrate their impact within the media mix by leveraging path-to-conversion reporting alongside cross-channel conversion lift studies. Together, these tools provide a clearer picture of how upper-funnel strategies contribute to business outcomes across channels.
Device ID Passback and Retargeting
An advanced feature in DOOH advertising is device ID pass back, which enables the collection of anonymized device identifiers from individuals exposed to ads. This data allows advertisers to retarget these consumers across various digital channels—such as mobile, display, and CTV—reinforcing the initial message and guiding consumers further down the sales funnel. Vistar Media explains that their device ID pass back solution allows brands to re-engage individuals exposed to DOOH campaigns across the channels of your choice including both programmatic and social.
Additionally, upper-funnel exposure retargeting can be leveraged in channels like display, allowing us to re-engage users who either fully viewed an ad or watched up to the midpoint in CTV and Audio channels. Since a brand’s target audience encounters multiple touchpoints throughout their journey, proactively reaching them across all their devices helps bridge the gap between initial exposure and long-term loyalty.
Integrating upper funnel into your media mix not only amplifies brand visibility but also leverages advanced targeting and measurement capabilities to optimize campaign performance. By utilizing tools like brand lift studies, foot traffic analysis, and retargeting strategies, advertisers can effectively track and enhance the impact of their upper-funnel media investments.
Understanding the path to conversion enables marketers to identify key touchpoints and tailor strategies that guide consumers seamlessly from awareness to action, ensuring a cohesive and effective marketing approach.
If you want to dig deeper on optimizing your media mix, reach out to our experts!
