For decades, television advertisers have faced a trade-off:
- Traditional linear TV: Delivers broad reach, utilizing the power of sight, sound, and motion on the big screen to capture more focused attention and foster immersive brand-building. However, it lacks the precise targeting modern marketers crave.
- Digital and addressable channels: Offer highly precise targeting and robust measurement capabilities but struggle to replicate linear TV’s unique combination of visual impact and viewer engagement on the big screen.
Connected TV (CTV) bridges this gap by preserving television’s immersive, large-screen experience—where audiences are more attentive to the content—while offering the precise targeting capabilities long associated with digital and addressable channels.
Yet, as the industry evolves, there’s a growing realization that lower-funnel performance marketing—which emphasizes quick wins from in-market shoppers—doesn’t fully support long-term brand growth. Leading brands have increasingly noted that relying solely on performance tactics can limit sustained demand and brand equity.
Within CTV lies a powerful subset: Free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST). As consumers gravitate toward free streaming options, FAST has emerged as a key focal point for reaching immediate and future buyers. In this article, we’ll explore why focusing only on in-market shoppers risks missing the larger pool of “future-ready buyers” and how FAST platforms enable brands to engage them effectively.
The challenge: Over-fixation on “in-market” shoppers
One common marketing hurdle is “lower-funnel myopia”—focusing almost exclusively on in-market shoppers who are ready to buy immediately. While this can yield quick wins, it also means brands miss opportunities to improve in three critical areas:
- Competition and costs: By chasing the same immediate buyers, brands drive up media costs, especially as programmatic ad spending continues to climb each year.
- Missing out on future buyers: Most consumers aren’t looking to buy right now. In fact, only 5% of potential consumers are active ‘in-market,’ meaning the other 95% represent future-ready buyers open to purchasing soon. Over-focusing on in-market audiences overlooks people who could be primed to purchase soon.
- Inefficient spend on “sure bets”: Over-targeting likely buyers inflates costs for conversions you’d capture naturally. Shifting budget toward brand priming boosts incremental ROI.
Expanding the funnel isn’t just smart – it’s necessary
While many advertisers have prioritized short-term conversions, the data shows a growing imbalance—and a potential risk to long-term brand health. According to The CMO Survey (eMarketer, Nov 2024), CMOs allocated nearly 69% of their 2024 budgets to short-term brand performance, leaving just 31% for long-term brand building. If you’re only engaging consumers when they’re already in-market, you’re effectively joining the race at the final lap—and often paying a premium to do so.
So where does that leave the vast majority who aren’t buying right now? That’s where future-ready buyers come in.
The solution: “future-ready buyers”
So, how can you broaden your reach without resorting to a “spray-and-pray” strategy? Enter category future-ready buyers—consumers who aren’t actively shopping right now but remain open to your product category. They’re not firmly opposed or “locked out” of it. For example, existing electric vehicle (EV) owners may not be in-market this very moment, but they could be ready to purchase another EV when their lease ends or a new model debuts, making them ideal future-ready buyers.
Why they matter:
- Cultivate future demand. Engage buyers early to stay top-of-mind when they’re ready.
- Build a sustainable brand pipeline. Develop ongoing interest instead of repeatedly chasing immediate leads.
- Expand your reach. Broaden targeting beyond active shoppers for long-term growth.
Use marketing data to avoid overspending on future buyers
Identifying future-ready buyers is powerful—but how do you avoid wasting spend on unlikely buyers? Marketing data helps refine your targeting with real consumer insights, maximizing ROI and campaign efficiency.
- Precisely define your segments: Use lifestyle, demographic, and psychographic data to target consumers who are open to your product, avoiding wasted impressions on uninterested audiences.
- Prioritize privacy and compliance: Choose partners who prioritize data security and adhere to regulations, ensuring your campaigns stay both trustworthy and effective.
FAST: The strategic channel for reaching future ready buyers
FAST services, like Samsung TV Plus, have evolved into a crucial medium for advertisers eager to strike a balance between scale and precision.
Here’s why:
- Engaged audience: Viewers access free, premium content in exchange for ads, making them receptive and attentive.
- Advanced targeting: FAST offers precise segmentation beyond traditional TV, helping you reach Samsung consumers both in-market and future buyers effectively on the biggest screen in the household.
- Positive viewer experience: Free content creates a relaxed viewing environment, increasing ad attention and recall.
Samsung TV Plus and Experian Marketing Services: Scale meets precision
Samsung TV Plus offers expansive reach and contextual targeting aligned to viewer interests. Experian Marketing Services complements this by identifying consumers most likely to buy, leveraging demographic, lifestyle, and intent data—helping you effectively engage future-ready buyers.
Putting it into practice: A use case
Scenario
An electric vehicle (EV) brand, EVolution Auto, wants to reach eco-conscious consumers who aren’t shopping for a car right now but might consider one soon. They also want to track how ads influence brand consideration and sales over time.
Approach
- Identify future-ready segments
Using Experian data, EVolution Auto focuses on “eco-conscious drivers”—people interested in sustainability who are likely to be open to an EV in the near future. - Activate on Samsung TV Plus
The brand places targeted ads on channels with environmental or tech content. With millions of monthly users and a relaxed viewing experience, EVolution Auto’s spots get more visibility, boosting ad recall.
Outcome
By pairing Samsung TV Plus’s broad reach with Experian’s precise audience data, EVolution Auto achieves measurable lifts in brand consideration, website traffic, and dealership visits—effectively priming future EV buyers and driving long-term sales momentum.
Building a future-proof strategy
Exclusively targeting in-market consumers can limit your brand’s long-term potential. By focusing on those not currently shopping—but still open to your category—you widen your future buyer pool and keep your brand top of mind. FAST services like Samsung TV Plus, paired with Experian’s marketing data, offer a powerful way to balance scale with precision–delivering strong engagement today while priming your brand for long-term growth. By shifting your focus toward tomorrow’s buyers today, your brand doesn’t just stay relevant—it sets the stage for sustained market leadership and growth.
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Healthcare and Life Sciences teams map the patient journey to spot care gaps and guide interventions. However, clinical records cover only what happens inside clinics, not the forces driving patient decisions. Enriching these records with lifestyle, socioeconomic, and consumer-behavior insights reveals the “why” behind health outcomes. That’s where non-clinical insights step in – revealing the real-world forces that shape patient results. To address these blind spots, Experian and Komodo Health have teamed to integrate de-identified insights from millions of patient journeys with Experian’s socioeconomic and lifestyle data. This enriched view lets enterprises see each journey in full, identify care disparities, and craft smarter strategies – while rigorously protecting privacy. Driving tangible outcomes and better patient care This collaboration focuses on turning insights into action. With Experian and Komodo's integrated clinical, socioeconomic, and lifestyle data, Healthcare and Life Sciences teams can move from insight to accuracy, building adherence programs, finding hard-to-reach patients, and demonstrating treatment success. They can: Layer Komodo’s de-identified patient-level medical and pharmacy insights and analytics with Experian lifestyle and socioeconomic attributes Segment patient populations by condition, treatment history, and socioeconomic status Prioritize outreach – reducing waste and focusing resources where care is needed most For instance: Neighborhood-level gaps Identify opportunities to capture untreated patients and improve clinical trial inclusion. Income-related support Flag populations most likely to benefit from cost-saving programs, ensuring communications highlight co-pay assistance or financial relief options. Inside the data stack At the core of Komodo Health's AI-enabled healthcare analytics platform is its Healthcare Map®. This innovative tool integrates de-identified patient-level medical and pharmacy claims data from the patient journeys of over 330 million unique individuals – providing insights on diagnoses, treatments, outcomes, and care patterns across the United States. Experian enhances this data by adding socioeconomic and lifestyle characteristics that influence up to 80% of health outcomes. Together, this combined data effectively addresses essential questions such as: Which neighborhoods face the highest diabetes risk? Where is therapy abandonment spiking? When should co-pay assistance messages drop? How can we accelerate HCP outreach or clinical-trial recruitment? Experian's socioeconomic and lifestyle insights: Fueling data-driven care decisions In this context, Experian provides valuable insights into socioeconomic factors and lifestyle patterns, covering everything from household composition and income ranges to psychographics and other attributes that help build a broader understanding of an individual's circumstances. Where deep patient understanding, health engagement, and real-world evidence converge As healthcare marketing, patient engagement, and real-world data converge, the Experian and Komodo collaboration is empowering Healthcare and Life Sciences teams with fast, actionable insights. Fusing de-identified patient-level clinical data with socioeconomic and lifestyle attributes helps teams engage the right patients, and fuels research from product launches to community programs. It elevates experiences while proving impact with real-world evidence. Ready to utilize these insights? Latest posts
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Focus on outcomes, not clicks Impressions, clicks, and other output metrics have been the currency of marketing for decades. But the consensus at Cannes is that those proxies aren’t enough – business outcomes are what matter now. Marketers must shift their focus to measuring real results, such as sales lift, new customer acquisition, lifetime value, or brand impact, rather than getting bogged down in intermediate metrics. This move to outcome-based measurement changes how campaigns are planned and judged: success is defined by the value created, not just the volume delivered. Unified, identity-based analytics are finally making it possible to see who saw an ad and what they did next, across TV, CTV, and digital. That intel drives smarter budget shifts and tighter creative feedback loops. “Outcome-based measurement is table stakes in today’s media ecosystem, and Ampersand has woven it into almost everything we do. 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Connect with us About Optimum Media Optimum Media is a multiscreen advertising business that partners with small and medium businesses, as well as national, political, media and entertainment, and agency clients across the United States. They work with advertisers to develop custom multiscreen advertising solutions powered by proprietary technology and a massive aggregated database of audience data points and TV viewership data. Latest posts