Is It Possible To be 'Too Good' at Targeting the Perfect Customer On CTV?
- Origin
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Modern CTV targeting is extraordinarily good at finding the person most likely to buy.
That is progress. Very real progress. And we should be proud about how much we can cut wastage as a result. We can now build audiences by age, income, location, household composition, purchase intent, shopper history, proximity, interest, behavior and a thousand other signals that would have sounded like witchcraft to a media planner replacing the paper in a fax machine barely 25 years ago.
But all this progress leads to one slightly uncomfortable question:
Have we become so good at finding the buyer that we sometimes forget how much of a consumer's buying actually happens?
Ask yourself this - how many things do you buy in perfect isolation, as opposed to having that purchase be for a spouse, a friends, a parents, a children or a colleague? And how often has someone texted you or told you in the pub “Hey, I saw something right up your alley.”
The target audience is not always the whole decision.
Take a luxury stroller brand. The obvious target is affluent expectant parents. Sensible. Efficient. Defensible.
But the $1,000 stroller might not be bought by them. It might be bought by the 65-year-old mother-in-law who wants to one-up the rest of the family. Or the aunt with no children, flawless taste and dangerously generous instincts. Or the best friend who sends the link with, “This is absurd, but also…check this out.”
Are they outside the target?
Yes.
Are they outside the decision?
Absolutely not.
This is not an argument against precision. Hyper-targeting matters. Campaign efficiency matters. Nobody is suggesting we throw the audience plan into a lake and return to buying media by vibes, astrology and whoever had the nicest lunch with the rep.
But what we are suggesting is the idea that precision should make us smarter, not narrower.
The real opportunity is to start thinking about what we might call the influence audience: people who may not be the most likely direct buyer, but may still recommend, validate, gift, co-decide or carry the idea into the conversation where the decision actually happens.
This is where creative logic and the ability to surface different messaging to different people becomes strangely fascinating.
One version of a campaign can speak directly to the primary buyer: the features, the offer, the product benefit, the practical reason to act.
But another version can speak to the person just outside the model: the gift-giver, the spouse, the friend, the trusted recommender. The message does not need to pretend they are the buyer. It can acknowledge their real role:
For the stroller, that could mean surfacing “the gift they’ll use every day.”
For travel, “the roadtrip worth forwarding to the group chat.”
For home improvement, “the new tool bag your partner will thank you for.”
For retail, “the thing they mentioned once and secretly hoped you remembered.”
That is not wasted reach. That is human reach.
Dynamic creative layering makes this practical. Instead of building one message for one perfect audience, brands can use the same core ad and surface different reasons to care depending on the household, moment, context or likely role in the decision.
Sometimes the right message is for the buyer.
Sometimes it is for the person who influences the buyer. And sometimes, the most valuable viewer is not the person who clicks, visits or purchases first. It is the person who says, later, casually, while doing something deeply human like eating chips in a kitchen: “You know what I saw that made me think of you?”
Advertising has always lived in that sentence - and CTV is now able to lean into it.
If you find this topic interesting and would like to know more, you can schedule a consultation with one of Origin's CTV specialists by clicking here.
Origin is a creative tailor for brands and agencies looking to transform conventional CTV campaigns into personally relevant, emotionally resonant moments at the household level.
Blending human expertise with real-time data signals and objective-led logic models, Origin’s creative technology layers dynamic, audience-specific narratives into a single brand ad - tailoring the message based on the household, the context, and the moment. The result is proven lifts in engagement, intent, and ROAS that consistently outperform category benchmarks.
Founded by media veterans Stephen Strong and Fred Godfrey, Origin is guided by one simple mantra: to win the modern living room, your message needs to say, “we recognize you.”
Learn more at: originmedia.tv
