Stop Running TikTok on TV
📺 Why CTV needs slower thinking, How fan-out queries shape AI overview citations, and more!
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In this newsletter, you’ll find:
📺 Stop Running TikTok on TV
🔍 Fan-Out Queries and How AI Overviews Source Content
🏆 Ad of the Day
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📺 Stop Running TikTok on TV
Most brands still treat CTV like a branding experiment.
That’s the mistake.
CTV has quietly crossed a threshold. It’s no longer just about reach or recall. It’s now a measurable, controllable performance surface if you design for how people actually consume it.
The brands winning on CTV aren’t doing anything flashy.
They’re doing a few structural things differently.
1. Design creative for commitment, not interruption
CTV is not a scroll environment. Viewers didn’t open an app to kill time. They sat down to watch something.
That means creatives should behave less like an ad and more like a chapter break.
Clear opening. Slower pacing. Fewer jump cuts. A single idea carried all the way through.
Trying to port TikTok pacing onto TV kills comprehension. On CTV, clarity beats cleverness.
2. Use CTV where social breaks down
CTV works best where feeds struggle:
complex products
premium positioning
education-heavy categories
trust-sensitive purchases
If your product requires explanation, reassurance, or demonstration, the large screen is an advantage, not a luxury.
Think of CTV as the place where you earn belief, not clicks.
3. Treat targeting as placement logic, not just demographics
Modern CTV is not a national blast. It’s a precision distribution.
The unlock is contextual proximity.
Targeting by geography, lifestyle signals, or household attributes lets you align the message with the environment the viewer already trusts.
CTV shines when it reinforces intent that already exists, rather than trying to manufacture it from scratch.
4. Build a direct response bridge
The biggest myth about CTV is that it can’t convert. It can, if you plan the handoff. Your ad should answer one question:
“What’s the next smallest action someone can take without leaving the couch?”
QR codes, SMS handoffs, and follow-up landing pages turn passive viewing into measurable response. The key is frictionless continuation, not immediate checkout.
5. Test small, learn fast, scale deliberately
CTV rewards early testers because inventory is still underpriced in many markets.
Start narrow. Run limited creative. Measure lift, not perfection.
This is where teams often get stuck guessing.
Systems like Lindy AI CMO help by studying competitors, generating CTV-specific creative briefs and messaging variations, and organizing experiments in Airtable so testing doesn’t stall after week one. You can see AI agents in action today!
CTV is not “the next Meta.”
It’s a different surface with different rules. Brands that treat it like just another ad placement will underperform.
Brands that design for attention, trust, and continuation will build an edge before the channel crowds. That window won’t stay open forever.
🔍 Fan-Out Queries and How AI Overviews Source Content
New research shows a strong relationship between fan-out query coverage and AI Overview citations. Fan-out queries are the follow-up questions AI systems generate from a main search to expand context. Ranking across these fan-outs reveals how AI actually selects sources.
The Breakdown:
1. Fan-Out Coverage Drives Citations - Across 173,902 URLs, pages cited in AI Overviews were far more likely to rank for multiple fan-out queries. The correlation measured 0.77, a very strong relationship.
Pages ranking for both the primary query and at least one fan-out made up 51.2% of AIO citations. Pages ranking only for the main query accounted for just 19.6%. Dual coverage made pages 161% more likely to be cited.
2. Fan-Outs Beat Head Terms Alone - AI Overviews cited pages ranking only for fan-outs 29.2% of the time versus 19.6% for pages ranking only for the main query. That makes fan-out-only rankings 49% more likely to earn citations.
Meanwhile, Google clarified that only pages returning a 200 HTTP status code are reliably sent to the rendering queue. Pages with non-200 codes, like 404s, may skip JavaScript rendering entirely. Skipped rendering directly risks lost visibility in search.
🏆 Ad of the Day
What Works:
1. Desire Reframe - “All I want for Christmas is…” sets up nostalgia, then subverts it with something quietly personal. It turns skincare into an emotional wish, not a cosmetic fix, which feels honest and grown-up.
2. Gift Language - The ribbon does the persuasion before the product does. It visually codes the serum as a present, so buying feels like fulfilling a desire rather than solving a problem.
3. Intimacy Over Hype - There’s no before-and-after drama, no claims fighting for attention. The calmness makes the promise feel believable, like a quiet improvement you notice over time, not overnight magic.
This ad works because it sells restraint, not transformation. It understands that in skincare, especially around holidays, people buy into taste, self-respect, and subtle hope more than bold promises.
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