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Advertising AgencySmarter News Targeting, Stronger Outcomes

See how CarShield used Anoki contextual AI on Spectrum Reach CTV news to drive 28% more leads, 57% more sales and 39% lower cost per sale.

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With Spectrum Reach, CarShield achieved:

  • 28%

    more leads

  • 57%

    more sales

  • 25%

    lower cost per lead

  • 39%

    lower cost per sale1

Summary

CarShield, its agency InterMedia, Spectrum Reach and Anoki ran a five-week, equal-budget CTV news test. Ads placed in contextually relevant live news, classified in real time by Anoki ContextIQ, drove 28% more leads and 57% more sales at 25% lower cost per lead than less relevant news.

Introduction

What if live news environments many advertisers avoid due to potentially harmful content adjacency are in fact strong, brand-safe investment opportunities when backed with the right tools and data? That’s the question CarShield and its agency, InterMedia, set out to explore with Spectrum Reach and Anoki. Rather than treat all live news programming as equal, the partners tested whether CarShield could unlock better performance by prioritizing live CTV news content that contextually aligned with its brand.

To find out, Spectrum Reach and Anoki, an AI-powered contextual advertising and video intelligence company, developed a controlled five-week study designed to compare three distinct approaches: targeting the news environments CarShield saw as most brand relevant, advertising across broader news inventory, and appearing alongside news content CarShield viewed as less relevant. Powered by Anoki’s real-time contextual AI and activated through Spectrum Reach’s premium CTV inventory, the campaign put a more precise, brand-led approach to the test.

The results point to a compelling new way forward. By moving beyond blunt brand-safety exclusions and toward contextual relevance, CarShield was able to identify news inventory that worked harder for its business—delivering stronger efficiency and better performance than broader or less relevant news buys. For advertisers looking to balance scale, attention and outcomes, this case study shows why all news should not be placed in the same category when it comes to brand relevance.

 

THE APPROACH

CarShield wanted to reach in-market audiences within CTV news without relying on broad, one-size-fits-all brand-safety exclusions. In partnership with Anoki, Spectrum Reach enabled the brand to take a more tailored approach—identifying and targeting the live news content CarShield believed was most contextually relevant to its brand, rather than advertising broadly across all news or alongside content it viewed as less relevant.

To prove the value of that approach, the test allocated equal CarShield ad spend across five campaign arms in order to show whether more contextually relevant news environments could drive stronger lower-funnel outcomes—specifically leads and sales—than broader news buys or less relevant news content.

 

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Test design

The campaign was split into five equal budget groups:

  1. Local Contextually Relevant News
  2. National Contextually Relevant News
  3. Spectrum Run of Network Control — unfiltered news with no Anoki contextual filtering
  4. Local Less Contextually Relevant News
  5. National Less Contextually Relevant News

The test examined both contextual suitability and local vs. national news environments. Local news was prioritized in the design as surveys demonstrate that audiences tend to think of local TV news as less politically polarized and more community-driven, creating a potentially stronger environment for advertisers.2

Real-time contextual intelligence

Anoki applied ContextIQ, its AI-powered contextual taxonomy, to classify live news content in real time based on topic, tone, and narrative context. Unlike legacy tools that simply block broad topics, ContextIQ continuously evaluates spoken language, visuals, and story progression, allowing contextually relevant decisions to shift within milliseconds as live programming changes. This gave CarShield a more nuanced control layer: not “avoid all news,” but rather “buy the right news.”

Measurement

Success was measured against direct business KPIs:

Comparing all five groups side by side allowed Spectrum Reach and Anoki to isolate the impact of contextual targeting versus unfiltered news exposure.

 

Products & Capabilities

Spectrum Reach Inventory

Spectrum Reach provided access to local and national news inventory across its CTV streaming footprint, with local news serving as a key differentiator because of its community relevance and lower-polarization content profile.

Anoki Contextual AI

Anoki’s ContextIQ for Live News product detects subgenres in real time based on rich metadata that goes beyond keywords to true contextual understanding, grounded in the story’s topics and narratives. Key capabilities included:

  • • Live scanning of spoken language, visuals, and story context
  • • Subgenre, sentiment, and suitability classification in real time
  • • Advertiser-defined brand-safety parameters
  • • Dynamic suitability decisions that update as live content changes

This moved brand safety beyond blunt category blocking and toward contextual decisioning based on how a story is presented, not just what topic it references.

Programmatic Activation

The campaign was executed programmatically through Private Marketplace (PMP) deals using The Trade Desk and Magnite, showing that contextual news buying can be activated within standard programmatic workflows without requiring custom advertiser-side integrations.

Results

The results showed a clear performance advantage for contextually relevant news.

At nearly identical spend and impression delivery, contextually relevant news outperformed less contextually relevant news across every core business metric:

  • 28% more leads
  • 57% more sales
  • 25% lower CPL
  • 39% lower CPS

 

Performance summary: 

MetricContextually Relevant NewsContextually Less Relevant NewsAdvantage
Spend$42,185$44,144Nearly equal
Impressions1,347,7861,423,131Nearly equal
Leads145113+28.3%
Cost Per Lead$290.93$390.65-25.5%
Lead-to-Sale Rate7.6%6.2%Higher

 

These findings are especially meaningful because the performance lift occurred without material delivery bias. Spend and impressions were effectively matched, strengthening the conclusion that contextual classification—not media weight alone—drove the outcome.

Segment-level outcomes

The advantage also held at the segment level, not just in the aggregate.

SegmentLead-to-Sale Rate
Local Contextually Relevant News9.0%
National Contextually Relevant News6.4%
Spectrum RON Control6.6%
Local Less Contextually Relevant News7.8%
National Less Contextually Relevant News4.8%

 

Local Contextually Relevant News was the strongest-performing segment, while National Less Contextually Relevant News was the least efficient, with more than 2x the cost-per-sale of Local Contextually Relevant News.

Notable outcome details

  • Contextually relevant news delivered a CPL advantage in 4 of 5 reporting weeks
  • Efficiency improved as the campaign matured
  • The strongest weekly CPL for contextually relevant news reached $191

Together, these results demonstrate that CTV news, when filtered intelligently, can drive lower-funnel performance—not just upper-funnel awareness.

 

Conclusion

This campaign showed what’s possible when advertisers can move beyond buying news as a broad category and instead target the news segments that are most relevant to their brand. In partnership with Anoki, Spectrum Reach gave CarShield the ability to do exactly that—using real-time contextual intelligence to identify and activate against the live CTV news content CarShield believed best aligned with its brand. The result was a smarter, more intentional way to use news: one that performed better than advertising across all news or alongside content the brand saw as less relevant.

By combining Spectrum Reach’s premium news inventory with Anoki’s real-time AI capabilities, CarShield was able to reach high-value audiences in the moments that mattered most, without defaulting to rigid exclusions that can limit scale and performance. Instead of treating all news the same, Spectrum Reach enabled a more precise, advertiser-led strategy that unlocked stronger lead generation and sales outcomes while maintaining control over brand fit.

More importantly, this case study highlights a unique advantage Spectrum Reach brings to advertisers: the ability to turn live CTV news into a more addressable, performance-capable environment. Rather than forcing brands to choose between scale and suitability, Spectrum Reach makes it possible to access premium news inventory with greater nuance, flexibility, and confidence. For advertisers, that means a better way to activate their campaigns through news inventory. For the industry, it signals a shift in how news can be valued—not as inventory to avoid, but as inventory that can work harder when the context is right.

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