Last week brought another step forward in the evolution of streaming and connected TV advertising’s evolution to becoming a full-funnel marketing solution with the launch of Wurl Perform from Wurl, which powers the distribution of 1,200+ streaming channels in 50+ countries. As VideoNuze readers know, I have been steadily beating the drum for how, and why, streaming and CTV advertising need to evolve beyond mainly reach and frequency KPIs, to also enable advertisers to pursue lower-funnel KPIs.

Wurl Perform is a clever new approach for how streaming services can use performance-oriented advertising techniques to highly target ads to relevant audiences. Wurl Perform first builds a viewer graph by analyzing content consumed by viewers that is based on streaming services having integrated the Wurl Perform Integration framework. Then it uses machine learning to identify target viewers who are most likely to convert to the advertiser’s KPIs. Next the targeted campaigns are created/activated. Finally Wurl Perform measures the results of the campaign.

According to Wurl, Wurl Perform has deployed in beta by Bloomberg Quicktake, Stories by AMC, Cheddar News, Gravitas Movies, Danger TV and others with initially successful results. Wurl said overall conversion rate across all targeted viewers was 4% and among those which the ML had ranked as highest likelihood to convert, the conversion rate was 20%. In addition, daily average viewing was up 20% for targeted viewers. The test involved Wurl accessing unused inventory from a variety of FAST services.

In a briefing, Wurl CEO Sean Doherty said streaming services are excited about tapping into the potential of Wurl Perform. It’s clearly early days for Wurl Perform, but as VideoNuze readers know, I’m constantly looking for signals for how CTV and streaming are evolving to full-funnel capability and Wurl Perform is contributing to that evolution.