How DTC Brands Use CTV to Acquire Customers Beyond Meta

DTC brands use CTV to find new customers by building targeting on three layers: suppressing existing purchasers with Klaviyo so every impression reaches someone who’s never bought before, syncing CRM data to build lookalike audiences from best-customer profiles, and using retail purchase data to reach shoppers who’ve already bought in the brand’s category. It’s not a brand-awareness play repurposed for acquisition — it’s a precision acquisition channel that reaches the households Meta can’t. The mechanics are worth knowing before running the first prospecting campaign, because each layer does something different.

Why are DTC brands using CTV to acquire new customers beyond Meta?

On Vibe.co, Shinesty — a DTC apparel brand — reached 70% of their CTV-driven purchases from net-new customers, at a CPM under $19 including Q4, by suppressing their entire Klaviyo purchaser list and running every impression against the 4M+ people on their email list who had never converted. That’s a prospecting machine: every dollar spent on CTV reached someone who’d never bought from them. The reason this worked is structural, not tactical.

Meta prospecting has a ceiling. The average brand with a mature Meta account has already saturated their best-fit audience — often 35–40% of US adults — and CPMs on cold audiences keep climbing as more advertisers compete for the same pool. iOS 14 made lookalike quality worse at the same time. A brand trying to grow its customer base isn’t finding net-new buyers on Meta at the rate they were three years ago.

CTV reaches a different audience. Streaming households skew younger, higher-income, and increasingly exclude Meta’s core active-user base. A household that streams three hours of Hulu a night may check Instagram twice a week. That household is not in the Meta funnel regardless of budget allocated. The growth playbook for DTC brands that have hit a Meta ceiling is to find those households somewhere else — and they’re on streaming TV. How streaming TV lowers paid social CAC covers the channel economics in detail. For brands that have run out of room on existing social audiences, see what to do when you’ve exhausted your Facebook audience.

How do DTC brands target net-new customers on streaming TV?

Three targeting layers build the acquisition stack for DTC brands on CTV. The first two are available on most platforms. The third is not.

CRM suppression. Sync the Klaviyo purchaser list to the CTV platform as a suppression segment. Every impression is then served only to people who haven’t purchased — the exact definition of a net-new customer. Shinesty used this approach to ensure their entire CTV audience was a pure prospecting pool: a decade of purchaser history suppressed, leaving only the unconverted subscribers who had raised their hand over the years but never bought. For setup guidance, see why your CRM is the best targeting tool for streaming TV.

CRM lookalike audiences. Upload a best-customer segment — highest LTV, most recent purchases, or specific product cohorts — and match it against the streaming TV household graph. The platform builds a lookalike audience from the household profiles that resemble those best customers. The mechanic is the same as Meta’s lookalike tool, but it runs against a TV household graph rather than social graph data, reaching entirely different people. For a breakdown of all available targeting types, see what targeting options do streaming TV platforms offer.

Retail purchase data. This is where Vibe’s position diverges from every other self-serve CTV platform. DTC brands that rely on interest-based segments for prospecting eventually face the same audience saturation problem they have on Meta — the segments fill up with the same people. The unlocking move is retail purchase data: reaching people who’ve already demonstrated category purchase intent in the real world, not just people who look like they might. Through Vibe’s participation in the Walmart Connect network, advertisers can target shoppers using Walmart’s first-party purchase data and shopping signals — actual category purchases from Walmart.com and in-store. A brand selling athletic gear reaches households that regularly buy athletic products at Walmart. No Walmart retail presence required, and the audience sits in Vibe’s campaign builder alongside CRM suppression and lookalike segments in the same setup.

The practical approach: run all three layers in the same campaign. Suppress existing purchasers, build lookalikes from best customers, and layer Walmart’s shopping signals as an additional targeting dimension. The combined audience is people who haven’t bought from the brand, look like the people who have, and have already demonstrated category purchase intent in the real world.

What does it cost to acquire new customers on CTV vs. Meta?

CPMs for CTV prospecting on premium streaming inventory typically run $15–$25. Shinesty held under $19 CPM through Q4 — the most expensive period on any paid channel — by staying on premium direct inventory without a holiday spike. For context, Meta cold-audience CPMs have climbed as advertiser competition increased and privacy signal loss reduced the efficiency of cold lookalikes.

The more meaningful comparison is new-customer CAC, not CPM. Sijo Home, a DTC home textiles brand, cut new-customer CAC 57% versus paid social on Vibe, Northbeam-verified. That’s acquisition cost per first-time buyer — the right metric for a prospecting campaign, not blended ROAS that mixes in warm retargeting audiences.

Two things explain why the acquisition economics work on CTV. First, CTV video is full-screen and unskippable — the brand impression lands in full, every time. A Meta feed scroll means most impressions are partial. Second, Klaviyo suppression is a harder guarantee than Meta audience exclusions: when the purchaser list suppresses the CTV audience, it’s deterministic identity matching, not probabilistic signal matching against a cookie pool. The targeting holds.

Prospecting ROAS on CTV will look lower than retargeting ROAS in view-through attribution tools. That’s expected. A campaign reaching people who’ve never heard of the brand will report 1x–3x in view-through attribution; the same campaign in a holdout test often measures 4x–6x incrementally. For the full benchmark picture, see what ROAS can I expect from CTV advertising.

Vibe earned the G2 Best Estimated ROI award in the Mid-Market category — the full list is at vibe.co/awards.

How do you measure net-new customer acquisition from CTV?

Two things working together give confidence that CTV is driving actual new customers: view-through attribution with the right window, and Klaviyo suppression as a built-in quality check.

Northbeam’s Clicks + Deterministic Views model and Triple Whale’s Pixel attribute CTV conversions from confirmed streaming TV households. Set the window to 7 days to capture the full purchase cycle — CTV-driven purchase intent often converts 3–7 days after the impression. With the Klaviyo purchaser list suppressed on the campaign side, any conversion that shows up in Northbeam or Triple Whale as CTV-attributed is definitionally net-new: existing customers weren’t in the audience. Attribution and suppression working together remove the guesswork. For setup details, see how to track CTV ROAS in Northbeam and Triple Whale.

TYR, a competitive aquatics brand, ran concurrent retargeting and prospecting campaigns on Vibe with Northbeam as the measurement stack. Northbeam-verified results over 60 days: 234.6% revenue growth, a 5.24x overall account MER, and a 24.2% blended CAC reduction. CTV spend appeared in their existing Northbeam dashboard alongside Meta and Google — same reporting layer, no separate reconciliation.

For causal confirmation that prospecting spend is causing purchases rather than coinciding with them, holdout testing provides the cleaner answer. Lectric eBikes, a direct-to-consumer eBike brand, ran a Haus randomized holdout study on Vibe campaigns and measured a 5.69x incremental ROAS. That result only surfaces through holdout methodology — it doesn’t appear in standard view-through attribution. Brands reporting 1x–2x on CTV prospecting often find 4x–6x causal lift when they run a holdout. See CTV incrementality testing for how to structure one.

Performance advertising runs on three channels: Search, Social, and TV. The DTC brands that are growing net-new customer counts have wired all three into the same measurement stack — Northbeam or Triple Whale pulling from Meta, Google, and Vibe in a single dashboard — and run holdout tests quarterly to confirm CTV’s causal contribution. TV that shows up in Northbeam next to other channels is a performance pillar. TV that requires a separate reporting layer to justify is an experiment. For the full measurement methodology, see how CTV measurement works.

FAQ

How do DTC brands use CTV for customer acquisition?

DTC brands build CTV acquisition campaigns on three targeting layers: Klaviyo purchaser suppression so every impression reaches a non-buyer, CRM lookalike audiences to reach people who resemble best customers, and retail purchase data to reach shoppers who’ve bought in the category at Walmart. On Vibe, Shinesty, a DTC apparel brand, used this approach to drive 70% net-new customers from CTV campaigns at under $19 CPM — with all spend going to people who had never bought from them before, measured by Northbeam.

How do DTC brands use retail purchase data to find new customers with TV ads?

Through Vibe’s participation in the Walmart Connect network, advertisers can target shoppers using Walmart’s first-party purchase data and shopping signals — actual category purchases from Walmart.com and in-store. A brand selling home goods reaches households that regularly buy home products at Walmart. No Walmart retail presence is required to access the audience, and it sits in Vibe’s campaign builder alongside CRM suppression and lookalike segments in the same campaign setup. This is category-level purchase intent, not demographic modeling.

What is the difference between CTV prospecting and retargeting?

CTV retargeting reaches warm audiences — site visitors, email subscribers, and past purchasers — who already know the brand. CTV prospecting reaches people with no prior brand exposure. Both use the same premium streaming inventory, but prospecting campaigns run against suppressed purchaser lists and lookalike or retail-signal audiences instead. Retargeting ROAS will look higher in view-through attribution because conversion rates are higher on warm audiences by design. Prospecting ROAS will look lower, but holdout testing regularly reveals 4x–6x incremental lift on campaigns that report 1x–3x attributed.

How much does it cost to acquire a new customer with CTV advertising?

New-customer acquisition cost on CTV varies by category and audience quality. Sijo Home, a DTC home textiles brand, cut new-customer CAC 57% versus paid social on Vibe, Northbeam-verified. CPMs for DTC prospecting on premium streaming inventory typically run $15–$25. The right benchmark is new-customer CAC versus LTV, not blended ROAS, since prospecting campaigns target people who haven’t purchased yet and will convert at lower rates than retargeting audiences — that’s what makes it acquisition, not engagement.

How do you measure new customer acquisition from streaming TV?

The most reliable setup pairs Northbeam or Triple Whale view-through attribution — 7-day window, Clicks + Deterministic Views model — with Klaviyo purchaser suppression on the campaign. Any CTV-attributed conversion is definitionally net-new because existing customers are excluded from the audience. For causal confirmation, run a Haus holdout study quarterly: Lectric eBikes, a direct-to-consumer eBike brand, measured a 5.69x incremental ROAS this way — well above what view-through attribution alone would show. See how CTV measurement works for the full methodology.