Lenovo’s Rick Corteville: B2B Marketers Must Focus On ‘Quality Places’ For CTV

Why It Matters

For B2B marketers, applying deterministic data and stronger ad tech practices to CTV can significantly improve targeting efficiency, measurable reach and campaign ROI, while premium placements and AI-enabled optimization will separate effective programs from wasteful ones.

Summary

Lenovo marketing executive Rick Corteville says deterministic, first‑party data is transforming B2B connected-TV (CTV) by improving audience precision, reducing waste and boosting incrementality across media mixes. He cited a recent enterprise AI campaign that used target account lists and media partners to achieve over 90% reach and high engagement against prioritized accounts. Corteville emphasized ‘‘precision at scale’’—keeping first‑party data and intent layers current, standardizing lead source tracking, and optimizing the end‑user experience—to better attribute touches and tune campaigns. Looking ahead to 2027, he urged focusing on premium CTV inventory, verified audiences via customer data platforms, and AI-driven testing and automation to win in B2B CTV.

Original Description

Connected TV isn’t often considered a primary channel by B2B marketers to target their desired audiences. But Lenovo is not only making the case for CTV as a valuable venue for B2B, it’s also touting the channel’s use for eliminating ad waste. Specifically, the electronics company boasts achieving over 90% reach against specific enterprise audiences using first-party data matched to target account lists.

“We just finished up a campaign at the end of January that we were really excited about. It’s for our enterprise AI solution running with both our ISG and SSG business groups and we were using CTV to run against a target account list,” Rick Corteville, executive director for the Global Media Center of Excellence at Lenovo, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan. “Being able to take that first party data that we had and really hone in on a specific core set of audiences that were trying to promote our overall solution was key.”

The campaign also generated high engagement rates while building frequency against targeted decision makers.

Precision requires data accuracy

Precision at scale depends on maintaining current, accurate first-party data while ensuring intent partners continuously layer additional information into campaign execution for optimal targeting effectiveness.

“When I think about precision at scale, I think there’s a number of things that opens up for us — being able to highlight how we’re always looking to keep that first party data as up to date and accurate as possible, not only with our own database, but then making sure that our intent partners are continually layering in their data,” Corteville said.

User experience remains critical, as highly targeted campaigns fail without personalized, efficient messaging that drives KPI achievement throughout the customer journey.

Ad tech stack standardization

Lenovo’s team builds internal tools including standardized lead source codes that track all company touchpoints over time, enabling campaign optimization by revealing complete interaction histories with target accounts.

“We have a group building tools around things like standardizing lead source code so that when we’re looking at how we’re able to hit a specific target audience, we’re able to look at all the different touches that we had against that company over a period of time,” Corteville said.

This comprehensive tracking approach significantly improves campaign optimization speed and effectiveness.

Premium inventory and verification define winners

CTV success in B2B marketing requires premium inventory placement, customer data platform utilization for audience verification, and continuous testing roadmaps that incorporate AI automation partners.

“Making sure that you’re highlighting your brand against really premium inventory — there’s a lot of partners out there that are offering CTV, but making sure that we’re showing up in those quality places,” Corteville said. “Also leveraging a customer data platform and being able to really verify those audiences that you’re going after.”

Lenovo is evaluating AI partners that auto-optimize campaigns and reduce manual labor required for media effort adjustments and tweaks.

“We’re looking at a number of different AI partners to help us auto optimize our campaigns and just cut down on that manual labor in terms of being able to change and tweak the different elements of our media efforts,” Corteville said.