Why advertisers need to catch up with the fast-growing CTV audience

While some may argue that the shift to on-demand, Connected TV (CTV) is a direct result of COVID-19, in truth, premium audiences stopped being exclusive to prime time long ago. Back in 2019, 45 million UK viewers were already watching digital video at least once a month, while CTV users numbered 34 million. In addition, recent findings highlight that almost 70% name CTV as their consumption method of choice when compared to linear channels, demonstrating how the pandemic has accelerated this pre-existing trend.

Advertisers, however, are still trailing behind. For all the buzz about CTV’s power and benefits over linear - including high viewability, return on ad spend and emotional impact - budgets have moved by degrees, with discussion mostly centred on plans to boost future investment. Without an increase in speed, advertisers risk falling further out of step with audiences; not to mention, losing ground to competitors and missing out on the rich potential of CTV. 

The question is: what’s driving this ongoing hesitation and how can advertisers catch up?

Complexity drives stubborn adoption barriers

It’s no surprise almost half of advertisers cite poor understanding as one of their key adoption barriers. Fragmented inventory has continuously made selling and buying CTV ad space complex, with problems often amplified by limited supply. Now, the combination of escalated content production driven by soaring viewer demand, and innovations in unified cross-environment trading tools are driving positive changes; boosting impression volumes and enabling simpler and smoother transactions on all sides. But some barriers remain.

Top of the list of challenges is data availability. Increasingly stringent privacy legislation and restrictions - such as Apple’s latest ban on third-party access to IP addresses - mean the data advertisers rely on for user identification and targeting is fast depleting. The most obvious solution to these problems - contextual advertising - has also faced difficulties with limited oversight of premium video data. Concerned about the possibility of piracy, cherry-picking from advertisers and losing data control, media owners and distributors have historically kept their insight securely out of reach within internal content management systems. 
 

Making contextual targeting viable

Opportunities, however, are emerging to remove persistent blockers. Thanks to advances in data onboarding and activation, there is greater scope for media owners to safely share video-level data, opening the door to collaboration and context-based efficiency. So far, minimal data visibility has proved especially problematic for CTV, where lack of page-level data means even imprecise standard content analysis approaches can’t be applied to understand videos. 

By facilitating a way to collect, unify and share video information without losing ownership, secure platforms act as the vital missing bridge between media producers, contextual advertising tools, ad servers, DSPs and SSPs. With an ongoing supply of data - including sight, sound and motion information - each element of the CTV ad framework can tap crucial insights. For instance, contextual providers can dive deep into video and determine its true meaning, creating normalised identifiers that enable tailored ad delivery in line with specific brand offerings and target audiences, enhancing advertiser confidence and ad resonance. 

As an added advantage, freer data flow at the video-level will also address one of the industry’s other principal worries: brand safety. Again, lack of contextual data has made it hard to accurately evaluate web-wide content and doubly challenging for CTV, frequently resulting in the use of generic keywords to avoid certain terms. This caps advertising range and broadcaster revenue. Unlocking the data gates allows for contextual tech to evaluate content to ensure the best topical fit, in addition to analysing suitability against brand-specific safety criteria.

The time is right for advertisers to start catching up with CTV audiences. Not only is harnessing this fast-growing channel essential to maximise reach and engagement, but developments in data management mean the capacity to deliver hyper-relevant, privacy-centric and cookie-free advertising is greater than ever. By taking advantage of the new horizons created by better data access and expanding budgets, advertisers can leverage the next evolution in CTV to highly rewarding effect.