Connected TV is growing fast, presenting advertisers with an opportunity to target viewers, control frequency and measure outcomes.
But, despite the digital-style tactics, many in the industry are craving TV-style familiarity.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jessica Brown GroupM, Director, Digital Investment, GroupM, says she wants consistent data about her ad buys.
TV parity
“We need the same thing that we get in TV when we place a linear buy,” Brown says.
“When you do a TV buy, you know the pod position you’re in, you know the time your commercial ran, you know the show, you know the content of the show, which episode number it is. We need that same level of detail that we’re accustomed to.
“From some partners, we don’t know where we’re running – maybe we get a sample list before the campaign starts. Some partners are a little bit better – they’re giving us maybe a post-delivery report and maybe 50 to 70% of where your impressions ran on some of the content. On the other side, some of the content owners, maybe they’ll give us the top 20 shows.
“But, in each case, there’s still something missing and none of them are giving it to us – giving us that information in a consistent way. And none of it’s really from a trusted third party verification partner, which is really what we need. We need it in a consistent way from a third-party verification partner, someone like DoubleVerify.”
Connected growth
Over-the-top streaming services accounted for 25% of all US TV-viewing minutes during Q2 2020, according to Nielsen Streaming Meter.
EMarketer estimates CTV ad spending will reach $10.81 billion in the US in 2021 – up 56% from two years earlier, and representing around 15% of total US TV ad spending.
But GroupM’s Brown is worried that growth also means the emergence of nefarious fake CTV publishers, which could end up taking her spend if controls are not in place.
“We know where the money is, there will be fraud there,” she says. “We’ve seen cases where some of our ads, not necessarily our clients, but we’ve seen other ads they’re running on pirated content, or maybe a mobile phone, when they should be running on a CTV.
“We need that reporting, that measurement, that transparency that we’re used to getting in other digital channels to be applied to CTV so that we can even maybe block the content that we don’t want to be running on and make sure that we’re getting the quality that we need.”
Fraud rising
DoubleVerify’s (DV) Global Insights Report 2020 lifts the lid:
- Q1 2020 CTV fraud was 161% up on the prior year.
- Since March 2019, DV has identified 1,300 fraudulent CTV apps — 60% of which were identified in 2020.
The report amplifies a datapoint given to Beet.TV in June, when it said CTV ad fraud is occurring in three ways – fraudulent apps containing bots, cloud server farms and ad spoofing.
You are watching “CTV Grows Up: Making a New Medium More Efficient & Effective,” a Beet.TV series presented by DoubleVerify. For more videos, please click here.
