For so many years, ad buyers’ complaint was that the connected TV (CTV) ecosystem had too little inventory.

Well, after an explosion of new services and a tsunami of viewer adoption, that has changed.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Tim Sims, chief revenue officer of The Trade Desk, says CTV has crossed the threshold.

CTV’s tipping point

Sims says the pandemic in 2020 “accelerated a few years of change into about a nine-month period”, during which consumers embraced a new wave of ad-supported VOD services (AVODs).

“We saw a huge influx of inventory come into the programmatic media ecosystem,” he says.

“That has really put connected television and programmatic really perfectly aligned for the moment in time that we’re in right now today.”

‘Bigger than linear’

Sims can quantify the development, and the numbers tell him CTV’s footprint is now as big as regular TV’s.

“We see 87 million households on our cross-device graph,” he says. “We’ve reached this equilibrium point where, in connected television, you can reach as many households as you can in linear television.

“It’s kind of mind-blowing to think about that. That’s just an amazing milestone.”

“That myth that, ‘Hey, there’s no scale and connected television’ is completely gone at this point. I think we’ve crossed this tipping point into in CTV now where it’s just becoming a core part of any marketers media plans.”

AVOD boost

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By as early as July 2020, The Trade Desk reported CTV ad spending was up by 100% from a year earlier.

Its stock price has been motoring through the pandemic as a result.

The ad-tech firm is benefitting from new services like Tubi, Pluto, Peacock and HBO Max, Sims says.

Spending follows

He thinks those two factors combined – swollen consumer interest plus the scale brought by new services – is combining to beckon marketers in.

“I think that shift that we’ve seen on the consumer side from a media consumption perspective is now going to be followed by a shift in advertising dollars that will move more rapidly into these AVOD services than it has in years past,” Sims says.

“I’m really excited for the future because I think CTV creates one of the greatest opportunities in the history of marketing.”

You are watching, “The Stream: New Audiences, New Opportunities,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Tubi. For more videos, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on    @robertandrews