With traditional TV viewership declining, ad executives are looking to internet-connected TV (CTV) to pick up the slack.

But, whilst CTV purports to enhance reach and control the frequency of ad exposure, what is the reality?

That is the question CTV ad software supplier Innovid set out to answer when it undertook research into the area, conducted with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

Research highlights

The resulting output, a report called Decoding CTV Measurement, tells the story.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Innovid co-founder Tal Chalozin summarises the results from a study that heard from 20 brands with a total of $35 million in spending.

“We wanted to go out to the market and learn, what is the optimal reach and frequency?,” Chalozin says. “And even more than that is that, ‘when you buy media right now, what are you actually getting?’ ‘What’s the real duplication in the market right now?'”

According to the study:

  • “Across our study, the average campaign reached only 13% of the available U.S. CTV households, indicating that we’re only scratching the surface of unique reach.”
  • “Average frequency was just 4.6 across all campaigns. While high levels of frequency can exist in pockets, frequency is not universally high in CTV.”
  • “The average eCPM of the campaigns in our study was $23, which sits between the average CPM for U.S. primetime TV ads for broadcast and cable ($36 and $19, respectively, according to eMarketer).”

Avoid overlap

Chalozin opened up on other findings.

“When you buy media from multiple media companies, we’ve seen that the average overlap between two media companies is 33%,” he says.

So, what’s the takeaway?

“Yes, people are tuning into streaming, cutting the cord, it’s definitely a tremendous transition,” Chalozin notes. “However, with the help of technology, you can do a much better job on making your money work harder.”

By Robert Andrews on    @robertandrews