The growing number of people who watch ad-supported streaming video gives marketers more ways to reach consumers who spend less time with traditional linear television. With the right tools, brands can gain sharper insights into the performance of their campaigns on connected TV (CTV) platforms.
“When we’re looking at the connected TV space, there’s still a bit of need for increased availability of control over targeting and reporting,” Katie Long, head of U.S. demand sales at sell-side ad-server company Beachfront, said in this Beet.TV interview with Sr. Editor Rob Williams. “Having access to that granular level of targeting — it’s really critical in terms of having intentional ad slot placements which would theoretically then allow for better business outcomes.”
Importance of Business Rules
Greater inventory transparency helps to support business rules that differentiate brands in their CTV media buys. Ad deduplication helps to reach different audiences and improve the viewer experience by avoid excessive repetition of the same ad. Competitive separation that prevents an advertiser placing an ad within the same pod as a rival also is important.
“It’s up to us now as ad-tech partners and suppliers to make sure that we’re not messing up this user experience by delivering the same ad over and over again,” Long said. As for business outcomes, “it’s really ensuring competitive separation and then ensuring that there’s not this brand dilution by having two competitive ads next to each other or competing for ad positioning.”
Challenges With Media Fragmentation
The fragmentation of the media marketplace gives audience more choices of content and more control over the viewing experience. However, it creates more challenges for advertisers in ensuring they have broadened their reach instead of targeting the same people through different media outlets.
“The good news is we’re seeing a great deal of innovation in some pockets of supply being made more readily available in these automated environments,” Long said, “and we’re really starting to see suppliers leaning in as well to help solve this problem.”
Convergent Future
Amid the fragmentation of the media universe, there’s a countervailing trend of convergence among linear TV and digital video environments that gives advertisers more flexibility in their media buying.
“Convergent technology is really starting to emerge and those that have the tech are really continuing to iterate on it in a positive manner,” Long said. “I’m pretty confident that I think that we’ll see a substantial progress towards convergent buying this year.”
You are watching “Transforming CTV: Delivering a Better Ad Experience for Viewers,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Beachfront. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
