What Display Daily thinks: Opinions matter until they contradict your own. This opinion matters, and it makes sense. The crux of the problem in monetizing CTV is that it is fragmented and doesn’t provide a simple measure of ad performance.
The same problem existed in social media for many years until Meta became so powerful that and monopolistic that the ad industry asked for more of the same from competitors, and then it didn’t matter if the measurements and applications were fragmented, they were easily sellable as viable budget buckets to brands and executives.
There is no single power in CTV. There are some big brands, Roku and LG among them, that provide some sort of foundation platform knowledge for the initiated, but neither is that dominant or accessible to change entrenched opinions.
What’s that got to do with the price of fish, or the sales of flat panels? LG, Samsung, even TCL and Hisense, have to do more on building out CTV as a viable ad platform, and maybe they could work together on the measurement of ads. A rising tide lifts all boats. There’s the opportunity for a refreshed TV market right there, instead of sitting around waiting for a World Cup or Olympics.
CTV redefined TV in one way, and now it needs to go bigger, deeper into being a platform, to change the definition of television viewing. There’s obviously a change happening in the TV market driven by competition among streamers, a growing sense of subscription fatigue by consumers, and a general lack of a cohesive sense of what a TV means. The TV used to be a family appliance. Who knows what it is now.
CTV Advertising’s Complexities
Alan Wolk has an interesting article on the challenges facing CTV as a platform for advertisers. examines the current challenges within the Connected TV (CTV) advertising landscape, highlighting the disconnect between viewership and advertising dollars. He notes that despite the growth of streaming platforms, many brands and agencies continue to favor linear television, resulting in low fill rates for CTV ads. And he identifies key issues like a reliance on reruns, confusion over measurement standards, and a fragmented landscape that complicates audience targeting. Granted, most of this isn’t backed by data, but most of it is also common knowledge in the industry.
Advertisers in the TV industry tend default to linear TV due to its simplicity in buying and measuring advertisements. This inclination is exacerbated by the narrow targeting often employed by brands, leading to missed opportunities in reaching broader audiences.. For example, brands still seem to prefer to advertise on new shows, and miss out on opportunities being offered by reruns in the new streaming world order. Wolk also points out high costs associated with SVOD services and concerns regarding transparency and brand safety.
To address these challenges, Wolk suggests several actionable steps: embracing contextual targeting to reach larger audiences, fostering collaboration among industry stakeholders, establishing common measurement standards, simplifying processes, and innovating advertising strategies. Wolk believes that by implementing these solutions, the industry can better adapt to the evolving viewing habits of audiences and ultimately improve the performance of CTV advertising.
