CTV’s growth will hinge on randomized experiments that prove premium video advertising delivers incremental business results, writes measurement expert Rick Bruner.
With the right safeguards in place, open-market CTV can match PMP performance, proving that quality controls – not deal type – drive results, argues Ayse Pamuk, director of platform operations at Basis.
The 2024 Olympics proved premium live sports could be transacted programmatically. The 2026 World Cup tests something harder: whether programmatic spend holds up amid viable alternatives.
The future of TV isn’t traditional vs. CTV. Rather, it’s a partnership of two sides. Fox and Roku represent this convergence.
There is a clear set of capabilities that CTV OEMs and streamers can offer advertisers that the original content owner cannot. Here are the most material gaps that the buy side experiences between supply sent from the publisher and supply sent from distributors.
CTV never fit cleanly into campaign execution models built for RTB-based trading. Whether agentic AI solutions can simplify the complicated CTV landscape for publishers will be their first real test case.
Complexity hasn’t made the CTV supply chain difficult to trust. This is a transparency problem and, more specifically, an ads.txt problem.
The divergence between the DSPs reveals shifting buy-side priorities. Advertisers have grown wary of how The Trade Desk earns margin, where its algorithm steers inventory and how these strategies compete with buyer goals.
A 2004 statute prevents owning enough TV stations to reach 39% of households. But without the scale afforded to other digital content companies, local TV is at a competitive disadvantage.
When it comes to managing fraud, there are four steps CTV publishers should take to remove bad actors from the supply chain.
“Performance CTV” oversimplifies how television actually drives value, and the focus on performance all but guarantees that campaign results will be misinterpreted.
Confusion in CTV isn’t a natural byproduct of a maturing market; it’s an outcome of how distributors protect their pricing power.
CTV, like digital display before it, is facing fraud and mislabeled information. The prevailing advice for advertisers is to go directly to the networks and streaming platforms. However, buying direct comes with a fraud risk itself.
Concrete findings on how effective QR codes are at driving ad interactions are now available, and some industry best practices are emerging.
Brands don’t feel secure enough to lock in huge CTV deals outside of live sports. So what happens to all of that nonsports content spread out across streaming channels?
The IAB Tech Lab video classification updates introduced much-needed clarity. But valuable inventory, now categorized differently, is being deprioritized or rejected, even though its performance hasn’t changed.
CTV advertisers have carried over one-to-one programmatic logic from display and online video into a channel that behaves nothing like them. We need to stop chasing CTV impressions and start chasing impact.
In the next two years, linear TV will be deprioritized so much that holding companies will begin outsourcing their linear buying.
Even with the amazing storylines, this NBA season brought a steep decline in local TV viewership. While it’s tempting to frame this as waning fan interest, these drops are symptoms of a media ecosystem in transition.
When platforms choose to label any significant portion of an ad buy as “other,” it’s a deliberate decision to withhold information for the seller’s benefit and the buyer’s detriment.
CTV advertising has made great strides, but it still lags behind social platforms in one critical area: optimizing campaigns based on outcome data. Here’s how standardized conversion API integrations for CTV can help.
The existing CPM model is broken. In what other industry would we accept paying full price for a product that delivers less than half of what was promised, asks Raphael Rivilla, chief media officer at Marcus Thomas.
Advertisers new to CTV tend to misunderstand performance metrics and overemphasize cost per thousand impressions (CPM) as a measure of success.
Brands have two options for avoiding election misinformation on YouTube: block all news, or only monetize credible news. But blocking all news restricts campaign reach and harms reliable journalists, just when we need them most.
A significant amount of the ad inventory distributed to CTV audiences is actually sold via linear. This is especially prevalent with FAST networks, which currently account for 20%-25% of ad-supported streaming.
During a Covid-induced two-day binge watch of a recent streaming hit, advertisers consistently failed to serve the right ad. Where’s the accountability?
While CTV has emerged as a powerful and unique advertising medium, venue-based DOOH streaming is distinct and requires its own marketplace to fully realize its potential.
Adopting standards and interoperable IDs can benefit the entire ecosystem, enabling solutions that can help solve for omnichannel ROI and more effective tracking of ads across platforms.
It’s anyone’s guess how CTV advertising will eventually look. But, today, there are no rigid standards, writes Operative’s Mike Pollard.
The TV market’s vanishing impression problem is even more concerning than the numbers indicate. But maybe a little impression scarcity is a good thing.
