Throughout the CTV market, there is an ongoing push for higher levels of transparency and control – and for good reason. Advertisers need deeper insights into the audiences and types of content surrounding their ads if they want to drive maximal interest.
But as the amount of data in the market increases, and as the number of content-level signals potentially expands, there is a pervasive concern that advertisers will use these signals in ways that would limit investment in CTV publishers.
These concerns don’t align with reality. Signals boost the value of inventory by marking it as addressable to specific and targeted audiences, which helps publishers increase their long-term yield. On the other side of that equation, signals help advertisers achieve additional scale and discoverability by driving alignment between content and ads.
Still, a number of myths about content-level signals persist in the CTV space. So we’re going to take a moment and run through four of them.
Myth #1: Content-level signals will lead to cherry-picking inventory and lower total revenue
Say you’re a platform with a popular piece of programming, something that everybody’s watching. You may be concerned that content-level signals will narrow interest to this high-traffic inventory. Since this inventory is limited, too narrow an interest will result in lower net revenue.
The problem with that outlook is that it doesn’t match up with how marketers actually spend. No advertiser is going to spend their entire budget on one show. Marketers want broad reach and engagement, which means buying across many programs.
Right now, many publishers make their inventory available at too general of a level to appeal to advertisers, especially those who are looking for other relevant content areas. For example, a cooking channel also hosts home and garden content, despite being listed exclusively as a cooking channel. Without advanced content-level signals, that publisher is missing out on the enormous number of home and garden advertisers that would love to buy relevant inventory on their channel.
Advertisers invest at higher levels when they have higher levels of confidence. Content-level information about relevant inventory and suitability boosts advertisers’ confidence that their overall investment is putting the right ads in front of the right people at the right time.
Therefore, advanced signals about genres, ratings and content add clarity around the quality of their investment, which allows them to invest more. Far from resulting in cherry-picking and falling revenue, this data actually drives higher publisher revenue.
Myth #2: Transparency undermines the value of direct deals
But wait, if I add transparency to my programmatic ad sales, aren’t I shooting myself in the foot by devaluing the direct deals that bring in a steady stream of revenue?
Well, no. Signal-enabled programmatic sales aren’t a competitive threat to direct deals – they’re a complement to those deals. In fact, they can be used strategically to acquire new customers and strengthen existing ones.
As waves of new advertisers enter the CTV market, publishers need to act strategically when it comes to capturing their business. Programmatic advertising is the only way to scale where these new advertisers might find value on your platform. Content-level signals allow you to pitch them with maximal clarity regarding the unique value your inventory brings to the table.
The result? More deals and stronger existing deals that can develop into deeper programmatic relationships, which can include direct deals.
Myth #3: Transparency limits advertiser investment
Sure, advertisers enjoy running their ads on top shows, live sports and new movies. It’s one of their tactics for reaching a wide range of potential customers. But it’s not their only tactic.
Advertisers are motivated by creating visibility and appeal for their products, which means running targeted campaigns as well as broad ones. No advertiser is going to spend their entire budget on one show.
By using content and genre signals, advertisers can easily discover additional groups of content they may not have been aware of. When publishers provide this content-level information, they increase the value of their inventory in the eyes of these buyers and strengthen their relationships with advertisers. Indeed, it’s these signals that enable brand and performance-minded advertisers to route more spend through your platform, not less.
Myth #4: Advertisers will block ads with brand safety
The reality here is that the buy side already feels CTV is a brand-safe environment, which we can see in the forecasted rise of investment levels. Yet there are new suitability needs that have come to light.
Compare CTV with how advertisers bought ads on movies in the pre-CTV days: Predominantly, networks would run alternate versions of movies, removing the strong use of profanity, adult content or violence to make something suitable for all audiences. CTV’s on-demand nature removes the need for edited content, which means there are now movies and TV shows with content that may not be suitable for a particular message. When this is the case, rather than lose the spend, publishers can help brands redirect to other content that may be suitable.
Again, this particular myth boils down to confidence and transparency. The more information advertisers have about content, the more confident they can be about their choices and investments. Buyer confidence leads to deeper relationships and increased spend, which benefits CTV publishers and the overall marketplace.
Looking forward
The industry continues to move in the direction of programmatic CTV advertising. Publishers and advertisers face many choices to see how this plays out. Either they can lean into the wealth of signals driving the next generation of programmatic CTV, or they can wait to adjust and condemn themselves to a game of catch-up.
Having spent the last few years directly exploring these threads here at Peer39, I’ll be the first to say these discussions are both highly nuanced and evolving. This is why it is so important to collaborate with the right partner to build the desired transparency strategy.
Those of us that have been in the space for a while have seen this movie before and know it’s only a matter of when. Unlike those that wait, those that actively make themselves a part of the evolution stand to benefit.
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