Connected TV may be the media industry’s shiniest new toy, but it’s not squeaky clean – it’s rife with ad fraud, and high CPMs only make the channel a better target for con artists. Several industry execs discussed why the industry’s best shot is to increase transparency as much as possible across the bid stream at IAB Tech Lab’s Transcend summit.
The growth of connected TV advertising isn’t simmering down anytime soon – but the lack of an industrywide standard for campaign measurement is making it a rocky road. Several executives at AdMonsters’ Ops conference in New York City discussed how interoperability between TV publishers can help solve for some of the standstills stemming from the lack of consensus.
Real estate franchise Coldwell Banker, like the rest of the housing biz, has been targeting buyers who might be in the market for a new abode. But due to various macroeconomic factors, the company launched a new campaign to shift gears and start talking directly to home sellers – which also means targeting an older audience across channels.
Under COPPA, businesses can’t target ads based on the data of children under 13 years old. Toy manufacturers like WowWee need other ways to get their products in market via advertising, and after testing a YouTube campaign with contextual ad platform Precise TV, the promising results allude to the potential of contextual in targeting ads effectively without audience data, profiles or cookies.
On Wednesday, AppLovin-owned mobile measurement platform Adjust launched a product called CTV AdVision that attributes cross-device app install conversions tied to CTV ads, whether that’s CTV to mobile or CTV to CTV. Connected TV isn’t always the superhero – sometimes, it’s the sidekick.
This year is ripe for test-and-learns with alt TV measurement currencies, but the trend is still in its early days. Omnichannel TV measurement methodology is making waves, but standardizing a currency for media transactions in an ever-so-fragmented ecosystem is quite another story.
TripleLift claims that it’s the world’s largest source of in-feed inventory. But can the same ad experience work for CTV? Native product placements in programming could be a viable alternative to interruptive ad experiences – and a cash cow for CTV publishers – but it’s not very scalable and it’s hard to execute, says Michael Shields, GM of CTV at TripleLift.
Roku’s overall Q1 revenue for 2022 is up 28% year-over-year to $734 million – and more and more of the company’s growth is thanks to streaming. 88% of Roku’s Q1 revenue came from ad sales and content distribution, compared with 80% last quarter. But as streaming grows, so does the cost of original content production and hardware manufacturing.
On Wednesday, iSpot.tv announced a $325 million investment from Goldman Sachs – a hefty chunk of change considering the company had previously raised a total of $58 million since it was founded in 2012. The company has a roadmap to enhance its TV measurement currency offerings (as well as attribution capabilities) with the new influx of funding.
On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery held its first quarterly earnings report as Warner Media and Discovery newlyweds. The merger has only been closed for hardly two weeks, but the combined company is revving up for this year’s upfronts. Discovery, for one, reported a 5% YOY increase in ad revenue and 13% YOY growth in total revenue. The duo hopes to keep up the momentum by leaning into streaming with original content production.
