CTV advertising sucks.
Not the ads themselves. It’s the experience of being advertised to that sucks.
Although I was boosted and masked throughout recent travel, I somehow picked up the newest virulent strain of Covid-19. The downtime led to a two-day binge-watch of a top-rated streaming show.
Did I love the series? Yes! Did I love the ads? Not one!
Despite being logged into a streaming service that knows exactly who I am, advertisers consistently failed to serve me the right ad.
I watched 32 episodes. Each episode had three or four commercial breaks, and each break had a mix of three to four ads. That’s 392 chances for a live ad server over two days to deliver the right ad to me at the right time.
Anyone who’s watched ad-supported streaming knows where this is going. The same ads appeared over and over in the same show, even during the same break. Four unfortunate advertisers showed me the same ad probably more than 10 times each on a Friday night.
But this isn’t another frequency-capping screed. Rather, my complaint has to do with the lack of ad targeting.
I saw one ad that I felt was well targeted to me. One!
Any random knucklehead pulled off a street corner could have looked at me for a second and chosen far more relevant ads.
But what’s astonishing is that the streaming service had the keys to the kingdom. It knows my name, address, credit card number and email. It has my consent for ad targeting. It could cross my data with any commercial credit bureau or third-party data broker and find my income, my marital status, my kids, my cars, my house, everything.
Some of the ads had great creative. But I don’t need a wedding planning app. I’ve been married to my best friend for 32+ years. My kids are grown. I don’t need an ad for back-to-school supplies and clothing or a family theme park vacation.
They have my data. How can they not know that?
For 32 straight episodes, basically every ad was off-demographic, off-age and off-gender/identity. Unsurprisingly, they were even off-psychographic – way too upbeat for a cranky guy stuck at home with Covid. I got absolutely nothing of value from the ads served, and neither did the advertisers.
After thirty years of data-driven innovation, our targeting is worse now than it was on basic cable in the 1980s.
We have to fix this.
An industry responsibility
Publishers have to demand better ad serving. We have needed frequency caps, pod placement and competitive separation in TV forever. Otherwise, our agency and brand partners would have crucified us for makegoods. Does anyone in digital even know what a makegood is anymore?
Speaking of which, where’s the accountability?
Agencies, are you even trying? Have you asked to see a log file? I’ve heard some platforms refuse to share their log file data. Cut them off! Your clients expect you to be a steward of their budgets, not asleep at the wheel.
Ad tech, please stop selling crap. If you destroy publishers and agencies with the lousy ad experiences you’re creating, you won’t have any business for Luma Partners to sell to anyone.
And advertisers? I don’t even know where to start.
Your first-party data is your new oil. Don’t lose it or waste it. Use it. I realize it’s hard navigating all these new privacy laws, but they’re primarily meant to protect consumers from bad actors. Meanwhile, you’ve paid hundreds of millions of dollars to build good-faith relationships with your customers, and you’re screwing up the opportunity to capitalize on that.
The consumer’s relationship with your product might be great, but their relationship with your advertising is probably terrible. When the show they’re watching is interrupted for the 10th time by the same ad for your brand, they’ll remember you as the brand whose ads suck. That is not the kind of ad recall you want.
Demand full accountability from your agency and your partners. Stop chasing clicks and fake conversions. If the platform/publisher/ad-tech partner won’t be fully transparent and auditable, DO. NOT. SPEND. THERE.
Thirty years of digital advertising and promises of one-to-one targeting in a logged-in, consented state, and we still can’t serve the right ad to the right person, never mind at the right time.
That sucks. We can do better.
By the way, if you were curious which ad was correctly targeted to me … it was one for Popeyes boneless chicken wings.
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
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