Is Your Streaming Ad Performance Being Manipulated?

If there’s a case to be made for Nielsen, it’s the fact that it got every single agency and TV advertiser aligned on how to measure a TV campaign. In the good old days, Nielsen ensured there was order and harmony.

As it relates to streaming TV, it’s err… different. Nielsen got dethroned before it could even establish itself in the world of streaming TV. And now there are too many new players (e.g. Samba TV, VideoAmp, Comscore, etc.) to drive industry consensus and uniformity.

The net result: streaming ad providers operate under very few guidelines and even less oversight when it comes to measuring the impact of streaming ad spend.

This is hurting brands. While the dialogue has mostly focused around fraud and brand safety, there’s an even more common cheat hidden in plain sight.

Among streaming ad providers, there is tremendous temptation to make streaming ad ROI look better than it really is (and definitely better than linear). After all, when the numbers look good, there’s a higher chance for a happy advertiser.

Inflating streaming TV performance: easy as pie

It’s easy to overstate the impact of a streaming TV campaign. All that is needed is to lump other channels (e.g. digital display) into the CTV mix. 

Let’s do the math together: 

Streaming TV ad platform A allocates 100% of media spend towards streaming ads. Streaming TV ad platform B, on the other hand, allocates 25% of media spend towards display ads across other devices. Keep in mind, display ads are significantly cheaper than streaming ads. 

Here’s what the campaign metrics might look like:

On the surface, with more impressions served, lower CPMs and higher attributed ROAS, ad platform B seems to be the winner. But here is the problem: 80% of those impressions are display ads. CTV impressions within platform B are actually a lot lower than CTV impressions within platform A. 

Once a significant number of those display ads are served across all devices in the household, ad platform B will start taking credit for those actions, responses, and website visits regardless of those display ads’ impact on the buyer’s journey.

How does this happen? When advertisers log into ad platforms, they’ll often see options like Audience Extension and Multi-Touch. While each of these capabilities sounds appealing, they all represent ways in which ad platforms mix different ad placements in the name of driving stronger performance. What they don’t do is actually drive real business outcomes.

Improper view-through measurement

Advertisers probably would never know to ask about it if no one told them, but mobile attribution on view-through is very confusing within the evolving TV landscape.

View-through is a measurement methodology that matches the IP address of the impression with the IP address of the response over a specified time period. Using this methodology, a brand’s streaming TV campaign receives credit simply if the responding IP delivered an impression, regardless of whether that user was influenced by any other paid media. This is the most generous approach to attribution—especially compared to incremental methodology.

Now let’s get back to our example. Attributed ROAS is going to look 7x stronger on the ad platform B dashboard compared to platform A. That’s because the results shown in the dashboard are not the actual business outcomes—they’re results that would have been generated anyway. 

When measurement providers lump display ads into premium CTV ads, the existing problem with view-through attribution is magnified to a much higher level. On average, a household has more than 20 devices. Now imagine cheap display ads being served across all those devices. With current view-through methods that include running display ads across those devices, streaming TV campaigns start getting credit for impressions never served on TV.  

Advertisers need to ask

There’s nothing stopping players in the CTV landscape from conflating streaming numbers. At this stage in the industry’s evolution, providers are largely able to determine how they want to track and present results to advertisers. 

In this sense, providers have two choices: Wow advertisers with the biggest numbers possible and hope no one asks questions. Or dig in and break things up in the most granular way possible to help advertisers build long-term success through greater understanding.

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. 

Follow Tatari and AdExchanger on LinkedIn.

For more articles featuring Andy Schonfeld, click here.