For years, media buyers have been demanding more transparency when they buy connected TV inventory. But some networks just don’t seem to be giving ground.
CTV transparency has taken an even bigger hit since TV bundles became cool again.
Brands want to buy ads across a publisher’s streaming apps in one place. But some programmers allegedly sell mystery deal IDs that make it nearly impossible for buyers to figure out if they’re purchasing ads on Paramount+ or Pluto TV, for example, because they’re packaged together.
Some buyers are becoming more vocal about their frustrations and worry that the lack of transparency could impact CTV’s growth trajectory.
Several of those frustrated buyers spoke with AdExchanger regarding the lack of transparency they’re experiencing. Four buyers and one advertiser who all buy programmatically from Paramount and NBCUniversal discussed their concerns anonymously to protect their relationships with these publishers. Ad execs from Tinuiti and MiQ and a Gartner analyst spoke to us on the record more generally about the ongoing CTV transparency conversation.
Media buyers told AdExchanger that both Paramount and NBCU offer off-the-shelf deal IDs that don’t disclose where impressions are going across different apps owned by the same publisher. Programmatic buyers, for example, say they don’t know how many impressions they’re running on Paramount+ versus Pluto TV, the network’s free service, until after their campaigns run.
This lack of transparency “flies in the face of how we [should] go about attracting programmatic buyers to CTV,” said the head of one indie agency. Digital-native buyers need to account for every dollar they spend, especially for high-cost premium video.
This isn’t the first time buyers have expressed frustration toward Paramount in the past year for transparency shortcomings. In July, it was dinged for reportedly manipulating ad auctions to sell impressions on Pluto at higher prices. (Read more on bid duplication here.)
In some cases, the inventory that buyers consider to be premium (or not) plays a role in how transparent a publisher decides to be.
Buying in bulk
Bundling is a popular strategy for a few reasons. It lets buyers bid on all of a publisher’s inventory in one place, but without letting them cherry pick. In turn, publishers can offer more efficient pricing for buyers while also maximizing their own yield.
For those reasons, bundling in general is growing as a trend. But this tactic translates into buying streaming bundles that don’t give buyers much choice, said an ad buying executive for a large media agency.
Three of the ad buyers that spoke with AdExchanger said Paramount and NBCU bundle their inventory in deal IDs considerably more than their competitors do. Excessive bundling limits transparency, and when media planners can’t allocate impressions to specific platforms, they risk running repetitive ads.
The same media exec told AdExchanger that buyers get nearly no say in how dollars flow across Paramount’s properties. Meanwhile, some buyers said NBCU takes a similar approach. Its streaming inventory includes free ad-supported TV channels and other NBCU-owned content across channel distributors (think Roku or LG) in addition to Peacock.
“Generally, our deal IDs are at the aggregate level,” an NBCU spokesperson told AdExchanger. “We encourage our programmatic partners to look at NBCUniversal’s entire portfolio, as the goal is to maximize the reach of their investment. That being said, partners can work with us [for] highly curated and customized deals.”
NBCU, to its credit, has a separate premium bundle available that delivers all spend to Peacock. Paramount also offers advertisers a more expensive bundle option that allocates nearly 70% of a campaign budget to Paramount+. But to run only on Paramount+, a brand would have to buy a title sponsorship.
A Paramount spokesperson said the network gives buyers a percentage breakdown of where it expects impressions will land across its streaming portfolio, which also includes MTV and CBS.
But without a way to make decisions at the buying stage beyond Bundle A or Bundle B, it’s much harder for marketers to make informed decisions about their CTV investments.
The problem behind the scenes
From the media buyer standpoint, the case for more transparency in CTV seems quite clear.
Problem is, publishers generally aren’t incentivized enough to become more transparent, said Eric Schmitt, an analyst and research director at Gartner. One reason is because CTV supply is known for being both scarce and premium, he said, as in, people will buy it anyway.
Privacy is also a concern, to some degree. Many publishers claim their hands are tied by privacy-related regulations that restrict their ability to put user data in the bidstream. For example, Hulu and HBO have both been sued for allegedly sharing viewership data with Facebook in 2015 and 2023, respectively. But these concerns deal with the way publishers handle user-level data – and doesn’t explain why some pubs don’t seem to tell brands which app they’re running on.
Pubs also fear buyers will cherry-pick their inventory. If advertisers have full control over what apps or shows they run against, they may pick and choose the most popular media and leave the rest on the table. This concern is especially prevalent where “premium” inventory is concerned.
Premium usually refers to professionally produced, long-form video that sits behind a paywall. Buyers generally consider paid streaming apps (such as Paramount+, Peacock and Netflix) to be more premium than free distribution services (think Pluto TV and Tubi).
Two of the buyers who spoke with AdExchanger said they believe bundling helps Paramount distribute ad dollars to Pluto by tying it to the network’s most premium service: Paramount+. It would make sense to apply the same logic to NBCU, which bundles Peacock with content it distributes via FAST channels. There’s no concrete proof these publishers are purposely obfuscating impressions to influence ad delivery, but a lack of transparency is good for yield.
Last but not least, buyers may not have power in numbers when it comes to pressuring publishers to change. Some buyers are placated by the limited transparency they get in post-campaign reports.
For example, Paramount breaks down channel delivery by percentage and NBCU tells buyers the top 100 TV shows they ran in. “In practice,” said Harry Browne, VP of TV, audio and display innovation at performance agency Tinuiti, “that [level of information] is enough for most of the advertisers we work with.”
But other buyers are only growing more frustrated.
“[One] client was soured on Paramount [during the] upfronts because of this issue,” the large media agency exec told AdExchanger. The lack of transparency on these streaming platforms “has affected business,” they said.
Changing the channel
Which isn’t to say Paramount and NBCU haven’t been making some effort to respond to buyer demands for more transparency. Starting in the fall, for example, NBCU began sharing more detailed genre and rating information in bid requests, the brand exec said. NBCU also reports on delivery across its top 100 shows for direct and programmatic deals.
More information on genre is great, but it still isn’t the best publishers can do, said a third agency media buyer.
Insufficient transparency could deter new advertisers from trying CTV for the first time, said Gartner’s Schmitt, or sway them to favor other fast-growing channels that come with more detailed reporting, such as retail media and social video.
Without a more substantial improvement to CTV transparency, “the long tail of ad buyers won’t be playing there,” Schmitt said. The result, he added, could be “a relatively smaller universe of advertisers spending large amounts of money [on streaming media].”
In other words, CTV advertising growth could hypothetically plateau.
To prevent that, the third ad buying exec said, agencies need to lead “a fight to make [CTV] more transparent.”
Transparency and beyond
There are a few ways buyers can squeeze more transparency out of media partners for their streaming campaigns.
Buyers should pursue direct relationships with media sellers when possible, said Lara Koenig, VP of global strategy and partnerships at programmatic buying agency MiQ. Publishers are often willing to share slightly more information in direct deals than in the bidstream, where they fear cherry picking and potential privacy issues.
Some TV buyers, for example, are starting to use demand-side platforms as a control center to manage direct buys, rather than relying on DSPs to handle planning, buying and execution.
Buying method aside, agencies should contact media partners directly to ask for specific information about budget allocation and impression delivery. Depending on the publisher, making direct contact could surface some log-level data and other granular information that publishers usually won’t put in the bidstream, Koenig said.
Another option is to buy streaming media through programming distributors such as Roku or Spectrum. Since distributors generally don’t own most of the content on their platforms, they’re less incentivized to obfuscate competitive information such as show title.
Plus, buyers consider direct deals to be more premium than buying through a distributor or middleman of sorts, which is why content aggregators have been offering more information in the bidstream as a competitive edge to win over buyers.
Still, tactical workarounds won’t appease buyers forever – although it might take a while for their demands for transparency in streaming media buys to be heard. It will take even more market pressure from advertisers to force change, Schmitt said.
Expect transparency to remain a hot-button issue throughout 2025.
