CTV advertising is experiencing some growing pains, especially in its convoluted supply chain. Issues include auction duplication from header-bidding products and a blend of high- and low-quality ad products that obfuscate what media buyers get for their money.
Which is to say, welcome to programmatic. But when will advertisers investigate CTV, since many accept the media as premium without knowing the content and formats where their ads appear?
“The industry is long overdue for revisiting what is considered CTV,” said Geoff Wolinetz, SVP of publisher and demand platforms at the SSP OpenX. “When people think about CTV, they don’t focus on the C. They focus on the TV.”
On Thursday, OpenX announced its own reevaluation of the CTV supply chain: a twofold initiative called TV+, which reserves the CTV label for what the company deems premium inventory and kicks resellers out of the supply pool.
Lean-back linear
What OpenX classifies as premium CTV is highly produced or curated content that audiences consume in a way that mimics a “lean back” linear TV experience. In other words, watching longer or episodic content on the big screen on the wall.
OpenX defines “non-TV” content as everything else: dating apps like Roku Rendezvous, gaming apps like Apple Arcade, smart TV home-screen panels and streaming apps meant to capture ad money while building no audience (the classics include holiday fireplace screensavers and channels meant for pets to watch when their humans aren’t home).
There is a caveat, though. OpenX sees mobile or web information like the device, browser and OS, but it relies on publishers to self-classify their inventory in the bidstream as, say, CTV or online video.
The non-TV label is not a value judgment, Wolinetz said. Advertisers can still buy against this inventory; it just won’t be included in TV+.
Clean break
In biddable environments, the buyer and seller of CTV inventory are often many hops away from one another. This can dilute the inventory or poach attribution value from the media, Wolinetz said.
Rather than only removing the so-called “bad actors” from the system, he said OpenX is cutting out resellers completely for TV+.
Other sell-side players have CTV products that reduce vendor fees in the name of SPO, but none eliminate resellers entirely.
OpenX may take an initial revenue hit, Wolinetz said. But it’s a calculated risk. The SSP is betting that advertisers “will transact with us because we’re demonstrating this level of transparency.”
Trust me
Currently, buyers have two main choices to buy CTV.
First, one-to-one private marketplace deals directly with programmers. These are widely considered a strong strategy, but they have pricing problems and can lack scale, said Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media.
Buyers can also buy via the open auction or auction packages that are “window dressing on the open auctions,” Kane said. But they could be buying a deal ID that bundles together many publishers and doesn’t protect against low-quality auctions.
“What is missing is a trusted marketplace where buyers have the opportunity to bid into high-quality auctions, like direct supply chains, to publishers they trust,” he said.
OpenX’s TV+ is providing buyers with a third option for accessing CTV inventory that automatically handles inventory curation on the sell side of the market, Kane said.
The jury is still out on whether buyers will reward OpenX for removing low-quality products from the shelves – and whether other SSPs will see those rewards and come out with similar initiatives. In part, it will depend on how much buy-side demand there is for low-quality inventory.
Ultimately, OpenX is invested in growing CTV the right way, Wolinetz said.
“Given that CTV is the child of display and television, how can we take the best of both of those media?” he said. “How can we help guide it to adulthood?”
