Not every advertiser has bought into connected TV.
Some advertisers are waiting on more evidence that CTV campaigns drive real value that they’re not already getting from linear TV or other digital video channels. They’re hesitant about adding CTV to their media mix because those campaigns lack attribution and standardized measurement, said StackAdapt’s marketing VP, Christiana Marouchos.
StackAdapt hopes to quell those concerns, at least in part. On Wednesday, the demand-side platform announced a partnership with Samba TV to access the measurement provider’s automatic content recognition (ACR) data. Using Samba’s ACR data, StackAdapt is launching two features to help clients attribute and forecast incremental reach directly to streaming, compared to linear alone.
ACR is pulled from smart TV sets, which use content recognition libraries to identify ads, shows and movies on the device. Since CTV ad platforms rarely disclose viewer account data or transparency into where ads are served within programming, ACR data is a popular option for publishers and agencies to fill in their own measurement gaps.
Ideally, this partnership helps advertisers identify optimal reach and frequency for linear campaigns, so they can start to reach new audiences that cut the cord or never had one, said Aden Zaman, Samba’s chief commercial officer.
The partnership was also intentionally timed ahead of the 2024 presidential election because a large shift of political ad dollars from linear to streaming is expected this year, Zaman said.
The ACR potential
With Samba’s ACR data, StackAdapt’s buying platform now has new tools for forecasting and measurement.
Based on an advertiser’s campaign parameters, such as target audience, geography and budget, StackAdapt forecasts the incremental reach for that target by channel based on how that advertiser’s campaigns are performing on linear. Incremental reach reports are generated within 24 hours, so clients can reallocate ad budgets fairly quickly.
Now, StackAdapt clients can see the exact percentage of their target audience they should be reaching on CTV compared to linear, Marouchos said.
Based on their own frequency targets, for example, Zaman said advertisers can exclude households that have already seen their ad a certain number of times on linear, thus shifting budget to reach new audiences on streaming instead.
The ad products should be especially helpful for advertisers that prioritize reach, such as political candidates, sports-focused advertisers and brands trying to reach a competitor’s audience.
Plus, lowering ad frequency in favor of wider reach should help clients improve cost efficiency and raise return on ad spend, Marouchos said.
Primed for political
StackAdapt expects political advertising to be the most popular use case for its new source of ACR – at least ahead of this year’s election.
For example, GMMB, a political marketing agency based in Washington, DC, will use Samba’s data through StackAdapt to help determine how clients should “divide and conquer” between linear and streaming to achieve the “widest reach and lowest frequency,” said Eric Yoffee, the agency’s ad operations manager.
For the most part, political ad campaigns have a large overlap of viewers who see the same commercial on both linear and streaming, Yoffee said. But GMMB hopes more ACR data will help reorient budgets to get in front of CTV viewers who aren’t watching linear TV.
The opportunity for incremental reach is why political buyers that rely on linear are considering spending more on CTV, he added.
The more proof of incremental reach there is, Marouchos said, the more advertisers historically reliant on cable and satellite for reach will move their linear TV ad dollars into streaming.
