Connected TV- A Disruption In Digital Advertising Landscape
Connected TV advertising, or CTV advertising, allows brands to reach their audience on connected TVs. MiQ helps advertisers to understand their audience and tracks the performance of CTV campaigns. But before we deep dive into CTV campaigns, let’s take a look at the evolution of television and advertising.
Evolution of Television
It was just two decades back when there were only two channels broadcasted over antenna TVs by the broadcaster. Then arrived the era of cable TV where companies offered a variety of channels like sports, movies, music, etc. All these types of TV come under traditional TV, which is primarily focused on media broadcasting.
In the mid 90’s first satellite launched to transmit television shows. The broadcasters used satellites for broadcasting television shows and people were still using this mode of transmission. But, as time elapsed the consumers’ demands changed as they started to expect more from the entertainment industry. Two decades back it was a privilege to own a TV with just two or three shows on. Since then, we have observed a great shift in the manner of watching TV. Having a TV is close to a necessity now. Also, with so much content available and so many shows running on the TV every hour we have “TV on Demand” where the viewers can have the content to be available whenever they want it and wherever they want it. To accomplish this, it demands new generation devices like internet TV/OTT/CTV, online interactive media, and/or on-demand streaming media which can be accessed through software applications or web widgets.
Terminologies Used in CTV Campaigns
The Video Advertising industry uses a lot of complex jargon, let’s look at them one by one:
Let’s start with OTT (over the top), In layman terms, it is the content that is delivered via an internet connection or you can say it is a term for gadgets and services that are used to stream videos, ads, and other digital content, for example, Hulu or Netflix which can be watched on the mobile phone, a tablet or smart tv. Simple right?
Then…… What is CTV (Connected TV)?
CTV stands for Connected TV which refers specifically to internet-enabled TVs, which have inbuilt capabilities of connecting with the internet and running inbuilt apps. For example smart TV, Chromecast, etc.,
All streaming services, devices, and Televisions that enable users to watch their content over the internet are a subset of OTT. Please refer to the below diagram
If it is confusing when to use which — just remember CTV refers to the device specifically whereas OTT refers to services that can be streamed across multiple devices (inc. ctv).
Now we are clear with the OTT and CTV definitions lets move to other jargon that you might come across when talking about trading TV campaigns
- Linear TV
Linear TV refers to a classic system when a viewer watches a scheduled TV program at the time it airs and on its original channel. This includes DVR recordings. The viewer typically watches content through regular programming or by paying for a cable or satellite subscription.
2. OTT devices
3. Advanced TV
Advanced tv refers to the ways that you can serve ads to your TV- viewing audience ranging from streaming services to addressable TV. Advanced TV can encompass both CTV and OTT devices.
4. Addressable TV
According to Experian, addressable tv is defined as “The ability for an advertiser to define an audience based on first, second and/or third-party data and serve different ads or ad pods (groups of ads) to this audience within a common program or navigation screen. Ads typically are delivered at the individual household level, through cable, satellite, and Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) delivery systems and set-top boxes. Segmentation and delivery also may take place at the geographic, demographic, and behavioral level.”
How Connected TV Advertising Works?
At MiQ, we use demand-side platforms to serve CTV ads. There are various tools and automated insights that are available within MiQ which enables the advertiser to set up their CTV campaigns and match their target preferences with relevant inventory on CTV devices and streaming devices.
MiQ centralizes the initial Discovery insights on keyword, site domain, demography, geography, etc in our proprietary Intelligence HUB a self-service UI that makes tv planning easier and more data-driven than ever. This is also incorporated with TV/OTT insights to help you understand the content your audience is watching as well as the context so that you can better plan your campaign around these consumption patterns.
We will discuss more on this section in our next blog where we will discuss how MiQ uses its indigenous intelligence hub to set up the campaign and how we track the performance of campaigns.
Why CTV Is The Future of Video Advertising?
New consumer research from Leichtman Research Group finds that 80% of U.S. TV households have at least one Internet-connected TV device, including connected Smart TVs, standalone streaming devices (such as Roku, Amazon Fire TV stick or set-top box, Chromecast, or Apple TV), connected video game systems, and/or connected Blu-ray Disc players. This is an increase to 74% with at least one connected TV device in 2018, 57% in 2015, and 24% in 2010.
On a daily basis, 25% of adults watch video on a TV via a standalone device, 20% via an Internet-enabled Smart TV app, 11% via a connected game system, and 3% via a connected Blu-ray player.
Research from the IAB shows that tv consumption has only accelerated during covid, with people spending more time at home and consuming more content than ever.
This means that advertisers are starting to accelerate their investment in CTV to address this new opportunity.
In addition to being able to reach prospective clients in CTV, marketers are also seeing CTV as being cheaper, more measurable, and more targetable than linear tv has historically been meaning:
- Measurement is taken to the next level
ACR technology has challenged the traditional panel-based GRPs that are the Gold standards in the tv industry. Now we can exactly measure how many HHs watched your ad and how frequently did they watch them and if they watched it completely (VCR), etc
2. Addressable TV makes it easier to reach the right audiences
Target a HH with specific TV watching behavior and/or ethnic group, powered by third-party data
3. CTV is cheaper than Linear TV ad spots
A 30-seconds ad spot on a “Sunday Night Football” is over $665,000, even with a 20Million viewership, it is twice as costly as the average CPM on a CTV inventory
4. Investments pouring on Smart TV Apps means more inventory
Every major Traditional TV Production Company has invested in CTV Apps, either taking their content online or diversifying their portfolio to reach more viewers. NBC launched Peacock App, Vizio owns WatchFree, Fox owns Tubi TV and Comcast has bought VUDU during COVID times.
Summary
This blog covers
- Understanding of various terminologies and system of connected TV
- How advertising works in connected TV
- If we see current market positioning the CTV ad impression share increased by 178 percent, overtaking desktop to account for approximately one-third of all digital impressions.
In Our Next Blog….
Now we understand what connected TV is and why it is important in the digital advertising world. Continuing this in our next blog we will see
- How MiQ advanced analytics insights help traders to identify the target audience across both CTV and OTT devices.
- Once CTV campaigns go live MiQ defines various performance metrics to track various factors like engagement levels, ad viewability, cross-device advertising, etc.
- Process of creating an end to end pipelines starting from data ingestion to developing insights.
References
2. https://steelhouse.com/performance-tv/how-connected-tv-advertising-works/
3. https://digitaladblog.com/2020/01/13/8-connected-tv-advertising-myths/
