First, there were the cord cutters who decided to do away with their traditional TV packages. Then there were the “cord nevers,” the younger generation who prefer accessing content digitally almost from birth. Now, the potential audience for connected television (CTV) is becoming far more diverse, increasing the potential opportunity for brands who invest in it wisely.
Ad spending for CTV is already projected to reach $8.8 billion this year, representing 3.4% of total ad budgets, according to eMarketer. By 2023, CTV spending could grow by 4.7% to more than $14 billion. For Marc Bourget, Senior Vice-President & Head of Audience Products at Samba TV, those kinds of numbers are leading brands to become far more strategic in their thinking about what CTV could do.
“At the beginning the interest was really to get the precision of digital with the impact of the largest screen in the household,” he said. “Some people were just happy to be there and playing in that space, but now a lot of those marketers have developed more sophisticated digital teams, and they’re ready to utilize their expertise.”
They are also turning to the expertise at Samba TV, the global leader in cross-screen television data and analytics, and whose track record stretches back to 2008 when they first developed Automatic Content Recognition technology now embedded in 20 of the top TV manufacturers around the world. That means the company has been actively involved in trying to address some of the ongoing challenges facing CTV, from the difficulties with inventory to questions about measurement.
Late last year, for example, Samba TV expanded its integration with Moat by Oracle Data Cloud to measure viewability and invalid traffic across its CTV impressions.More recently in August, it signed a partnership with MiQ to provide deeper insights across channels such as CTV in the Australian market. And, in September, the company announced a partnership with Comscore to broaden measurement capabilities for advertisers and publishers across Europe.
“We’re playing the role of educator. When we first got into this space 10 years ago, we were building out apps for [companies like] A&E and Fox News and placing them on OEM partners’ platforms. Now, as you place an ad, marketers are saying to us, ‘Hey, help me out.’ The pandemic has only kicked it into high gear.”
Here is Bourget’s best advice for marketers to make the most of what CTV could offer in 2020 and beyond:
Don’t Look at CTV as a Replacement for Linear TV: Bourget has two reasons why the latter is here to stay: “One is sports and the other is news,” he says. “People are always going to want to get as close to real time as possible,” which linear TV offers.
Instead, marketers want to look at CTV and linear as two things that work hand in hand together. For example, Samba TV has been helping brands understand where CTV can offer incremental reach that complements their linear ad investment.
Allocate A Budget That Allows CTV To Succeed: While brands have sometimes taken money originally earmarked for linear and put it towards CTV, Bourget said others have borrowed from their digital and programmatic spend, and still others have used an “innovation budget.”
Regardless of the approach, he suggested brands use the fact that activity at upfronts has been “softer” this year due to the pandemic and consider the full spectrum of the CTV opportunity.
“They can come in when they’re ready,” he said. “You have the ability to not do a national buy, but a local buy and leverage the precision of the knowledge you have to target those households more closely.”
Act On Your Results: Much like the rise of other digital channels for marketers, CTV is not simply a place to slap down creative, but to learn and inform a strategy that drives more concrete impact for brands. Samba TV offers help in this area, Bourget said.
“We have teams of data scientists and researchers who will not only help deliver the data about a campaign, but the story behind it,” he said. This includes what the next action for a marketer should be, including their next campaign to achieve the desired outcome.
Think Broadly and Globally as Competition Heats Up: While the CTV market seems like a complex and sometimes fragmented ecosystem in the U.S., Bourget sees considerable opportunity for Samba TV to build its business internationally. Similarly, brands that haven’t invested in CTV before should be aware that their rivals may already be leaning in.
“Entertainment brands are clearly early adopters because they were already marketing in linear TV. It’s a natural progression for them,” he says. “We’re also seeing those heavy digital folks leaning in, as well as any brands that do a lot of online video. The conversations we’re having cut across verticals.”
