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Share on XConnected TV’s (CTV) meteoric rise has revolutionized the way viewers watch and consume entertainment media. 60% of U.S. households own a CTV device, and CTV usership is expected to surpass 242 million users in the U.S. alone by 2026. As the home entertainment landscape expands, lucrative advertising opportunities will continue to emerge. However, with any successful advertising platform comes threats to your brand — from both external bad actors and risky content that lives on CTV platforms.
What is CTV?
Ever watched your favorite show on a Smart TV? If yes, then you’ve used a CTV device. CTV is any TV device that is connected to the internet and enables users to stream premium content through apps, like Netflix or Hulu.
A few examples of CTV devices include Apple TV and Roku, but they can also include set-top boxes and gaming consoles like Amazon Fire TV, Xbox, and PlayStation.
What is CTV advertising?
CTV advertising refers to video ads that are shown to viewers while they stream their favorite movies and TV shows. This type of programmatic advertising allows for highly accurate audience targeting and in-depth measurement of media quality metrics like viewability, invalid traffic, brand safety, and more.
CTV ad breaks are structured similarly to traditional TV ad breaks, with ads served around and within a show in time-based ad pods. However, on CTV, advertisers typically have access to more data, which enables them to be much more granular in their targeting.
More and more audiences watch free streaming services, making CTV ads more important than ever. CTV advertising plays a significant role in keeping some CTV platforms free for viewers. Without the revenue that comes from CTV ad purchases, many streaming platforms wouldn’t be able to offer free content for their audiences.
The advantages of advertising on CTV
CTV advertising is highly unique. It combines the impact of traditional TV (also known as linear) advertising with the advanced capabilities of modern digital advertising — so you can reach your desired audience in the right place at the right time.
Top 4 benefits of CTV ads:
- Rich CTV data enables marketers to precisely target audiences based on age, gender, location, purchase behavior, and more — maximizing engagement and ROAS.
- CTV allows brands to reach broader swaths of consumers, including those who have parted ways with traditional cable TV (“cord-cutters”) and those who never used it (“cord-nevers”).
- CTV boasts high video completion rates, as it’s typically not possible for viewers to skip CTV ads
- Ad campaigns on CTV are trackable in near real-time thanks to an abundance of first and third party data.
But CTV ads aren’t inherently protected
As with any digital environment, CTV’s terrain isn’t all smooth. Video ad inventory is especially susceptible to fraud, brand risk, and being out-of-view.
In the current fragmented CTV ecosystem, there is a greater risk of fraudulent activity than ever before. Plus, CTV’s expansive ecosystem contains a wide variety of content that could either be unrelated to your brand or damaging to your brand’s image. Having your ads delivered in either of these types of environments can result in wasted ad spend at best and, at worst, permanent damage to your brand’s reputation.
For example, adult content apps are available across most CTV devices; there could also be violent video content, or movie and TV scenes that are in direct conflict with what’s suitable for a specific brand (like a home rental company brand ad running right after a home break-in scene).
Protect your CTV ads with IAS
As CTV adoption continues to skyrocket, so will the risks that come with CTV ads. That’s where IAS comes in.
IAS works directly with some of the largest streaming platforms to deliver the most actionable data available on CTV. With granular post-bid measurement and pre-bid optimization segments, marketers can better understand their investments and ensure they bid only on valid inventory across streaming platforms.
But we don’t stop there. With the acquisition of Publica in 2021, IAS gained the unique ability to provide CTV streaming publishers and platforms with the ad serving technology to run unified auctions and build seamless ad breaks, enabling sell-side partners to grow their advertising revenues and improve their viewers’ streaming experiences.
If your brand is advertising on CTV, media quality is a must. Reach out to an IAS representative or click here to learn more about how IAS helps you protect your brand, improve ROI, and increase efficiencies on CTV.
