Earlier this week Croud’s Associate Programmatic Director, Connie Del Bono, attended Digiday’s Hot Topic: Addressable TV event in New York. Following this, Connie shares her account of the event, including some of the key takeaways shared.
The excitement was in the air in midtown New York, as I made my way to Digiday’s Hot Topic: Addressable TV event. Not only was I eager to learn about how other agencies are planning and executing for addressable TV campaigns, but also to hear more about measurement and how it has drastically changed over the last year, especially for CTV (connected TV).
Rapid growth vs. demands
The fundamental takeaway from this event was that everyone is having similar struggles across the industry. It is such a rapidly growing part of the ad tech space, meaning supply is not expanding quickly enough to meet our clients’ demands. As a result, advertisers and agencies alike are seeing inflated CPMs.
Ad spend doubled
It was no surprise to hear that in 2020, we can expect to see ad spend double when compared with last year, with a much higher proportion allocated towards programmatic CTV, as opposed to just addressable TV. This is because programmatic CTV has advantages that not only include giving you more control over your media buying, but also better audience insights, frequency control, a cleaner supply path optimization, and to a certain extent, measurement.
What do we think?
At Croud, we have been planning and adopting these media buys through limited programmatic platforms, with the outlook that this currently provides us with the most control for our clients. For example, through monetizing one DSP (demand-side platform) you can maintain total control over frequency. There is however the ‘walled garden’ of CTV, but it is not yet possible to purchase it through programmatic.
Moreover, whilst it is indisputable that there is value on Roku, Hulu and other such players in the market – which is why we strive to have close relationships with these partners – these types of media buys are generally much harder to control and measure.
We believe programmatic TV will self evolve over time and further shift towards engagement opportunities for brands – in fact, Roku has already adopted this with their Microsite product offering.
Household/zip code level
A major challenge for addressable TV, is that it is still considered at the household or zip code level. Advertisers would like to have a better understanding of co-viewership, especially as there has been a huge push for co-viewing within individual deals – which we should and can count. So why is it that we are not doing it yet?
What do we think?
The reporting needs to be there, but in the meantime, we should appreciate that despite the fragmentation, addressable TV is still better than it was, and it’s allowing us to enter households outside of desktop, tablet and smartphones.
In the meantime we can focus on what will help us curate our media buys; automatic content recognition has already had an enormous impact on the industry, and has helped advertisers dig through the ways in which we are buying.
Croud will continue to be at the forefront of programmatic CTV developments. We hope that in the remaining months of 2020, we will continue to see the development of measurement, audience leveraging, and reporting capabilities. As well as this, we expect to see more collaboration between the DSPs, publishers, brands and agencies. Ultimately, I left Digiday’s Hot Topic event with the understanding that Addressable TV has an enormous amount of potential and as advertisers, we can and will continue to capitalize on this!
To find out more about Croud and our programmatic services, get in touch.
