COMMENTARY

Execs Expect Shifts in Targeting, Creative, Metrics, Aggregation For CTV, Addressable In 2024

• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily

With AI accelerating and a newly cookie-less environment, buy-side, sell-side and ad-tech executives foresee major developments for connected and addressable TV in 2024. Here are excerpts from a few.  

Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, chief revenue officer, Yahoo: While we must continue to solidify foundations around identity and quality inventory, it’s creative that will drive performance, engagement, and brand awareness in programmatic advertising. Creative will be top-of-mind for all advertisers, but particularly for CTV advertisers, with the convergence of generative AI, the need to manage the cost of creative development and the addressability of CTV. AI will embolden advertisers to develop an array of creative variations for their campaigns, and to deliver personalization like never before. This will allow them to engage audiences across geographical areas, languages and viewing environments without incurring sky-high production costs. But it will also reduce ad fatigue by varying the creative viewers see in their households. 

Dina Roman, senior vice president, global ad sales, Fubo: Fragmentation across streaming, and especially sports content, has reached an inflection point. Consumers have grown frustrated with the increasing number of subscriptions required to watch all of their programming and advertisers are challenged with reaching their strategic target audiences across a growing number of media partners and devices. Aggregation will show its value and we will see a return to bundling across streaming. We have to continue to work as an industry to make life easier for consumers and, by extension, advertisers. Measurement continues to be a hot topic in streaming and we will see certain metrics come to the forefront, including analyzing viewers' cross-channel engagement and attention to demonstrate CTV campaign outcomes and the value of CTV for advertisers. 

Andrea Kwiatek, director, strategic partnerships, Goodway Group: The CTV landscape is poised for significant growth and transformation due to a convergence of advancements in data-driven targeting, measurement capabilities and automation, and major global events. New metrics such as co-viewing and attention will provide advertisers with more nuanced insights into viewer engagement. The upcoming election cycle will be a key catalyst, as political candidates leverage first-party data to precisely target and connect with their core audiences on CTV platforms. The Paris Olympics will present a unique opportunity for premium demand, fostering a surge in CTV viewership as audiences tune in for live and immersive coverage. 2024 may also bring mergers between major broadcast companies. The anticipated launch of an Apple DSP and Apple’s entry into the advertising space are expected to have substantial impacts, influencing how brands leverage data and target audiences across Apple’s ecosystem, including CTV. Amazon Prime Video’s launch of an ad-supported tier will introduce a new avenue for advertisers to engage with audiences on one of the world's largest e-commerce platforms. And in the live events sphere, the evolving landscape presents exciting prospects for programmatic opportunities, enabling more precise targeting and real-time adjustments during broadcasts. 

Mark Jung, vice president of product, Dstillery: Programmatic CTV ad buying will continue to gain momentum. Reflecting programmatic’s ability to find the right person at the right time, more budgets are flowing into CTV, and The Trade Desk and other DSPs are going all-in on it. One of the biggest challenges in CTV is not having a third-party identifier that works across all players in the space. But the industry is moving more toward authentication-based IDs as a replacement for third-party cookies, and that plays well in CTV, since most devices require logging in. Content gateways’ crackdowns on sharing accounts will also help. One of the biggest advantages of programmatic is the speed at which we can understand and solve problems. While CTV may not have a clean KPI, such as CTR, folding CTV into programmatic buying platforms and leveraging clean room data matching will allow a much better understanding of the impacts of CTV versus linear advertising. And with programmatic-like hands-on keyboard capabilities, advertisers will be able to leverage their programmatic experience and plan to get the most of their CTV buys. 

Will Lapointe, CEO, Pathlabs:  In 2024, CTV advertising will focus on robust planning, accurate measurement, and effective data activation. Issues like inventory quality and the complexity of programmatic CTV campaigns will be central, as the space attracts more publishers and advertisers. AI will continue to grow in advertising, enhancing efficiency and innovation, but the need for human oversight in managing AI-generated advertising content will be crucial. The shift away from cookies will lead to a more 'opt-in' internet, changing how online advertising is monetized and targeted. This transition is expected to impact both publishers’ revenue models and advertisers' strategies, possibly leading to a greater emphasis on subscription models. The advertising industry will continue to navigate challenges due to retail media expansion, privacy regulations, and attention fragmentation. Success in this complex landscape will require advertisers to adeptly handle legal, targeting, and reporting shifts in a rapidly evolving environment.

Lindsey Kurland,  vice president buyer demand, Index Exchange: Streaming TV advertising will reach a pivotal point in 2024, fueled by the maturity of key standards like OpenRTB 2.6 and app-ads.txt. These standards will continue to drive scale, efficiency and transparency to programmatic streaming TV advertising and as a result, play an essential role in boosting media buyers' confidence and attracting more advertising investments to the channel. OpenRTB 2.6 introduces features like ad podding that bring the same inventory granularity as linear to streaming TV, enabling more accurate and efficient ad placement. Its widespread adoption will enhance the viewer experience, help ‌media owners monetize their inventory, enable the targeting and transparency capabilities that buyers need, and help reduce carbon emissions across the supply chain. Having already demonstrated its effectiveness in combating ad fraud in web and mobile app environments, app-ads.txt will be instrumental in bringing more transparency and trust to the streaming TV supply chain. Together, these standards are essential in scaling streaming TV, providing the industry with the common foundation needed to accelerate innovation and move the industry forward. 

Mark McKee, general manager, FreeWheel: 2024 will see a renewed focus on premium video: what it is and what factors buyers and sellers should consider when engaging in video transactions. This issue is timely as premium video continues to grow and content proliferates across platforms and screens. In today’s complex and fast-moving media landscape, buyers want and deserve to know that the ad inventory they’re purchasing is high-quality and brand-safe. Holding premium video to a higher standard is a win-win for the industry, as such efforts will help drive an enhanced viewer experience. 

Justin Rosen senior vice president data & insights, Ampersand:  Viewers are flocking to streaming environments, including FASTs and vMVPDs, but they also remain engaged with linear TV and broadband and video MVPD services. So marketers must be everywhere. The most successful will holistically plan and unify across every environment, including unduplicated post campaign measurement. Without a well-thought out strategy that combines media planning with data and analytics, bringing this all back together will not be possible… On another front, as the cable bundle did originally, a re-bundling of services across new streaming channels will help consumers navigate the proliferation of services to find their favorite content and afford multiple subscriptions. Many of these services will be ad-supported — a good thing for marketers, as more high-quality, targetable, accountable inventory comes back into the ecosystem. With recent announcements such as Comcast and Charter’s XUMO box, we are already beginning to see this shift.  

Cathy Oh, head of marketing, Samsung Electronics America: As CTV ad capabilities continue to improve and evolve, digital screens get more dynamic, and retail media ecosystems explode, it will be critical for advertisers to shift their ad campaigns beyond the living room. Targeted multi-screen experiences will be key in 2024 to reaching consumers with messages that move with the medium. Expect retailers to get smarter with their in-store screens, and expect brands to start to bring their CTV campaigns out of the home, onto mobile and into retail and other out-of-home locations in 2024. 

Larry Allen, vice president and general manager, data and addressable enablement, Comcast Advertising:  Following the 2023 breakthrough of the launch of AMC Networks’ programmatic addressable capability, we can expect to see a major increase in addressable ad inventory available programmatically in 2024. This, tied with a stronger push and emphasis on authenticated identity, will help pave the way for even more accurate audience targeting and measurement innovation across the TV ad ecosystem. We’re also in the midst of an inflection point in the U.S. as the measurement sector moves toward a multi-currency world, with new entrants emerging and players on both sides calling for advancements in solutions. Buyers and sellers are seeking diversity to measure ad views across linear and streaming platforms accurately and consistently. Innovation will be key in bringing the greatest possible reliability and accuracy to cross-screen measurement.

Chris Vail, vice president, political sales, Effectv: We’ll see even more advertisers experimenting with or upping their investments in addressable TV advertising — particularly in the political sector, during an election year. This is where addressable’s superpower — the ability to reach and target specific voter segments, including at the local level, where votes can go a long way — really comes into play. This is an area we’re watching closely, especially in today’s audience-first ad/media landscape.” 

Angelina Eng, vice president measurement, sddressability & Data Center, IAB: Advertisers are moving away from cookie-based metrics and prioritizing meaningful engagement over quantity. The IAB and MRC plan to establish standardized guidelines for attention measurement, ensuring consistency and transparency in measuring user engagement…  With a focus on privacy and data usage, the landscape is shifting toward private marketplaces and direct buys for more controlled ad placements. Emphasis on user experience and high-quality content will become pivotal for engagement and trust… Achieving a unified view of the customer journey across multiple platforms remains a substantial hurdle. Privacy regulations and initiatives like Google's Privacy Sandbox pose ongoing challenges, leading to intermittent progress in cross-channel measurement. As cookies decline, measuring consumer behavior and attributing actions to campaigns become more complex. AI-driven tools are emerging to develop sophisticated attribution models using synthetic data, derived from ad-tech and martech sources. AI solutions can offer new insights into consumer behavior while maintaining privacy standards.

Dan Slivjanovski, CMO, DoubleVerify: The IAB released OM SDK for Android TV, Apple TV and Amazon Fire CTV environments last year, and we expect early adopters to begin supporting this in 2024...  Top publishers and distributors will finally respond to advertiser demand and begin providing video-level data to buy-side partners... Attention measurement, which is gaining traction for its ability to better measure and optimize performance across environments, will become more widely available in CTV next year.