The Key Trends Shaping the Addressable TV Market

Leaders across the CTV space share insights and offer predictions

Connected TV (CTV) has experienced massive growth in viewership as more people continue to cut the cord. This, in turn, has accelerated the discovery and use of free and low-cost streaming services—commonly referred to as free ad supported (FAST) or advertising-based video on demand (AVOD)—and offers advertisers new opportunities to reach TV audiences.

To navigate the key trends shaping the growing addressable TV market in 2022, Publica, in its latest CTV leadership webinar, gathered executives from the smart TV, streaming publisher and ad-tech industries.

Alysha Dino, global publisher partnerships director at Publica sat down with Katie Coteman, vp, advertising and partnerships at Discovery Inc., Katya Shkolnik, head of partnerships at Future Today Inc., Christopher Martinez, OTT director of sales at Hearst Television, Philip Duffield, vp, U.K. at The Trade Desk, Christopher Kleinschmidt, head of EU platform sales at Samsung Ads and Ben Antier, cofounder and CEO Publica to dive into current CTV trends. Here are some of the key takeaways from their in-depth discussion.

Alysha Dino: Why are consumers tuning into free and low-cost streaming services?

Christopher Kleinschimdt: The costs have just skyrocketed over the last few years. And I think this is something everybody relates to. Samsung Ads recently surveyed Smart TV owners and found that 41% of Samsung Smart TV owners right now are already saying that they are paying too much on streaming services, and more and more households just can’t afford to keep up with the many subscription video on demand (SVOD) services that they are subscribing to.

How are ads delivered to viewers on CTV?

Ben Antier: In CTV, we deliver one single stream that contains content plus ads into the video player (TV) and this all happens server-side, reducing any latency on the viewers’ device. Televisions were never designed to run advertisers’ code, hence we run all logic server-side, unlike in digital advertising where a lot still happens on the users’ device, client-side.

CTV publishers are increasingly working with supply-side platforms (SSPs) and adopting a unified auction built around the OpenRTB protocol to grow their share of programmatic demand. It is the job of CTV-first ad servers, like Publica, to construct ad pods that enable publishers to maximize their yield and improve the viewers’ streaming experience in each ad break.

Why is frequency management discussed a lot in CTV?

Katie Cotman: Not only is poor frequency frustrating for viewers, but it can also negatively impact advertisers also. The key to combating this frequency issue is server-side ad insertion (SSAI) as it fills out a pod before it gets to that point in a person’s viewing experience, allowing the publisher to manage who is in that pod, the frequency of their exposure, and the diversity of advertisers.

This is where programmatic plays an important role for publishers; we need a diversity of advertisers to make sure the viewing experience in CTV is premium.

Antier: To improve the frequency issue, we can’t rely only on the creative ID, or a declared advertiser domain. At Publica, we analyze the media file itself using machine learning models that detect the brand’s logo to help enforce any publisher controls around frequency and competitive ad clash.

We give publishers the controls they need to better understand each creative that is going to run on their inventory at the session level, even when advertiser details or IAB category is not passed to them from their programmatic demand partners.

What more can be done to grow CTV ad budgets?

Phillip Duffield: I think as an industry, we need to work on trust. A lot of CMOs’ biggest concern is the understanding of where their money goes in the programmatic supply chain.

As an industry, we have got to make sure that we are building the best solutions around identity and frequency management, but also, we want to make sure that we educate consumers around their data. It’s so important for them to engage, and for our industry to ensure we give them the best advertising experiences possible.

What are your CTV predictions for the next 12 months?

Katya Shkolnik: I think we are going to see a huge amount of innovation when it comes to CTV measurement and targeting, especially around the development of privacy-compliant device graphs. I believe there will be a lot of focus on Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and what is possible in CTV advertising moving forward also.

Christopher Martinez: I believe we are going to see a massive push towards contextual and local advertising on CTV over the next 12 months. If you can see a local car dealer’s ad while you are watching your favorite network show, it is all the more relevant because you know exactly where it is!

Duffield: We will continue to see TV viewers adopting ad-supported streaming content driven by SVOD fatigue. Measurement and identity will also be key areas of development for many this year in CTV.

Antier: We will see continued adoption of new standards such as OpenRTB 2.6 and ads.cert 2.0 that not only bring increased targeting capabilities to CTV, but will also bring increased transparency and control to the CTV supply chain.

Kleinschimdt: I think that 2022 will be the year where we will see a huge amount of innovation around FAST in Europe from leading TV broadcasters and this will help to grow the AVOD opportunity on CTV.

Coteman: We are going to see a lot more collaboration in the next 12 months from both buy and sell sides in CTV; there is a lot more that needs to be done to build the addressable TV ecosystem.

Ben Antier is the cofounder & CEO of Publica, a leading CTV ad server that works with many of the world’s biggest broadcasters, TV manufacturers and streaming apps. Publica provides solutions for publishers to maximize their revenue across their CTV inventory through key solutions including a unified auction, ad pod management, audience management, and server-side ad insertion (SSAI).