What does the rise in Connected TVs mean for B2B marketers? Is this a new channel to be considered?
Disney Plus has just announced that they will launch an ad-supported subscription tier which will be available sometime in “late 2022” to the US market before expanding internationally in 2023. It is typical of the available advertising opportunities in Connected TV (CTV) technology. Our Digital Marketing Manager, Diwakar Redhu, wanted to explore more and understand what this means for the B2B advertisers.
How big is the market?
Several CTV channels are providing a subscription service that includes ads. These include channels like HBO Max, Peacock & Hulu, to name a few. The focus is to capture the growing subscriber base by offering cheaper alternatives to mounting subscription costs for different platforms. Most CTV viewers (69 percent) say they watch ad-supported content.
Meanwhile, according to eMarketer, in the UK alone, the number of CTV users in the UK in 2024 will reach 44.4 million – which accounts for two-thirds of the population. This presents a massive opportunity for the advertisers to get in front of their target audience. The number of advertisers is growing rapidly with both the buy and sell-side investing in these new channels.
How are advertisers reacting?
Presently, the CTV advertising market is still pretty fragmented, but we do have specific platforms which are fast becoming an integral part of the channel mix for digital ad campaigns. YouTube has undoubtedly benefitted the most from the steep rise in CTV dominance since always being pitted against television, and it is effectively part of the TV industry now. Increasingly, advertisers are recognizing that it’s not an either-or conversation.
Is this the same around the world?
Beyond YouTube, the preferred smart TV platforms vary from country to country. For example, almost a third of all UK households use Samsung’s smart TV here in the UK. Advertisers can leverage the Samsung Ads platform to advertise to the prospects, which has a wide array of demographics and intent-driven targeting capabilities.
Amazon Fire TV comes in second place with 19% of the market share (5.4 million+ homes). However, their ad serving platform, Fire TV Ads, is still in the beta phase. They are in the process of developing advertising opportunities on their platform. LG is also firmly placed, with 13% of the market and a fast-developing platform advertising platform in the form of LG Ads, launched last year.
What targeting options exist?
Top-level brand awareness campaigns are the most appropriate use of the medium. The targeting options are mainly contextual via placements/channels that fit your target audience’s demographics and interests.
On top of that, most of these platforms offer an option to run programmatic campaigns by integrating the first-party data for effective customer segmentation. So now we can leverage all that data that sits in CRM to reach and nurture the customer base. This sort of pinpoint targeting was never a possibility in traditional TV advertising.
In addition, now we also have the opportunity to build custom intent-driven target audiences like ’technology enthusiasts,’ ‘sports fans,’ etc.
The associated technologies, detailed reporting insights, and targeting capabilities are getting more sophisticated with time, particularly in terms of 3rd party integrations with platforms like LiveRamp, Bambora, Kantar, etc.
What formats are available?
The available ad formats on CTV are also rapidly developing and growing. Still, the preferred format remains shorted video format (non-skippable) as that has more scope for storytelling and integrating the branding elements.
Different types of banners on the home screen are also an exciting option for top-level awareness, although many ad platforms restrict that placement for endemic advertising (native streaming content). These checks on behalf of the ad platforms are to make sure that the ad content is not out of place and adds value to the customer experience.
A few hurdles do remain to make CTV advertising more mainstream (if not already), like suitability of sellers, effective measurement, fragmented market space, and uneven regulations. However, as the streaming wars get bloodier and the temptation for free ad-supported TV grows in appeal to ease the financial strain, they’re overwhelmingly more positive towards ads on their Connected TVs. But the catch is for the advertisers to strive to enhance the end user’s viewing experience and deliver relevant content.
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