This is part of a three-part series of ‘Agency Talks’ in collaboration with Samba TV. We invite Joseph Lee, Partner of Media Activation at Media Futures Group to discuss reaching CTV audiences and the data needed to drive it forward.
How has CTV planning and buying shifted in recent years?
Back when there was the big rush behind mobile, you had to ask where the mobile element was on the media plan, but then it became all encompassing. The same shift towards a more seamless plan is happening in the CTV space now, but there are nuances in each market that affect the maturity of the ad ecosystem and the way CTV is bought and planned.
For example, in North America, CTV is ahead and premium content has always been via subscription. SVOD is growing fast in EMEA, but the scale is much smaller than North America and the markets have a stronger attachment to linear.
In the UK, we have free, premium content via the broadcasters, and now a healthy combination of FAST/SVOD/BVOD is accelerating in growth, with SVOD dominating ahead of linear. Linear, despite being in decline, still remains key to the AV mix. That said, the way we’re buying is becoming more like an all-in-one AV package.
We don’t look at things in isolation. No more platforms – it’s visual touchpoints on screens that create a more holistic and effective advertising experience.
What do we need to reach CTV audiences at scale?
It’s important to have a robust strategy that aligns with your overall business goals and objectives: What are you trying to achieve with your campaign? Brand awareness? Lead generation? Sales?
A clear understanding of the target audience is also key. We need access to high-quality, reliable and relevant data that connects the dots, have the ability to analyse and interpret this data effectively, and use AI technologies to scale, automate and optimise the campaigns.
What the data looks like in this privacy-centric era is changing because the industry has had to rebuild the way it is thinking of scalable, addressable audiences. We can’t rely on cookies, and first party data is on-target but without scale. We must instead understand cohorts of behaviours, consumption and location signals for scaled results.
Samba TV offers an interesting use case where TV consumption and location data is analysed to understand audiences and consumption habits at a geographic level. By indexing the highest or lowest performing locations, advertisers can flatten the frequency curve and understand where there’s under or over exposure.
This provides an opportunity for incremental reach by increasing media spend in underexposed geos and minimising waste in areas with overexposed audiences. These location signals are privacy-centric, strong, reliable and relevant.
What does the industry need to prioritise data integrity?
These priorities can be summarised in three key points:
- Improve data quality and accuracy. It does not necessarily mean to diversify the data sets you have; it means to cleanse the data and make it as accurate and complete as possible. This has to be the number one priority. What you put in affects what you get out.
- Enhance targeting capabilities. Develop a seamless and consistent brand experience across all touchpoints by using your most reliable data sources and leaning into AI to deliver both scale and accuracy. Be sure to find partners who have a genuine USP and programmatic strengths no one else has to offer.
- Ensure that user privacy is a must. You have to have a foundation of privacy in everything you do, every partner, every channel. The industry needs to build trust around advertising and think of the user first to give the best ad experiences. Then we can look at achieving that at scale with the best data, signals and technology to deliver the message. Your results on awareness, consideration, favourability and advocacy will then speak for themselves.
What’s new and exciting in the landscape?
AI is an opportunity to bring our fragmented ecosystem back together and manage the complexities of it all, but the industry has to be brave enough to embrace it. What excites me most is AI’s potential to scale solutions in a privacy-centric way, such as with valuable first-party data.
It can also give us a deeper and more relevant understanding of audiences, and transform real-time automation and optimisation. I think AI can help us prioritise quality, reliability and scalability more efficiently than before, ultimately bringing us closer to the audiences we want to engage with.
