NDA has launched an interview series, CTV Leaders: Building the Future of TV, featuring inspirational leaders across the industry. Next up is Richard Brant, Senior Director, Advanced TV UK & International, Vevo UK. Richard has worked buy side and sell side across TV and digital with roles at Publicis, Sky and Dentsu
What is the biggest opportunity for advertisers AND consumers in CTV at present?
For advertisers, it is the ability to still reach audiences on a TV screen that they are struggling to achieve via traditional means whilst having further flexibility to utilise the benefits of digital delivery.
For the consumer, CTV offers more choice and more content available than ever before.
What are the biggest challenges and how will we overcome them?
The biggest challenges are still primarily education and getting away from activation siloes.
There tends to be a boxing of certain CTV inventory based on the way it is bought rather than the way it’s actually consumed. Instead, the content should be the focus no matter how it got to the TV screen.
We, as an industry, therefore, miss out on the bigger CTV opportunity, where there is lots of scale and opportunity. We need to treat it as its own growing and developing medium – not treating it as “exactly the same as digital”, just because buying mechanisms can be similar. There are too many additional nuances to take this tact and far too many for me to analyse one by one in this short interview!
What technology or innovation in the sector are you most excited about?
I am most excited about the new entrants coming to market that are aggregating CTV opportunities across all the available suppliers. Broadcasters, new FAST/Apps, broadcast quality YouTube content are all part of a consumer’s “TV” experience now. T
hese platforms/services are taking a much more practical approach, looking for common denominators between all the fragmented activation points in order to scale the opportunity. Aggregating both the buy and reporting all in one platform can only be a good thing.
What is your favourite CTV ad or piece of content at the moment and why?
CTV is TV the way we see it, so I’m enjoying “Race Across the World”. Love a bit of travel/exploring as I rarely get the chance at the moment.
What is your most proud achievement in the CTV sector to date?
I am proud of the collaborations Vevo has developed with BARB, Channel 4 and many more to come. It’s helping enormously in the education process and helping to shape understanding of what TV is today and what it’s becoming. We should all be working more collaboratively.
