NDA has launched an interview series, CTV Leaders: Building the Future of TV, featuring inspirational leaders across the industry. Next up is Sarah Lewis, Global Director CTV, ShowHeroes.
What is the biggest opportunity for advertisers AND consumers in CTV at present?
For consumers, CTV provides a huge amount of choice on their content consumption. They can watch what they want, from a vast library of content and ever-growing FAST channels, at whatever time or day suits them. This also leads into the opportunity for advertisers.
In our research study, conducted last year with COG Research, we found that the CTV platform generates higher attention and engagement levels than other video platforms such as linear TV and social video. This is therefore a huge opportunity for advertisers to build not just brand awareness and recall, but also drive user action.
What are the biggest challenges and how we will overcome them?
Measurement has been one of the biggest challenges for the CTV industry. We’ve definitely made clear strides ahead in the last year or so with brand uplift, incremental reach and audience measurement now far more robust than in previous years.
We still do have some way to go though before we reach the granularity that many brands are used to seeing in digital. As long as we as an industry embrace new measurement innovation, adhere to data standards and collaborate on new solutions I have no doubt we will continue to strengthen the CTV measurement options.
What technology or innovation in the sector are you most excited about?
I’m really excited about being able to push the levels of creativity and innovation in CTV creative. We’re able to really enhance CTV advertising now by including elements such as QR codes and Voice Commands, which can extend the user experience and drive further engagement from the user.
What is your favourite CTV ad or piece of content at the moment and why?
In June we launched a new format called Custom Animations, where our amazing team of designers and animators create an animation to enhance the advertisers’ CTV creative. We’re currently creating a beautiful example of this- I can’t reveal which brand this is for until the campaign starts, but stay tuned!
What is your most proud achievement in the CTV sector to date?
I’m very proud of the CTV Innovation team that I’ve built at ShowHeroes over the past couple of years. ShowHeroes was already a leader in video innovation when I joined, but we’ve managed to take this expertise and create a market leading CTV offering that I’m very proud of.
