Bill Swanson, SVP EMEA at Connatix
Google’s third-party cookie depreciation has been the talk of the town for a few years now and will be a drawn-out process over the year and even into next year. One of the last significant changes that impacted both the buy and sell side of the programmatic ecosystem was GDPR; though this had a date set in stone which allowed the market to put systems and partners in place.
The issue with third-party cookie deprecation is that it is being drawn out (admittedly safari and iOS have already dropped cookies) and therefore there is somewhat of a ‘head in the sand’ attitude to the changes that need to be made. That said, privacy-first solutions are being widely adopted but these should also run hand in hand with contextual solutions – particularly for video and even more so for CTV.
This content is not static, therefore the context changes, which can make for unreliable targeting and buying – context is key in both environments but most importantly let’s not forget there are no cookies in CTV! Buyers need to adopt contextual targeting as a key component of their strategies – now is the time to ensure they are efficiently future-proofing their client’s media spend.
CTV will though continue to change the way buyers evolve their strategies and where these budgets come from. AV and digital budgets will over time unify but it is still a fragmented buying ecosystem, even more confused by BVOD channels trying to build their own solutions and in effect creating walled gardens.
Manufactures/OEM’s are building their own ‘app store’ environments for streaming content allowing direct access for users to choose hours of content via multiple vendors. Access to CTV content is getting easier and the ad dollars are following but measurement and attribution are key elements that will continue to be discussed and hopefully unified. Until this is resolved it creates an inefficient and murky marketplace that helps neither the buy nor sell side.
Nonetheless, CTV will continue to take more market share of overall digital advertising spend through 2024. I think it will continue to shake out agencies’ strategies on behalf of their brand clients as they continue to optimise ad placements by targeting the right demographics at the right time within the right context by using AI and other technologies to drive efficiency in spend.
Ultimately we, the user, can get a better idea of the success; are you seeing the same advert time and again? Or do you feel that you are having a traditional, creative linear TV advertising experience with a quality ad around the content you are viewing? If not, there is still work to be done from a technology and buying perspective!
