NDA, in partnership with Xandr, is collecting the views of some of our industry’s leading figures for their predictions on 2022 and beyond. Next up is Chris Kleinschmidt Head of Platform Sales, EU, Samsung Ads.
What is the biggest challenge in your sector when it comes to digital advertising and how will it be overcome?
Education around connected TV (CTV) is still a challenge to overcome for the digital advertising industry. The CTV market has exploded in recent years, brought forward by a global pandemic driving more people indoors. But despite this growth, there still isn’t a consistent understanding when it comes to defining the quality, quantity, and measurement of this highly-valued inventory compared to traditional linear TV or online video.
2020 was the first time we have ever seen Samsung TV owners spend more time streaming content than watching linear TV, and it’s critical for advertisers to understand how to access these audiences as part of their overall media strategy.
What is the biggest opportunity in your sector when it comes to digital advertising and how will you take advantage of it?
There is often a misconception that CTV inventory does not have scale, but it can and does. There is a growing number of ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) CTV apps that are providing premium content to users and creating a real opportunity for advertisers to get ahead of the shifting trend in viewing behaviours.
According to a recent IAB Europe report, 63% of CTV users are watching AVOD on a weekly basis. As users shift their time from subscription-based video on demand (SVOD) to AVOD services, it will create an opportunity for Samsung’s AVOD service Samsung TV Plus and other AVOD services to become top of mind for advertisers.
What consumer behavioral change over the last 18 months will be the most important for shaping your digital advertising strategy in 2020?
This really comes down to the users spending more of their time streaming content versus linear TV viewing and understanding the concentration of linear TV viewers. Analysing our own Samsung TV viewership through the first quarter of 2021, streaming content represented 54% of total time spent on our TVs.
Linear viewing will still see major spikes, particularly when it comes to live sporting events. Linear TV viewing is highly concentrated on a small subset of heavy linear viewers– with our own data showing that one third of linear TV viewers in the EU5 make up 74% of the overall linear viewing time. As this trend continues, advertisers will need to take notice of how they allocate their AV budgets to correlate with this concentration.
What is your biggest hope and/pr fear for your industry in 2022?
As we venture further into a post-pandemic world, I am very interested to see how this impacts viewing patterns. My biggest hope is that the increased time spent trend continues to favor streaming services and advertisers allocate a proportionate share of their budgets to align with the time spent in streaming environments.
The bigger fear is that the industry is unable to define a clear and effective KPI’s across the CTV ecosystem. This goes back to the education needed to ensure that clients are talking about consistent industry adopted approach towards measurement when transacting on CTV.
