CTV Advertising in 2022: Is It Worth Your Attention?

According to eMarketer, the average US citizen spends approximately 5 hours watching television, and nearly 2 of these hours are spent on Connected TV. CTV is essentially a TV set or any other kind of device with Internet access (smart TV, streaming stick, game console) that enables the user to consume the content from the streaming services.?

Meanwhile, addressable TV makes it possible to personalize advertising experience in each individual case. This way even if two households are watching the same show, they will be receiving different kinds of advertising based on their digital portraits.?

With highly-targeted advertising being available on TV, advertisers can go far beyond outdated mass-market advertising approaches while saving their budgets and focusing on meaningful ‘brand-user’ communication.?

Let’s take a look at its ad landscape and dive deep into its benefits to see exactly what this type of advertising has to offer in 2022.?

$34.49 billion by 2025: why CTV ad spending is growing?

CTV advertisement has become a hot trend since 2020 and it seems to stay: 66% of advertisers plan to increase their budget for this type of advertising by the end of 2022. By 2025, the ad spending on CTV is expected to grow up to $34.49 billion.

It happens because CTV is extremely popular and is widely used in the US: half of the Americans used it on a weekly basis and in 2020 alone there were 105 million American households connected to it. People spend more time watching CTV rather than traditional, linear TV (with Hulu having the most subscriptions on CTV). Still, in fact, 6 out of 10 households regularly watch free, ad supported streamers among which the most popular are Pluto TV lead and Tubi TV.

The good news is, that even subscription channels are often testing the ad monetization model. For instance, recently Netflix opened up certain types of content for everyone. Even those users who are not registered on the platform can access Netflix content in all languages and absolutely for free. In exchange for this Netflix expects viewers to watch 30-second pre-roll ads. For Netflix, it is a new marketing opportunity to foster brand loyalty among viewers while advertisers get a chance to reach new audiences.

What does it mean for marketers? It means that they can access more users and find any target audience they may need. Moreover, one CTV device can show ads to more than one person because, for example, such a device as Smart TV is oftentimes viewed by families, friend groups, and couples.

While the CTV viewership and ad spending reach the new heights, some trends appear to define the development of the market in 2022:

• Advertisers are on the hunt for premium inventory. With a fragmented landscape of available ad solutions the concerns about the origins of purchased ad inventory grows. Striving to know that they buy brand-safe good quality impressions, advertisers more often give preference to premium inventory aggregators.?
• Automation becomes a must. In order to deliver ads effectively advertisers are using the power of automation on CTV enabled by programmatic platforms. Thanks to this, DSPs and ad exchanges make it possible to schedule and deliver the ads on TV as quickly and effectively as on the web.?
• Additional data works as an opportunity. In the light of GDPR, CCPA, Cookie crumble and IDFA restrictions data becomes a scarce resource. As CTV channels leverage offline data sources it is seen as an opportunity to get additional insights that connect CTV watching with direct business results. Likewise, the same opportunities arise in campaigns attribution.
• New formats seize the market. As CTV advertising matures, it can support more advertising formats giving a more creative freedom to advertisers. In 2022 apart from videos advertisers can diversify their media-mix with interactive formats and storytelling ad units that can be divided in fragments and inserted into particular segments of video show.?

Addressable TV advertising: benefits for advertisers

For advertisers, CTV has more benefits when compared to traditional linear TV. Addressable TV provides access to good quality audiences that consists mostly of the tech-savvy young adults. While the subscription model of content monetization has reached its potential these days, it is expected that in the coming years, the monetization through advertising will significantly increase because of the numerous benefits it delivers for publishers and advertisers. Let’s take a closer look at what advertiser gets from it:

Immersive experience

Advertisers are free to try videos of any length and play around with interactive options, as well as either showcase a product, tell a story and highlight values of your brand, address consumer’s problem that you may solve, or give a tutorial on how to use the product. WIth this, full-screen video creatives, as most widespread ad formats, guarantee immersive experience and memorability of the ad.?

Videos sell better

Compared to images or plain text, videos sell much better - they are, in fact, considered to be the most effective form of advertising and attract 66% more qualified leads. CTV advertising also allows them to create videos in great quality with stereo sound so they can attract a user solely by a bright picture on their big screen.?

More precise targeting

When it comes to linear TV, it is only possible to advertise to all users that watch a particular show at a particular time. Meanwhile, CTV leverages the targeting capacities of programmatic which allows the advertisers to serve the ads only to the viewers that fall within their targeting criteria .?

Cost reduction

Precise targeting helps advertisers to serve ads only to the right people. Thus, the advertiser's ad budget is not wasted on those audiences to whom the product or service might be not relevant. Additionally, advertisers reach more potential customers while paying less since CTV is normally watched with friends and families, which reduces the cost per impression.?

Real-time measurement

Linear TV gives little freedom in terms of campaign management since ad placement and scheduling is pre-negotiated. Likewise, It is hard to measure performance apart from counting the number of served ads per day. Thanks to programmatic the real-time attribution and measurement of the web also becomes available for TV campaigns. The same logic is true for campaign management - it is easy to fine-tune or change the campaign’s flow in rel-time when necessary.???

What is in CTV advertising for publishers?

CTV advertising is a great source of revenue for publishers as well. They get access to two big novelties, compared to linear TV: targeted and automated ad serving. Targeting on CTV provides effective ad serving to the advertisers. You can adequately estimate the worth of ad placement on your inventory. Automated ad serving is much faster and efficient than negotiations that are led in linear TV. At the same time, you can still control what kind and type of content you allow and not allow to publish by limiting the options on the programmatic platforms.?

CTV advertising also gives publishers the opportunity to connect to a much larger pool of advertisers. Many are afraid of linear TV because of the high costs or do not know who to talk to submit their offers. CTV eliminates all of these problems.?

Is CTV advertisement worth your attention?

Considering all that we have gathered now, the answer is yes. This type of digital advertisement has benefits for both advertisers and publishers. While advertisers enjoy cost reductions, better viewership, and targeting, publishers can optimize their service selling and attract more advertisers than ever. At this point, you are risking losing your place at the top if you do not advertise on CTV.?

If you want to leverage the power of CTV advertising and seek a reliable platform, consider using Integral Stream. This is an ad exchange focused specifically on CTV that allows publishers to monetize their inventory to the fullest and helps advertisers reap all the benefits of this trendy advertising medium for the best price.