As consumers spend more time at home, they’re spending more time watching content via connected TV. The rise in digital video consumption is a key business opportunity for buyers and sellers of digital advertising. At the IAS Innovation Summit, Glenn Perera, the Director Product Strategy, EMEA at IAS was joined by Diana Romero, Manager for Digital Standards and Partnerships at PMX Global to discuss the rise and innovation seen in over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) advertising.
Rapid growth
Even before the stay-at-home orders were announced across the globe in 2020, CTV has been experiencing strong growth. Glenn Perera from IAS pointed to research that highlighted the rise in online streaming, “Nearly half of consumers are claiming that they’re spending at least one to three hours more watching video streaming services.”
“I think the CTV space has been growing rapidly over the past few years but even more so
with the pandemic,” assessed Diana Romero. And this year, there has been one specific topic which has brought even more attention to the topic, not only the usage and consumption on CTV and OTT, but also “marketers being able to do much more in these devices,” stated Perera.
There remains many opportunities within the CTV space to address marketers’ needs, as Romero pointed out, “it has the opportunity to integrate more closely with all digital buyers and precisely target audiences.”
Focus on standardisation
However, as with any global and rapidly changing technology, CTV and OTT requires greater standardisation to enable more sophisticated measurement of its performance and targeting. Romero highlights this stating that, “We have seen the need to really address some of the key challenges across emerging channels in terms of standards and measurement.”
The challenge in OTT and CTV advertising remains the lack of measurement and the fragmentation in the space. “There’s a lack of common definitions and I think that’s actually very important to address in the immediate future,” argued Romero. Perera also compared major markets, arguing that whilst there is some standardisation in the US, across Europe, there are four or five different configurations on how OTT infrastructure has been set up.
With such a quick transformation for OTT and CTV in a relatively short space of time, Romero called upon the industry to work together. “All the key players need to make sure that standards are addressed and are implemented across the board. As the market is so fragmented, we need to make sure that we’re actually all working together towards the same adoption of the standards and language.”
Transformation vs innovation
Perera closes the session by posing a poignant question, “Is innovation moving as fast as the viewership numbers?” We’ve seen a huge growth, but has the industry collectively kept up with the pace of transformation?
The advertising industry is moving in the right direction as there is awareness of the challenges in the OTT and CTV landscape, with the key areas that need to be addressed known. It appears there will be further innovation coming for CTV, with the pandemic simply acting as a catalyst. The digital video advertising market will become more dynamic and transform, but as Romero points out, the CTV “trend is here to stay as everyone wants to tap in to this opportunity.”
Watch the full session from the IAS Innovation Summit here:
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