The Murmur Beneath the Roar This Summer

Tom Wolfe | SVP, Business Development — Viant

If you were at some of this summer’s big events — Upfronts and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity — you heard what has become common knowledge: CTV is growing at linear’s expense. This revolution is being driven by programmatic tech and, of course, the other hot topic at the Upfronts and Cannes — AI. Yet, technology has been upending TV for the last 25 years. Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

January 2000. AOL has acquired TimeWarner. Shockwaves. Shockwaves! T-shirt clad miscreants absorb the mightiest of media companies. The traditional linear world felt its first punch in the face by digital.

January 2024. Another traditional industry cedes market share to digital. As Connected TV replaces linear, so too does programmatic replace the insertion order.

In this 24 year interim, the 2004 film, In Good Company, aptly conveyed the stress environmental changes placed on the relationship-based seller. Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid), of fictional Sports America magazine, can no longer secure deals based on friendships alone. The advertiser lamentingly demands to know the ROI.

In the midst of this shift, the discussions at Upfronts and Cannes Lions made it clear that advertisers need now to work with knowledgeable and experienced CTV experts who understand the value proposition of premium TV content, how it works with other channels, and the ways to properly execute programmatically. Technology and expertise yield better results together than independently.

The Not-So-Streamlined CTV Supply Path

We can start by looking at the CTV advertising supply path. As it exists today, it’s bloated and unwieldy, in desperate need of streamlining. What holds it together are trusted partnerships.

MiQ’s recent study emphasized, yet again, today’s complicated supply path with the headline grabbing: “214 paths in CTV.” While the number may feel accurate for some working in the industry, the study doesn’t address important realities about premium CTV content and, more importantly, relationships. 

Distribution agreements between MVPDs, or between streaming apps, create legitimate, premium ad reseller relationships, which — while prospectively adding a “hop”— do not add tech fees, which, if we are to believe the media, is the greater concern.

This “no fee” model is often based on the historic agreement between cable operators and content providers, i.e., cable operators received inventory at no attributable fee as partial exchange for distribution of the services. In today’s streaming environment, Roku, Amazon and others require the same exchange. In some cases, they pay for the inventory. 

But, crucially, they do not add superfluous tech fees. 

Instead, the tech fees come from intermediaries who do not add value to the exchange. Yes, I’m talking about incremental tech platforms reselling the inventory to each other.

Sussing Out Resellers in CTV

Most resellers will tell you they add important value to CTV. Some do —  for select publishers. But not for buyers. In the end, advertisers need to target, activate, and measure campaigns across channels — an arena in which DSPs excel.

Further, when tech firms become media firms, or full-on exchanges, the supply pool gets muddy, incentives change, and bad actors (such as Made-For-Advertising sites and unscrupulous ad networks) slip into the ecosystem, complicating verification, spoof detection and, ultimately, further preventing supply path optimization. 

Obviously, none of this helps advertisers achieve their goals.

Deciding on the Right DSP

For their part, publishers which own media, and the industry as a whole, are starting to understand how the shift to direct buy-side integrations can help achieve their CTV growth objectives. 

For example, Disney inked a deal for Walmart Connect data to attribute CTV views to purchase; launched its home-grown exchange DRAX; and announced addressability initiatives with a few leading DSPs. As CTV is cookieless and, to date, difficult to measure, publishers need to work directly with DSPs on privacy-compliant data matches in order to satisfy advertiser requirements, from set-up, to activation, to measurement.  

Of note, not all DSPs are created equal — some excel in measurement, some in activation, some in specific media channels, etc. Size is not the only measure of a DSP’s strength. Diversification in the DSP market provides advertisers – but also publishers – greater opportunity to win in emerging areas, including measurement, new markets, and of course, CTV. 

As CTV grows more prevalent in multi-channel campaign execution, advertisers can excel by working with knowledgeable partners — authentic, experienced CTV experts — who understand the value proposition of premium CTV content, how it works with other channels and can help execute properly.

Expertise can complement a technically strong DSP by offering CTV supply via direct, legitimate connections to premium programmers and platforms alike, matched to first-party audience segments based on privacy-compliant data.

Human intuition often remains the best yardstick. For example: An ad query marked CTV, which includes cookie IDs, is likely not actually CTV! So Caveat Emptor. Or device IDs and URLs can be faked — buy directly to ensure legitimacy. Caveat Emptor. Low CPMs usually equate to low quality or illegitimacy. Again, Caveat Emptor!

The combination of human and machine learning is stronger than either on its own. As such, buy-side platforms leverage their new-found relationships with individual publishers to better serve the advertiser who has, and always will be, their core client — ensuring proper campaign reach, frequency, retargeting, ROI, conversion lift and more.