CTV Roundup

During Q1 this year, Viant reported that streaming audio and CTV combined represented more than half of the total ad spend on its platform.

Toyota is dipping its toes into home screen ads on Vizio TVs with a recent campaign for the new hybrid 2025 Camry model in hopes of reaching younger consumers.

BET+, which first launched in 2019 without ads, rolled out an ad-supported tier in June 2023. Now, the next step for BET+ will be to increase its monetization, says Jason Harvey, EVP of BET Media Group and head of BET+.

BarBoards, an Austin-based startup that launched in February, is the latest DOOH tech platform hoping to win TV ad dollars by running ads on screens in restaurants and bars.

It’s never been more complicated to buy TV ads than it is today. As a result, TV advertisers are rethinking how they want to use programmatic platforms.

If the nonstop news coming out of Cannes Lions in France this week is making your head spin, this week’s newsletter dispatch will catch you up on how CTV is factoring into this year’s festival.

For a moment in time, agencies and brands upped their efforts to reach diverse audiences and spend on diverse-owned media. But that hype has since petered out, in part because brands lack the data to effectively target this audience.

The more new FAST channels there are, the harder it is for them to stand out to advertisers that have long perceived them as the bargain bin of streaming. One way to grab the attention of advertisers is to provide the data and transparency they’ve long been asking for from CTV partners.

While agencies push for more programmatic buying options, publishers want to maintain control in TV ad buying negotiations – and particularly over their “premium” content.

In addition to taking execs through its plans to launch its own ad platform, Netflix hosted a separate event open to the press to showcase its content as part of its efforts to stand out to advertisers.

Programmers are using their Q1 earnings reports as a dress rehearsal for their upfront pitches. Meanwhile, programmatic platforms, including Magnite and PubMatic, also had upfronts in mind during their Q1 earnings.

It’s been a busy week in CTV and streaming, with Google kicking off NewFronts, Paramount ousting its CEO and the IAB projecting social video will outpace CTV in 2024.

GSTV is trying to win a larger share of spend earmarked for TV. In GSTV’s case, it wants to reach a broad and captive audience – while they’re at the fuel pump.

Moonbug Entertainment, a content studio whose portfolio includes kid favorites such as CoComelon and Blippi, is trying to bring some form of ad measurement to children’s content through a new partnership with iSpot.

In recent years, Vizio has undergone a metamorphosis, transitioning from a hardware company to primarily a connected TV ad platform. Now, its biggest growth opportunities lie in programmatic ad sales and home screen monetization to sell more supply.

Now that alternative TV currencies have passed the initial sniff tests, how should buyers and sellers compare their viewership numbers? The leaders of Nielsen, Comscore, iSpot and VideoAmp gathered onstage during the Coalition of Innovative Media Measurement summit in New York City to answer that question.

US TV ad inventory – including streaming – is eroding. Which means streaming platforms are tasked with pulling off the very difficult feat of appeasing viewers while also growing ad revenue enough to placate Wall Street.

Say hello to Blkfam (pronounced “Black fam”), a free ad-supported streaming platform that launched in February with on-demand content curated for Black families. The platform was founded by media vet Larry Adams with equity investment and creative direction from Whoopi Goldberg.

AdExchanger will lift the hood on the hottest topics in CTV live onstage at the inaugural CTV Connect event in New York City on March 13 and March 14.

Streaming services must juggle subscriber growth and ad revenue – an ongoing struggle that produced a mixed bag of Q4 earnings results. But there’s a reason why it seems like Netflix is coming out on top.

NASCAR’s Cup Series kicked off on Monday with the Daytona 500 race, an annual opportunity for paid brand sponsorships and prime time ad spots airing on FOX (or, for cord-cutters, Fubo and Sling TV).

This past weekend’s Super Bowl was different for a few reasons, particularly the presence of Taylor Swift and Chinese ecommerce challenger brand Temu.

To relate with Gen Z, advertisers have to do more than just spend millions on a 30- or 60-second Super Bowl spot. They need to keep up online and social marketing before, during and after the game – and using influencers will help, too.

Prime Video is playing with ads now, making it the latest entrant to the AVOD streaming wars. Consumers and advertisers have mixed feelings about the new ad offering.

JamLoop is a specialized DSP that launched in 2018 with a focus on local CTV advertising. It pitches its in-house ad tech that specializes in pacing smaller campaign budgets as a way to win over independent agencies and smaller, local advertisers.

The ad industry’s lofty ambitions for alternative currencies has come back down to planet Earth. Alt currencies struggle to gain market share because most buyers and sellers still transact on Nielsen numbers, while audience panels are back on the measurement menu.

CES this year was a petri dish of news and gossip (and hopefully not COVID) among the CTV ad industry.

CTV advertising is evolving from prepubescent into a profitable industry, so expect the nascent trends of last year – namely, a focus on measurement and data, transparency, targeting and programmatic – to shape CTV’s next phase of life.

This was such a busy year in CTV land that we had to launch a dedicated newsletter just to keep up with all the trends, from measurement, currency, targeting and attribution to streaming data, identity, supply-path optimization and new ad formats – just to name a few.

2023 was the year live sports entered the streaming arena in full force, creating a new form of fragmentation in the process.