Tag: CTV

After over a year of enduring lockdowns and restrictions, there is no stopping the e-commerce wave. Driven by boredom and necessity, shoppers continue to flock to online shopping platforms in droves as evidenced by record-breaking numbers across the board on e-commerce platforms. According to Facebook and Bain & Company, about 70 million more people have turned into avid online shoppers in Southeast Asia since the start of the pandemic.

This boom in online shopping is a tremendous opportunity for brands to seek and deepen audience engagement through digital channels. With the year-end shopping and holiday season approaching, this is a critical period for brands looking to cap off the year with a bang.

In today’s digital age, where audience attention spans are shorter, simply trying to stand out among the competition is no longer enough due to the sheer amount of content dispensed on every page and with every click. Online consumerism is no longer merely about purchasing products, but also the customer journey and experience. One way to embrace this period of disruption and retain consumer attention is through harnessing the capabilities of video and creative for genuine audience-brand connection.

It is also no surprise that video consumption has grown amid the pandemic, especially in mobile-first Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific regions. Results from a 2020 study conducted by Media Partners Asia revealed that mobile video streaming increased by 60% across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, with social media videos being one of the top channels for the discovery of new products.

The rise of Connected TV 

Standing out amid the rise in video consumption, Connected TV (CTV) continues to grow and dominate viewing habits worldwide, with 42% more attention going to CTV since lockdowns began. Compared to the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, CTV ad spend in Asia Pacific is forecasted to have the fastest growth by a Forrester study, contributed by new CTV channels and devices entering the market. 

The growth of CTV presents plenty of avenues that advertisers can leverage; its scalable and premium qualities, along with unskippable content, provide prime advertising real estate. As CTV viewership increases, brands should utilize this opportunity to adopt an audience-first strategy through tailor-made, data-driven, and relatable content relevant to their target audiences. As a massive canvas on which multiple formats can be experimented, CTV provides the perfect opportunity for storytelling and engagement within high-quality environments. This could come in the form of branded frames to reinforce product visuals, dynamic overlays to supercharge the viewing experience, and even opportunities for the audience to customize their own products on-screen.

Television and on-demand viewing platforms are often referred to as ‘lean-back’ media due to the audience experience of being relaxed and served content without being fully engaged. Hence, to capture attention, transfer the experience from TV to mobile device, and encourage further interaction, consider supporting CTV ads with a seamless purchasing experience across multiple screens. A great example would be a click-out feature, where consumers can scan a QR code for products to be instantly added to their shopping carts – seamless, quick, and fuss-free.

Genuine emotional engagement 

People forget what you say, but they will not forget how you made them feel. Emotion has always been a powerful tool in engaging and creating valuable connections with consumers. Video is one of the best mediums to evoke emotion and drive emotional engagement, and subtly help audiences respond more strongly and favorably to a brand. This helps to enable brand recall in peak moments and influence post-viewing behaviors, including brand perception and decision making.

Advertisers can better equip their ads for memory by leveraging a mental short-cut known as the peak-end rule – affecting how users remember the past through selected snapshots of memories that shape their perception and feeling about an event. To take advantage of this, place important takeaways at intense positive or negative moments, also known as its ‘peaks’, as well as the final moments of an experience.

It is also important to select the right mix of emotions to be evoked in ad campaigns, as the right emotional mix can have a huge impact on brand building and sales uplift: the right visuals, copy, sounds, and placements can all stir feeling and impact. Playing around the full spectrum of emotions – from positive to negative – can create that much-needed spark.

When it comes to season shopping, no other holiday evokes stronger emotions than Christmas, and the pandemic seems to have further amplified those feelings. Based on a study by video ad platform Unruly, amid the pandemic, 2020’s Christmas ads were found to be 51% more emotive than the global average, and even increased the average purchase consideration score by 41%.

In the Philippines, the same study found that Christmas ads evoked 14% more intense emotions than the average ad, and the top positive emotions associated with Christmas ads were happiness, inspiration, and warmth. Similarly, in Australia, a study of 2020 Christmas ads saw a 36% increase in intense emotions than the average ad. 

Captivating viewers with creative

Apart from cookies and targeting, which are some of the primary drivers of today’s campaigns, a Nielsen study found that creative is responsible for 47% of the uptick in sales from advertising.

Ultimately, creative should continue to be aligned with specific media goals, as well as its audiences, screens, and placement types. Capture audiences’ attention by telling engaging, relevant stories across all screens.

Brands can also capture viewers’ attention with short-form videos, where shorter ads can deliver higher dwell time, completion rate, and brand recall.

Interaction is key

Interactive video ads provide unique and engaging experiences for audiences, allowing them to live through your brand’s narrative and driving immediate action. Standalone interactive elements, or a combination of elements, can take the viewing experience to greater heights.

A common example today is the use of QR codes; their popularity has been further driven by the pandemic as viewers may take action almost instantly. Particularly useful in CTV, QR codes are an efficient way of getting viewers to continue the consumer journey on their mobile devices – including downloading an app, adding an item to an online cart, or even redeeming a gift.

Other elements that help push users down the conversion funnel include countdown clocks, which heighten the sense of urgency and excitement for promotions and product releases, and shoppable videos, which provide an instant path to purchase.

As CTV and video continue their rise as one of today’s most important marketing channels, it is time for brands to start riding on the wave of video and creative to unlock growth. With the close of 2021, it’s now time to harness the host of possibilities that CTV and video bring, to engage with audiences uniquely and personally for the most unforgettable shopping moments.

This article is written by Greg Fournier, senior vice president of global strategy at video advertising platform Unruly.

Singapore – Global video and CTV programmatic advertising platform, Unruly, has launched its new content-level targeting solution that standardizes attributes across genre and rating segments, enabling scaled buying on premium video content, as spend moves from linear to digital. The new solution will serve publishers who are increasingly looking to meet buyers’ needs for contextual targeting opportunities.

At launch, 26 segments will be supported based on content attributes, such as content genre and rating. With this, Unruly’s proprietary methodology will be evaluating the direct publisher partner data and simplifying the content-level attributes into scalable deals for buyers.

Moreover, the publishers can leverage Unruly’s Private Marketplace (PMP) platform, CTRL, to package inventory to more effectively meet growing buyer demand for privacy-conscious, publisher first-party targeting solutions across CTV and video. In turn, buyers gain scaled access to deals leveraging TV-like content attributes passed through the bidstream. They can activate through Unruly’s direct DSP integrations and via Tremor Video, the demand side of Tremor International’s end-to-end platform.

Karim Rayes, Tremor International’s chief product officer, shared that interest in OTT ad opportunities grows year-over-year, which leads publishers to meet buyer needs for contextual targeting opportunities on OTT supply but lack the framework to pass this content data in standardized ways.

“Content-level targeting gives publishers control over the segmentation and packaging of their inventory, but it ultimately brings benefits to both sides of Tremor’s end-to-end platform. Standardizing content in this way maximizes publishers’ inventory value, while buyers can broaden CTV campaigns across their desired categories,” said Rayes.

Unruly has also announced its plan to further expand support for content attributes in the coming months to include language and IAB content category, in addition to providing self-service forecasting, reporting, and insights tools in support of these new attributes.

Singapore – Marketing and advertising solutions Rakuten Advertising has expanded its relationship with Xandr’s Global Supply Evangelism Team (GSET), and will also be extending its partnership for the adoption of Xandr’s Monetize SSP. 

Through Monetize SSP, premium inventory that sits within Rakuten Advertising’s unified portfolio across connected TV (CTV), digital video, and native will be available in the Xandr marketplace. 

Across APAC and LATAM, excluding Brazil, Xandr’s buyers will be offered CTV and video inventory across Rakuten Viki, which offers primetime Asian entertainment, and inventory on its messaging app Rakuten Viber. The portfolio will be promoted globally through GSET and have monetization services and deals set up for buyers in-market on their behalf.

The GSET is a team of programmatic experts at Xandr dedicated to servicing strategic publishers by extending their sales efforts to global markets and promoting a publisher’s programmatic inventory, available via Xandr’s Monetize SSP. 

Xandr said GSET has been a unique addition to their offering, where the team provides a three-part service to publishers including in-market sales, monetization services, and marketing services

Ulrik Morell, the VP of Global Supply Evangelism at Xandr, said, “With the advertising ecosystem facing many upcoming challenges, Xandr is proud to be partnered with a major global publisher who is focused on directly benefitting their marketers and agencies.”

Meanwhile, James Collins, SVP of Media at Rakuten Advertising, commented, “We always seek to align our partner opportunities to serve our customers’ best interests. Whilst we have a global network, it has always been important to us to operate through the open internet and ensure transparency with advertisers we work with.” 

Xandr has also recently announced the expansion of its video inventory in APAC which includes top OTT platforms Viu, iQIYI, and True Digital.

Sydney, Australia – Digital media measurement, data and analytics platform DoubleVerify has announced its partnership with major connected TV providers in ANZ to offer quality measurement of their CTV advertising inventory.

CTV providers Foxtel, Television New Zealand and several other major broadcasters can now provide advertisers with access to DoubleVerify’s suite of quality measurement solutions, improving transparency and accountability of their client’s CTV investments.

DoubleVerify’s offering to these CTV providers revolve their own verification script DV Video OmniTag, which enables advertisers to measure and report on fraud, brand suitability and metrics such as ‘fully on screen’ and ‘quartile completion’ within the CTV environment. These are key metrics advertisers look for when gauging the efficacy of their media campaigns.

In short, the technology enables broadcasters to provide advertisers with an authenticated, high quality CTV environment for streaming media ad buys.

Imran Masood, country manager for ANZ at DoubleVerify, said that they aim to provide accurate real-time measurement for advertisers and media owners and create a trusted marketplace for advertisers to invest, adding that they can now look at the real impact that an ad is having and enable advertisers to get true insight into brand advertising on CTV platforms.

“Our mission is to provide the best ad analytics and digital media measurement in the market, whether it be CTV, desktop, social, mobile app, and video, and the acceptance of DV Video OmniTag with leading TV networks in Australia and New Zealand is part of that plan,” Masood stated.

Meanwhile, Chris Oxley, national head of digital sales at Foxtel Media said, “We have worked closely with DoubleVerify to deploy the DV Video Omnitag on the Foxtel platform because we believe that advertisers want to access high-quality CTV ad inventory. CTV is booming as audiences continue to move between linear to appointment TV to streaming platforms and the ability to measure media performance in the on-demand streaming world is critical for marketers.”

Singapore – Global mobile marketing analytics platform Adjust has extended its current connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) service offering to include connected TV ad to its mobile measurement tool. The feature gives advertisers a complete view of the user journey from CTV ad view through to mobile app install, providing cross-device insights to help optimize campaigns and drive growth.

The addition of Adjust’s CTV to mobile measurement feature brings attribution data for mobile marketers into one place, enabling them to assess the performance of their marketing campaigns across all channels, including CTV and OTT. By leveraging Adjust’s multi-touch attribution, marketers can see the full impact of CTV advertising on their overall user acquisition strategy, helping prove return of investment (ROI).

The company’s latest feature complements its Connected TV App Measurement solution launched last year. Focused on helping marketers maximize the adoption of their OTT and CTV apps, CTV App Measurement includes integrations for all major CTV platforms including Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku.

Gijsbert Pols, lead product strategist at Adjust, said that the company remains committed to helping apps meet their users where they are, empowering them to serve engaging ads that can be confidently measured and attributed.

“As CTV grows, so does its influence as an advertising medium — transforming what’s broadly been thought of as an awareness tool into a key performance channel. It has become essential for marketers and developers to understand CTV’s role in the user journey,” Pols stated.

He added, “Historically, television has been an expensive advertising channel with ROI difficult to prove. However, with holistic CTV measurement, teams with leaner budgets can enter the space and spend efficiently, while also maximizing an innovative new channel.”

California, USA – Programmatic digital advertising company PubMatic has announced that it is now expanding its fraud-free program to omnichannel clients, specifically those handling inventories of connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top media service (OTT).

The program is designed to expand scale and engagement opportunities for buyers and promote the development of the rapidly growing CTV sector, from a limited number of top-tier channels and apps, to a broader range of channels and apps with unique high value audiences.

Furthermore, it is expanded to include a money-back guarantee for demand-side partners if fraud is verified on PubMatic’s platform.

“We see tremendous upside potential in the transition from linear TV to connected TV, but fraud concerns have prevented some buyers from fully benefiting. We are confident in the quality of inventory on the PubMatic platform, and our fraud-free program should give buyers confidence to bid on quality CTV inventory at scale,” said Paulina Klimenko, chief growth officer at PubMatic.

She further says that publishers are creating a wealth of new premium TV content and that they are attempting to remove the major challenges and risks. 

“PubMatic is helping DSPs, agencies, and advertisers take advantage of the dramatic increase in opportunities to engage the huge numbers of viewers shifting to CTV,” added Klimenko

With many buyers continuously buying from a small number of CTV publishers due to concerns over quality and fraud, PubMatic’s fraud-free program aims to enable buyers to embrace the full potential of programmatic bidding, where efficiency and control do not need to be traded off against each other.

In addition, PubMatic believes the full potential of programmatic CTV can only be realized when buyers have confidence that their investments will reach real consumers within their intended contextual environments.

“PubMatic employs a rigorous inventory review process for publishers across all platforms and formats (mobile, desktop, digital video and CTV). Leveraging a combination of expert human analysis, proprietary and third-party fraud detection tools, PubMatic vets publishers prior to onboarding and implements pre-bid and post-bid protections to detect and filter out invalid traffic and other nefarious activity, and has historically achieved low fraud levels,” the company said in a press statement.

California, USA – Global ad platform Magnite has announced the conclusion of its acquisition of video ad platform SpotX, disclosed at an amount of US$640M in cash and 12,374,315 shares of Magnite stock.

Through the acquisition, both companies have created the largest independent connected TV (CTV) and video advertising platform, and reinforcing the company’s capabilities as linear TV budgets increasingly shift to digital, which works ideally for buyers and sellers that have long wanted a scaled, independent alternative to the giants that currently dominate the CTV marketplace.

Michael Barrett, president and CEO at Magnite, stated that scaling and reaching the largest possible audience is the name of the game when attracting the demand our CTV and video clients need, evident with the scale they have created with the recent acquisition.

“Acquiring SpotX positions us to become the world’s largest, independent source of highly-coveted CTV and video inventory. Two-thirds of our revenue is now concentrated in the fastest-growing segments of the market, and as linear TV dollars move to CTV, the greatest opportunity is still ahead of us,” Barrett stated.

Meanwhile, Mike Shehan, co-founder and CEO at SpotX, commented, “We’re thrilled to become a part of the Magnite family. CTV viewership and the ecosystem around it continues to evolve with new streaming services popping up every day and advertisers hoping to connect with those audiences.”

He added, “SpotX’s CTV business has experienced significant growth over the past year, and we believe our performance will only accelerate through this combination of resources by delivering even more value to our clients.”

Magnite, which now holds a large array of clients including A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Crackle, Discovery, FOX, among others, has also built a new Asia Pacific presence, as it announced last March the establishment of a new data center in Singapore.

Singapore – HUMAN, a cybersecurity company and formerly White Ops, has launched a new program that aims to defraud connected television (CTV) systems, in partnership with the newly-launched initiative ‘The Human Collective’ composed of Omnicom Media Group, The Trade Desk, and Magnite, as well as support from Google and Roku.

The launch of the program was in response to the spread of PARETO, a botnet that, according to nearly a million infected mobile Android devices, is pretending to be millions of people watching ads on smart TVs and other devices. The botnet used dozens of mobile apps to impersonate or spoof more than 6,000 CTV apps, accounting for an average of 650 million ad requests every day.

PARETO worked by spoofing signals within malicious Android mobile apps to impersonate consumer TV streaming products running Fire OS, tvOS, Roku OS, and other prominent CTV platforms. The botnet took advantage of digital shifts that were accelerated by the pandemic, hiding in the noise in order to trick advertisers and technology platforms into believing ads were being shown on CTVs. 

HUMAN’s research arm Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team found the PARETO operation in 2020 and has been working with the HUMAN team to prevent its impacts on clients ever since. The operation is named for The Pareto Principle, an economics concept that dictates that 80% of the impact in any given situation is carried out by only 20% of the actors.

“CTV provides massive opportunities for streaming services and brands to engage with consumers through compelling content and advertising. Because of this opportunity, it is incredibly important for the CTV ecosystem and brands to work together through a collectively protected advertising supply chain to ensure fraud is recognized, addressed, and eliminated as quickly as possible,” said Tamer Hassan, CEO and co-founder at HUMAN.

HUMAN also observed a far smaller but connected effort attempting to spoof consumer streaming platforms. The operation detected a single developer on Roku’s Channel Store with apps connected to PARETO. The apps linked to the developer, impacting less than one half of one percent of Roku’s active devices globally, were designed to communicate with the server that operates the PARETO botnet. The primary operation was associated with 29 Android apps and the secondary operation was associated with one Roku developer delivering the malware to infected devices.

“What’s especially striking about this operation is its scale and sophistication. The actors behind PARETO have a fundamental understanding of numerous aspects of advertising technology, and used that to their advantage in how they hid their work within the CTV ecosystem. Their efforts included low-level network protocol spoofing, which is especially hard to detect, but which our team at HUMAN spotted,” said Michael McNally, chief scientist at HUMAN.

The Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team used numerous tools to identify the sources of the botnet, whose information has been shared with law enforcement.

Sydney, Australia – Data analytics and brand consulting company Kantar in Australia has announced the launch of a new cookie-less brand efficiency measurement solution catered to connected television (CTV) and podcast brands.

The brand measurement tool was unveiled under Kantar’s Project Moonshot initiative, which establishes direct data integrations with global digital publishers and apps and provides advertisers with cookieless and privacy-centric methodologies to measure ad effectiveness. 

The tool, aside from being integrated into Kantar’s Brand Lift study which measures impact of media content based on consumer perception, allows publishers and advertisers to gather insights based on exposure data from permitted panelists in an anonymized and privacy-compliant way. Kantar’s proprietary approach uses deterministic exposure data from partner publishers combined with probabilistic approaches to convert household data like from a CTV to an individual person exposure.

According to Mark Henning, Kantar Australia’s executive director of media and digital, Kantar’s innovative new solution is playing a vital and leading role in ensuring continuity of measurement services in the impending post-cookie world. 

“This all shows that the digital ad world is getting tougher to target and measure. In the cookieless world, passive and deterministic data alone are no longer sufficiently comprehensive for effectiveness measurement across all digital platforms. Leveraging both permitted deterministic and probabilistic approaches in a hybrid capacity provides the most reliable and cost-effective way to capture a complete picture of campaign performance and a deeper well for divining useful insights,” Henning stated.

He also notes that using a range of integration approaches depending on publisher capabilities, brands can match the Kantar Profiles Network panelists directly with publisher ecosystem users in a privacy-compliant way.

“This enables us to ingest campaign level exposure data for matched panelists/publisher users without cookies, then consolidate and reconcile exposure data across publishers and platforms to provide a holistic picture of Brand Lift performance. It gives us something powerful to connect with technology back to individuals in a faster, more scalable, and streamlined way,” Henning concluded.

New York, USA – Digital media analytics platform DoubleVerify (DV) has announced a new brand safety solution for connected TV (CTV), which will offer app-level transparency for advertisers and brands. 

The development of the solution, which is first in the industry, is in response to advertisers’ concern with regards to the lack of standardization of data on the app due to bundled app and content-level data shared to them. 

DV provides all the information advertisers need including the real world app name, the devices and IDs associated with it. It eliminates the non standard and random Bundle IDs which, typically, only contain a subset of the programs where their campaign ran across and does not have guarantee of accuracy.

One of the significant features of DV’s CTV solution is its inclusion and exclusion lists which allow advertisers to target or avoid specific CTV apps, aligning their inventory and brand suitability. 

The solution also enables advertisers to measure the quality of their campaigns and determine infractions through its delivery reporting, allowing them to optimize their campaigns in-flight and refine their strategies in the future.

According to DV CEO Mark Zagorski, as a higher number of audiences use its platform, advertisers’ demand for transparency in CTV will continue to accelerate.

“We’re proud to be the first in the market to introduce this solution and enable effective CTV app-level brand safety and suitability controls for global advertisers,” Zagorski said.

“Our new inclusion and exclusion lists empower advertisers to assume greater control over brand-content fit, by selecting only apps that align with their suitability standards and criteria. If there is no clear or verified data specific to the environments and programs where CTV campaigns run, then every advertiser is exposed to brand suitability risk when buying on CTV,” He added. 

Earlier this year, DV also launched a new transparency and reporting solution for CTV inventory to address the lack of obscurity in CTV. The solution provides full transparency for buyers accurate data on where their CTV campaigns have run.  This solution charts app names across platforms and devices with more than 6,000 apps mapped across leading industry platforms.