- Intro
- What is CTV ?
- Why advertisers and marketers need CTV advertising
- CTV ad formats
- CTV measurement: Appsflyer vs Adjust
- Conclusions
It was just a matter of time before TV entered the digital advertising landscape. Finally, with the proliferation of streaming platforms and smart TV sets, mobile apps and brands can run advertising campaigns on TV. And we’re not talking about traditional advertising spots during live TV, broadly targeting demographics and audiences based on the TV programs only.
Indeed, CTV, which stands for connected TV, is very similar to regular app install campaigns, where app marketers target specific devices and are able to keep track of the whole funnel, from impressions to post-install events.
Curious to see how it works ? Let’s take a deeper look at it!
Connected TV, or CTV, is a term used specifically for advertising, and it refers to advertising campaigns run on TV sets connected to the internet. They can be smart TVs, TVs connected through Amazon Fire Stick or Apple TV, and gaming consoles like Playstation and Xbox. Such devices are frequently used to stream video content from downloaded apps like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, etc. and that’s where users will see the ads.
CTV must not be confused with OTT, which stands for “over-the-top”. While CTVs are the physical devices, that are the TVs connected to the internet, OTT is the content delivery method. For example, an OTT platform like Netflix is an app which delivers content via internet, to a connected device. To sum up, CTVs are devices where users can watch OTT content.
Now let’s see why CTV is becoming extremely popular in the mobile advertising ecosystem.
Advertisers are adding CTVs to their current mobile advertising mix, in order to diversify their user acquisition channels and explore new audiences. There are 2 main aspects which make CTV more and more appealing to advertisers: the advantages of CTV over linear TV advertising, and the ever-growing audience available to this new channel.
Difference vs linear TV
Linear TV advertising has always been associated with brand awareness rather than performance marketing.
Indeed, advertising on linear TV doesn’t allow a clear measurement of the whole user journey. Impressions are measured as the people who watch the tv program during which ads are shown, and such placements are bought on a CPM basis. Without any insight on the user behaviour after the impression, it’s hard to precisely assess the impact of the ads and their effectiveness. It’s usually assumed that exposure to ads on TV increases brand awareness, which ultimately leads to a return on investment, but the latter is very hard to compute.
Furthermore, linear TV advertising is subject to strict TV schedules. This means that audience segmentation and targeting is based on the TV programs they watch, and when ads must be shown when such programs air, with no flexibility.
Both measurement and schedule are no longer a limit with CTV advertising. Let’s see why!
Accurate measurement and targeting
First of all, CTV allows advertisers to target users almost like they do on mobile devices. This means that audiences can be targeted through contextual signals such as geographic location, device, internet service provider, etc.
Secondly, MMPs like Appsflyer and Adjust leverage cross-platform attribution in order to measure advertising on CTV just like they do for mobile app install campaigns. Therefore, unlike linear TV, CTV allows advertisers to assess the ads’ effectiveness. They can measure metrics like user engagement, which is already showing positive results, retention rate, ROI and all other post-install events.
Content consumption flexibility
The second limitation imposed by linear TV, which is the schedule, has been gradually overcome with the rise of OTT platforms. By downloading apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Max, etc., users can stream their favourite movies and TV shows anywhere and whenever they want, without any schedule. Again, like it happens in mobile advertising, this makes it possible to target relevant audiences without any limitation of time.
Moreover, audiences available through CTV are an ever-growing segment due to 2 main reasons. First, especially in the U.S., the so-called cord-cutters, people who unsubscribe from cable and linear TV, are rapidly becoming the majority of TV users.
Secondly, given the fierce competition, streaming and OTT platforms are introducing ad-supported tiers to their subscription plans; and users are responding well too. This means that ad tolerance is growing, making CTV appealing to many advertisers.
Unlike linear TV, advertisers can choose multiple ad formats to show people using CTV. Indeed, display and interactive ads are very popular, together with video ads, which remain the most common ad format.
Display ads
Display ads are static banners/overlays, either vertical or horizontal, depending on where they are displayed, at the bottom or on the side of the screen. Almost like mobile banners, they come with less engagement from users and even less viewability. Furthermore, streaming platforms seem to have limited inventory for this ad format.
Interactive ads
Interactive ads resemble mobile playable ads, asking users to interact with them either through a button on the screen or a QR code. While they are not available in every device, they tend to produce higher engagement from users than display ads do.
Video ads
Finally, video ads remain the most popular ad format for CTV. Such video can be shown multiple times, before, during and after the TV program. Their length ranges from 15 to 30 seconds, and their cost is measured on a CPM basis, like it is for traditional video ads shown on linear TV.
Finally, we’ve come to the most important question advertisers are asking: how can we measure advertising on CTV ? While many platforms support it, here we’ll briefly describe how 2 of the biggest MMPs measure CTV advertising: Appsflyer and Adjust.
Appsflyer
Appsflyer leverages cross-platform attribution to allow all the players in its ecosystem to keep track of CTV advertising campaigns. Since CTV measurement is very recent, there still may be some technical issues, but the attribution is up and running.
Adjust
CTV AdVision is the new tool developed by Adjust to measure CTV advertising. Besides the cross-platform attribution and all the metrics it allows to keep track of, CTV AdVision also measures the impact of CTV advertising on the other user acquisition channels.
- CTV advertising refers to advertising campaigns run on connected TVs, which are devices like smart TV, gaming consoles, Fire Stick and Apple TV.
- CTV allows advertisers to target relevant audiences and to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns, as opposed to linear TV advertising.
- Video, interactive and display ads are the most common ad formats for CTV.
- All major MMPs like Appsflyer and Adjust have developed cross-attribution tools to measure CTV advertising.
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