Connected-TV Ad Spend Accelerating

Author: Alex Weprin  Source: MediaPost

Ad spend on connected TV devices is accelerating at a quick pace, as marketers seek to reach consumers with video content that's interactive and, they hope, more engaging than traditional video advertising.

That's one takeaway from the Q4 TV and Video Market-At-A-Glance report, issued by converged TV and video advertising provider Videology.

“We know that advertisers have been increasingly interested in connected TV for its ability to couple digital capabilities with the immersive engagement of television,” Mark McKee, executive vice president for Videology North America, told Digital News Daily. “Our Q4 data shows that spending in this category is beginning to accelerate, with the number of ad requests for CTV almost tripling over the past two years.” 

As consumers embrace video consumed on their TV sets, but delivered through internet-connected devices, the connected TV ad market continues to follow suit. According to Videology’s data, the most popular devices running these ads are Roku boxes, video game consoles like the Xbox, the Amazon Fire TV products, followed by smart TV sets.

While video viewing continues to fragment, advertisers are leaning into that trend by launching campaigns that live across multiple platforms. According to the report, 97% of video campaigns run across two or more screens.

At the same time, advertisers are increasingly targeting consumers by incorporating TV data sets into their digital video ad buys. For instance, marketers could use online video to reach those who also watched, or didn’t watch, TV sports.

"In general, the most interesting finding of our Q4 analysis is that advertisers are actually doing what they have been talking about for the past few years,” McKee says. “The hope of bringing advanced data segments to linear TV, and additionally bringing these same segments across all screens, is now real. The movement in these trends over the past 12 months is impressive. A year is a relatively short period of time to see such substantive change in a legacy-rich market like linear TV advertising.”

You can read the full report here.