Deep Dive: How the coronavirus crisis accelerated the already cresting CTV sea change

By Pierre Bienaimé

This year the coronavirus crisis threw TV advertisers a curveball, but ultimately 2020 proved to be a transformational year for the industry. Indeed, she pandemic accelerated many of the systemic changes that were already in motion, namely the growing transfer of audience share to streaming and CTV at the expense of linear TV. The advertisers need to follow, and that impulse demands the industry innovate to keep up, from matching audiences with relevant ads to centering on the viewer in measurement models.

Digiday’s Deep Dive: The Future of TV, is a collection of videos and key takeaways from our recent Future of TV Summit LIVE that will provide valuable tips and key insights so you’re prepared for the evolution of TV and streaming and advertising’s role in it. Below you’ll find key takeaways, quotes and stats, as well as videos from our recent Future of TV event and more.

The audience is the future of TV

The story of the direction TV is headed in is defined by the changing TV audience and a tilt towards a CTV-dominated landscape. The pandemic had opposite effects on linear and CTV, providing a boon to the on-demand services just as it disrupted linear TV, with sports canceled and production brought to a shuddering halt for months.

Viewing habits were transformed, with more people than ever signing up to streaming services. Advertisers want to follow the consumers into that space and that’s thinning out the linear advertising landscape.

And advertisers are responding to these shifts by committing more budget to CTV spending. “That allows us to be able to add more media dollars to that area now, given that the overall demographic is broadening,” said Karina Rhem, Offline Media Manager at Ro.

These changes are exposing the inherent limitations of the way the TV advertising model is working. CTV advertising needs to be more relevant to viewers and there’s an urgent demand for more effective targeting that engages viewers without reaching the point of overkill.

Advertisers also need more flexible approaches to ad buying. The year has seen the upfront model ruptured by canceled contracts, as advertisers have embraced the more situtational appeal of programmatic advertising. That trend will only continue and a rebalancing of the upfront model is necessary going into the new year.

The current climate has laid bare the deficiencies of the GRP as a measurement of performance. While there’s general agreement that the GRP has to go and a better option adopted, the industry is struggling to forge a clear path forward.

“There’s a lot that needs to change,” said Matt Sweeney, Chief Investment Officer at GroupM. “There is a lot of interesting technology out there right now and some emerging companies doing this.”

The pace of change is being helped along by a fearless spirit of testing and learning. The pandemic necessitated experimentation, but with the industry in a state of flux now there’s every reason to aggressively pursue testing into 2021 and beyond.