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The key hits:

• Buyers are still struggling to measure the value of CTV advertising.
• Traditional TV buyers need to study up on the nuances of CTV.
• CTV may hew closer to the traditional TV buying model than the digital one, though maybe it shouldn’t be an either-or situation.

To kick off this week’s Future of TV Week, Digiday hosted a virtual Town Hall session on Tuesday during which ad buyers exchanged insights into the challenges they continue to face in the CTV ad market. The conversation was conducted under Chatham House rules so that Digiday could share what was said while maintaining participants’ anonymity. Here is a sampling of the discussion.

For more of a look into advertisers and agency executives’ minds on the state of the broader TV and streaming ad market, tune into the Digiday Business of TV Forum virtual event on Thursday where I’ll be interviewing buy-side executives on everything from the surplus (or lack thereof) of ad-supported streamers to advancements in streaming ad targeting and measurement.

The measurements that matter

“How do you bring it all together from a measurement perspective? We’ve all kind of swallowed the pill at this point that the social channels are going to be kind of separate to some degree. But still bringing the rest of it all together and ideally we’d like to crack YouTube if nothing else.”

“[A challenge is] select your currency, select your view — what was your cumulative reach across all?”

“The notion of a panel is changing, and so participation in those channels is also changing. The emerging currencies are reason for optimism that the connected TV as a data source can be part of the solution.”

“From a measurement perspective, the big debate, of course, is are you talking gross rating points? How do you convert that to eyeballs and then impressions? And what does that really mean, and which one is really fair?”

“The takeover of Nielsen into a private firm now and so much transition happening there — and knowing that the currency is going to change — will help that playing field. But until that all gets smoothed out, it’s still kind of a gray area.”

“As I present to my C-suite what the plans are for next year and how these allocations go and how I’m representing those, there’s always a discussion about [the value of different measurements].”

CTV’s share of spending

“It’s often questioned, ‘Why is the investment level staying where it is or not coming down as fast as others think that it should in linear TV?’ And then, adding in connected TV and looking at display on top of that, [this person’s company leaders] are going, ‘It doesn’t look like we’re transitioning the …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron