Making CTV Happen : Series Rewind
Since the launch of Publica several years ago, we have been lucky enough to work with some of the biggest streaming publishers and smart TV manufactures in the world. Our global sales & engineering teams get daily questions about everything from CTV header bidding right through to live ad break management strategies. This article rewinds the series we sponsored & realized with Beet TV called ‘Making CTV Happen, A New Ad Infrastructure Emerges’.
This growing need for CTV information & education prompted us to provide a way for premium CTV publishers & innovators to talk directly to the wider sell side community about how they are growing their streaming advertising revenues along with some of their best practices they have adopted around ad serving, unified auctions & SSAI.
Hear from practitioners who are directly leading monetization strategies & implementing a new ad infrastructure for CTV advertising. We highlighted timestamps and key soundbites for you – enjoy 🍿
Episode 1 – Jay Prasad, Chief Strategy Officer for TV, LiveRamp
Highlights
0.27 “We are a neutral player as we don’t buy or sell any media and this gives us a unique proposition to bring both sides together”
1.36 “Audience driven television has become a big thing!”
1.55 “You want to look at high quality data from reputable datas firms”
Episode 2 – Andrew Tint, Lead, Programmatic Partnerships, Dish Media / Sling TV
Highlights
0:59 “What we have seen over the last few years is CTV is not only becoming a strong brand awareness piece, but it can be used to drive lower funnel activity also if executed correctly”
1:30 “I think in order for CTV to continue that growth outside of user adoption which has already occurred, its education and that is going to be one of the most important pieces of 2021 because I think that is still frankly the largest gap for a lot buyers”
1:46 “We went from the year of mobile for 10 straight years to what I really believe was the the first year of CTV in 2020”
Episode 3 – Bill Murray, VP of programmatic solutions at Discovery
Highlights
2:26 “A lot of the logic that is necessary to deliver ads in CTV environments is very different from what we are used to in the display world”
3:19 “If were able to manage a unified auction similar to the way we are operating one today in display, and it does not have any negative impact on user experience, I think that would be very successful”
4:19 “Publishers who are still using a waterfall in CTV have learned the disadvantages”
Episode 4 – Ethan Heftman, Senior VP, Advertising Sales, A+E
Highlights
1:38 “We think the acceleration of the CTV ecosystem will be driven by content. The more content there is, the more viewers are going to come & the more money is going to follow”
3:21 “I think the key to ad serving is the quality of viewer experience. Making sure that the ad server is able to frequency cap, making sure the ad server is able to feed those ads in a way that makes it look seamless”
5:10 “Identity is both the billion dollar opportunity & also the 800 pound gorilla in the room”
Episode 5 – Louqman Parampth, VP Product Management, Roku
Highlights
1:07 “Connected TV is the best of both digital & linear TV”
2:47 “There are unique requirements for CTV that a lot of digital ad servers are trying to build around in order to support CTV specific spends”
3:34 “A lot of premium video is often server side ad inserted, therefore, this often means ad servers have to integrate with SSAI vendors”
Episode 6 – Dan Callahan, SVP Data & Strategy and Sales Innovation at Fox Corp
Highlights
2:34 “I think some of the early header opportunities we’ve seen in CTV is going give sellers more tools to make better ad serving decisions with”
4:15 “The opportunities are really endless with the way I think you can reimagine the ad pod, and that being from a structured standpoint but also from what does the ad break look like and how do I get to interact with it on my phone?!”
5:08 “Now we have not only the screen and the content, but really the mechanics and the technology to truly do things differently”
Episode 7 – Colin Petrie-Norris, CEO, Xumo
Highlights
0:46 “The adoption by consumers of free ad supported TV has been tremendous. The scales are enormous and engagement is increasing”
4:20 “We’re seeing a much quicker adoption from all sorts of insertion order type spend on CTV and moving to programmatic probably a little bit quicker”
6:28 “In traditional TV you have a certain number of minutes and the ad break of x number of ads and you resume. In streaming TV, it is a fresh start and you don’t have to go with that!”
Episode 8 – Mike Reidy, SVP Digital Ad Sales, NBCUniversal
Highlights
0:16 “For viewers right now – CTV, it’s the golden age of television”
4:17 “I think measurement is a pretty encompassing term and one that always comes up when people are talking about CTV”
5:50“Because there are so many ways a marketer could enter the CTV ecosystem, that causes confusion as to where they may actually run!”
Episode 9 – Leo O’Connor, SVP. Head of Programmatic Advertising, ViacomCBS
Highlights
0:39 “AdServing in CTV right now is a highly complicated thing to pull off”
2:20 “Live ad breaks are a huge part of our business and they are another thing all together” 5:20 “Identity is a hot topic right now and it is coming up in pretty much all of our partner meetings”
Episode 10 – Ben Antier, Co-Founder & CEO Publica
Highlights
00:05 “AdServing is the foundation of a CTV publishers tech stack”
01:14 “I believe we are at a unique moment in the history if television”
02:29 “Header bidding is really just another word for unified auction”
⏩ For further CTV webinars & explainer videos, head to the Publica YouTube channel.
📥 To learn more about the Publica CTV Ad Platform, please contact us here.
