5 Tips for Effective CTV Campaigns

For a long time, we’ve known that Connected TV (CTV) and Over the Top (OTT) streaming viewership has been increasing dramatically and more people have been cutting the cord on traditional cable and broadcast television. Earlier this year, Variety published an article summarizing a report on viewing and advertising trends, and they found that it’s only a matter of time until CTV/OTT is the biggest tv ad source. They wrote “Connected TV is no longer the future but the present.” CTV does have a higher cost than other digital advertising, but it’s no longer an optional channel for political campaigns (or anyone else). It’s also more affordable than you might initially think because you’re able to target audiences much more effectively than traditional television, making your ad budget much more cost-efficient for persuasion and mobilization.

The problem for advertisers is that CTV has grown so quickly that there are countless options for publishers and there has so far been little oversight or organization, so finding quality inventory and brand-safe content can be both confusing, and take a lot of time. Sometimes, things are so opaque, a media buyer may not even know exactly what they bought or where their ads ran. It’s not uncommon that global brands who have already made public that they will be blocking a specific disinformation publisher from their ad buys will have their commercials on that publisher’s streaming tv show. Ad industry watchdog Check My Ads notifies brands fairly regularly that those publishers have snuck into that brand’s CTV campaigns. (They’re also really useful to follow for updates and news about how to fight ad fraud and what publishers one should not trust). With all of this going on and the space still growing exponentially, here are some tips to help make the most out of your CTV ad campaigns:

1) CTV Block Lists Are Different 

Ensuring Brand Safety on CTV is much more difficult than on other channels, but it is worth investing the time to do it. Advertisers need to take extra steps for CTV block lists beyond a list of domains because there may be several apps across the many types of streaming devices, and there are apps that will stream a variety of content that includes content you don’t want. In addition, bad actors, like OANN / Performance One, are often able to take advantage of CTV by creating other channels like WeatherNation and Pursuit, which sound relatively innocuous. WeatherNation in particular is often bundled with normal, brand safe news and entertainment channels, making it easy for advertisers to miss when they do their brand safety checks. This is one of the ways disinformation publishers are able to continue to fund themselves and it requires a lot of vigilance on the part of advertisers to make sure budgets aren’t spent unwisely. 

It takes an investment of time, but you can create an effective block list for CTV and ensure brand safety. Just remember, it works differently than a typical block list of domains. Your DSP should be able to help you do this, especially if you already have a list of publishers you want to avoid. If you’re working with another vendor to buy CTV, make sure to ask them if they have a block list in place also.

2) Monitor for Wasteful Spending

Buying CTV often means you’ll see lot of free-to-the-viewer ad-supported content and sometimes that’s exactly what you want, especially if it’s long- or short-form video. However, sometimes, it’s content like games and screensavers, that may not be quality impressions. Ad-Supported content tends to have lower CPMs than premium content, so there is an advantage, but you need to monitor your inventory carefully. It can be hard to avoid all of the low-quality content, but doing a regular check of your inventory will help identify these sources and then you can add them to a block list. I’ve have found a lot of this content is sold through a few specific exchanges, so it could be helpful to monitor your inventory and just remove those exchanges from your CTV buys if you see a trend like this.

3) Research Content & Publishers

Inventory packages can often be very opaque about all the publishers and content that they contain, so it pays to do some research about some of the major CTV publishers to understand what you’re paying for. Often, even the big publishers will only identify their inventory as Run of Network (RON), so you have to be comfortable with all of the possible content that entails. Some publishers will identify both their specific channels and run of network, so if a good publisher carriers Fox News and you have a client that doesn’t want to run on that content, you can add all of their specific channel content, but avoid their run of network content to be extra safe. 

Running PG deals or direct buys with specific publishers can help you avoid this problem and also will avoid the types of lower quality inventory I spoke about in #2, but they do typically have a budget minimum.

4) Create an Allow List

Checking inventory is a pretty significant time investment, so you can save time during a campaign by running on an Allow List. It still takes a lot of time to create, but it’s one big investment of time up front. It does require getting familiar with how CTV inventory works with your DSP, then you need to be able to have the resources to research channels you aren’t familiar with and pull out the good content. Then, you’ll want to spend some time maintaining it in the long run, so that you always have good inventory and won’t lose scale over time.

You may not always want to run on that limited inventory, especially if you have content that will have a broad appeal or persuasiveness. However, if you have content that you may need to control a bit more closely, or a client that needs the highest level of brand safety, it’s really the only way to increase that control and safety beyond a direct buy with a high-quality publisher.

5) Ask questions and double check

If a vendor tells you that they only have premium, brand safe content, ask for their inventory list. I’ve had vendors approach me with this sales pitch and then proudly show off inventory that contains WeatherNation and other inventory that isn’t really something we would want to run on. They may not have the most explicit bad actors, but if they’re selling channels from Performance One, in my opinion, they really don’t care about brand safety. 

In addition, sometimes CTV inventory is mislabeled or completely unlabeled, so you won’t be able to tell what it is for sure. DSPs and exchanges need to be asked to identify this content and held responsible for labeling things and labeling them accurately because it’s in no one’s interest to have inventory that is unknown. The DSP and/or exchange should be able to tell what it is by the ID number, but that information isn’t easily accessible to advertisers. Along with this, there are sometimes packages that are labeled as “top-performing” with no additional details, which can be full of screensaver and game content, which is less desirable. It pays to ask your reps questions to make sure you know what you’re buying and that things are what you think they are. 

I hope these tips help you make your CTV campaigns more successful and effective. If I can help, please don’t hesitate to reach out!