In association with Teads

We met Teads’ head of CTV, Dan Black, to hear about the challenges facing advertisers looking to get into CTV, and what the major trends and opportunities in the space are.

Connected TV (CTV) is emerging as a game-changer, offering brands unprecedented opportunities to engage with audiences. ExchangeWire recently sat down with Dan Black, Head of CTV at Teads, to delve into the transformative potential of CTV as part of an omnichannel approach. Dan provides insights into the unique advantages of CTV, the challenges advertisers face in this space, and the future prospects for brands looking to tap into the growing CTV market.

What are some of the challenges advertisers often face when implementing an omnichannel advertising strategy? 

Our new CTV Pulse report reveals that over six in 10 of UK marketing decision-makers never include CTV advertising in their marketing strategy. This could be caused by a simple confusion around what CTV is and how it is different from OTT, or it could be due to technological challenges, such as cross-screen targeting, measurement, and creative optimisation. 

Targeting on CTV includes traditional demographic targeting, which everyone is used to in the digital space. Yet, there’s one distinctive difference that could cause hesitation – CTV delivers one-to-many viewing experiences, in contrast to one-to-one interactions using personal devices. Hence, the level of precision in CTV demographic targeting is different due to the environment in which people watch TV content. 

At the same time, CTV offers contextual genre-level targeting, so you can target sports fans with ads within a football match or frequent flyers within travel reality shows, and this can be done across different screens. 

Among other challenges, there’s definitely a lack of understanding of attribution measurement capabilities and multi-screen creative optimisation. Luckily, we now have effective tools to help address these points.

What are the key elements to keep in mind in order to integrate CTV in an omnichannel advertising strategy successfully? 

Second screening is the reality most consumers live in, and advertisers should factor this in when planning their campaigns. In fact, industry reports suggest that an overwhelming majority of consumers use mobile phones when watching content on a TV screen. 

We have seen an omnichannel solution deliver a much higher ad recall for a combination of CTV and mobile ads, compared to ads in a standalone mobile environment. This means there’re a lot of omnichannel opportunities for advertisers to capitalise on. 

What’s essential here is consistency, be it consistency of brand messaging, creative or performance metrics. Being able to leverage the same creative but adapting it to work on different platforms supercharges core brand metrics, such as unaided awareness, brand recall, and purchase intent.

Does CTV’s continued rapid growth present any new challenges for advertisers? 

Advertisers are concerned about fragmentation and the lack of transparency in the space, as they're not entirely sure what type of inventory their ads will appear on.

Another big challenge is proving whether expanding into CTV from traditional AV channels drives incremental growth. 

We have conducted a survey and asked UK marketing decision-makers to name the disadvantages of CTV as a marketing channel in 2024. Over a third (35%) of them named its cost. This underlines the lack of knowledge, since premium CTV ad slots are in fact much cheaper than those on prime-time linear TV. 

Other things advertisers see as disadvantages are measurement and attribution challenges as well as the quality of programming on CTV. The latter is really not really the case either with FAST apps offering high quality inventory. 

So, I still  think the main challenge in the CTV space in the UK, which is pretty nascent at the moment, is the knowledge gap. We, as an industry, have to be better at not overcomplicating things, sharing information and learning from each other.

Are there any new trends in the CTV landscape you expect to see taking off in the near future? 

We are seeing some interesting innovations in the shoppable TV space. I expect the connection between ecommerce and CTV to get stronger, driving results for lower funnel metrics, such as consideration. 

As for the formats, we at Teads have been innovating with CTV Native display ads for smart TV homescreens. This format will definitely gain more popularity as homescreen is the first thing a consumer sees when switching on a smart TV, it is where their content discovery begins. 

What’s also important, a homescreen is the best medium for brands and advertisers to reach those who watch ad-free or broadcasters’ video content online. So, I’m convinced CTV Native ads have a very bright future in the UK.