In this Q&A, we’re joined by Evelina Bucelyte, Account Director at Nexxen, to discuss the challenges encountered by advertisers as a result of the fragmented connected TV (CTV) ecosystem. She also expands on the role played by context, as well as what can help advertisers successfully execute and optimise their campaigns.

What are some of the biggest challenges that arise for advertisers as a result of the highly fragmented CTV ecosystem?  

The fragmented CTV landscape presents today’s advertisers with several key challenges.  

To start, reaching target audiences effectively is difficult and convoluted due to the sheer number of apps and devices (as well as the sheer number of tech partners claiming their solution is best). Once you do reach viewers, measuring campaign performance across these various platforms requires complex integrations and data reconciliation, often leading to inaccurate reporting.  

Fragmentation also hinders the development of targeted advertising strategies and limits the ability to create truly personalised viewer experiences. These issues lead to inefficiencies, increased costs and difficulty demonstrating a clear ROI or ROAS (return on ad spend).   

How is Nexxen poised to be able to help advertisers tackle these challenges?  

By delivering a flexible, unified solution for accessing premium inventory (in and beyond CTV), we’re helping advertisers tackle these challenges. Our platform streamlines campaign management, providing one place for planning, activation and optimisation.  

That said, we also take an agnostic approach – integrating other ad servers and DSPs – which enables our advertising partners to choose exactly who and how they’d like to work with us. This simplifies the buying process, improves efficiency and reduces operational complexities for our clients.  

The use of advanced, data-driven tools and teams – like our exclusive ACR (automatic content recognition) / TV viewership data, Nexxen Discovery and our in-house creative studio (aptly titled Nexxen Studio) – also offer insights that help marketers optimise and refine their campaigns and future strategies.   

In sum: Nexxen provides advertisers with exactly what they need to efficiently and effectively execute campaigns across formats – in and beyond CTV (with knock-on benefits to planning and activating across video, display and even digital out-of-home) – despite the aforementioned challenges of this fragmented, fast-converging landscape.  

Can you tell us more about your proprietary insights tool, Nexxen Discovery?  

Absolutely. Nexxen Discovery is, in essence, a supercharged market research platform – it’s able to analyse more than 3 billion data points, in real time, across digital, social and TV to identify consumer interests and possible trends. This granular data (including ACR data) provides a broader, more detailed understanding of viewer behaviour and content consumption.  

Nexxen Discovery allows advertisers to better analyse brand conversations and campaign performance – not just in terms of engagement, but also in relation to actual content viewed. This, in turn, offers valuable insights into the types of programming that resonate most with their target audiences, informing more effective, content-adjacent campaign strategies and increasing ROI.  

What role does context play?   

Context plays a crucial role in advertising, particularly on CTV. By understanding the context – e.g. the specific program or content a viewer is watching or consuming (particularly in real time) – advertisers can tailor their messaging and creative to connect more deeply with that audience, resulting in a more impactful and less intrusive advertising experience.  

Alongside solutions such as Nexxen Discovery, what else can aid advertisers in successfully executing and optimising their campaigns? 

In our current, competitive CTV environment, capturing and maintaining viewer attention is critical for campaign success, so pre-testing is vital. This involves testing creative assets – messaging, visuals, etc. – to identify what does (or does not) resonate most effectively with your target audience.  

Analysing the results allows for data-driven optimisation before the campaign even launches, increasing the potential for impactful messaging and minimising wasted ad spend. This pre-emptive approach, combined with ongoing performance monitoring and optimisation, ensures campaigns are both well-targeted and built to connect.  

Further, layering CTV viewership data onto your own first-party, CRM data not only paints a more holistic picture of your audience, it also provides a more accurate look at CTV's influence on your brand’s sales pipeline and revenue.