Commerce, creativity and innovation: why brands should be investing in CTV

Speaking at The Drum Digital Summit, Unruly AUNZ managing director, David Haddad, says the consumer growth has spurred on an increase in both content and advertising shifting towards the CTV space.

“In many markets, across APAC, we're seeing connected TV penetration into households of at least 70%, and growing. From an audience willingness to lean into connected TV, we see a lot of research coming out around streaming services fatigue. This means consumers are swapping for ad supported, connected TV content so they can view more variety. I think those two things combined together is really why we're seeing a lot of growth in CTV content, as well as in the advertising market,” he explains.

Similarly, Florent Davach de Thèze, director of programmatic at Mindshare APAC, shares the sheer scale of growth in APAC audiences, “In India, by 2025, you will have 45 million smart TVs, for context that’s the population of Spain.”

Davach de Thèze also says that, for brands, the large screen format really works, particularly for brands that want to show off features or creative in a higher definition.

Ultimately, the big opportunity for marketers is blending the best of digital with the creative canvass of the TV. Nicole Bence, Network digital sales director at Seven West Media, says this is what the network has been working on delivering for marketers.

“I think the opportunity for us to bring together data and creativity, and also commerce is something that we're really focused on. You've got the biggest screen in the house, we know what that can deliver for marketers as far as brand building goe. You've now got this addition of digital, whether that's data targeting, interactive creative solutions or commerce, bringing all of that together is the opportunity for brands,” she explains.

The CTV market has also learnt from the mistakes fo digital and is working fast to improve user experience issues around intrusive targeting or ad replication.

Sophie Hicks Lloyd, director of digital sales at Network Ten, shares, “I think one of the reasons marketers may sometimes stay away from connected TV is because there's still discussion around user experience. Most networks are working really, really hard to ensure that that user experience is improving, and in many cases, it’s pretty fantastic at the moment. The introduction of video header bidding and Australia in the coming quarter will really help us get rid of the very few remaining user experience issues with ad replication and double-up ads. These kind of things will become a thing of the past, which will really help bring more marketers into the CTV world.”

Likewise, Tania David, head of marketing and business development, Finecast Australia, says the APAC market is following the lead of more privacy-focused regions, like Europe. But with CTV being more of a shared experience, it naturally avoids some of the issues that one-to-one targeting has experienced.

“We'd believe as you have multiple people watching the TV screen anyway, it's definitely a bit risky to do one to one targeting on a connected TV in its current state. In terms of how our clients do personalization, where we're using a lot of capabilities around dynamic creative optimization and it doesn't have to be intrusive. It can be very subtle. We have clients that run day-night creative. We also have clients that run time of day creative based on their breakfast, lunch, dinner,” she shares.

To hear more about how marketers can start to experiment with CTV and make the most of this fast-growing channel, watch the full video on The Drum Digital Summit website.