IAB Tech Lab Pushes to Standardise New CTV Ad Formats with ‘Ad Format Idol’

Tim Cross-Kovoor 23 October, 2024 

The growth of connected TV opens up a lot of opportunities for broadcasters to run innovative new ad formats outside of a standard 15 or 30 second spot. Some of these formats are by definition quite bespoke, and will require brands to work directly with the broadcasters or CTV publishers which offer them.

Quite a few new formats however have gained popularity, and have been replicated across a number of different sell-side players. As VideoWeek’s most recent CTV Advertising Guide NA shows, formats including pause ads, scrollable carousel ads, binge ads, and ad break takeovers are offered across a number of the major streaming services in the US.

The issue from a buy-side point of view is that while these formats are essentially the same, they’re not standardised, making it harder to run campaigns which use these formats at scale. IAB Tech Lab is trying to solve this issue, and has announced a new initiative, called ‘Ad Format Idol’, which seeks to standardise emerging CTV formats, enabling efficient programmatic transactions and broader adoption across the industry.

Build once, serve everywhere

As mentioned, there are lots of CTV-specific formats available on the market, and standardising all of these would be a lengthy task. The idea behind Ad Format Idol is to invite sell-side players to pitch their ad formats for consideration, in order to help Tech Lab decide which are worth working on.

Stakeholders are invited to submit their most successful CTV ad formats between now and January 22nd next year, and submissions will be evaluated by a task force appointed by Tech Lab’s Advanced TV Commit Group. This group will select a number of formats, and these will be passed on to the Advanced TV and Programmatic Supply Chain working groups, which will work to update their respective specifications.

“We’re looking for ad formats that have real potential to scale across different channels and streaming services and change consumers’ advertising experience on CTV,” said Ken Weiner, Chief Technology Officer at GumGum and board director at IAB Tech Lab. “This is about identifying the ad formats that can navigate complexity and make a difference in the way advertisers engage with audiences. If you’re working with a relatively common or templatised CTV ad format, we want to see it, and we want to help it grow into something that can benefit the entire industry.”

Tech Lab believes that standardising the more common – and effective – emerging CTV formats will help drive significant scale. IAB research shows that 75 percent of CTV spend is transacted programmatically in the US, and standardisation makes it much easier for buyers to run campaigns via programmatic tools which use these formats, in a build once, serve everywhere manner.

“CTV is experiencing explosive growth, but we’re still in the early innings of figuring out how to make it work at scale,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab. “The industry is full of new ad formats that show promise but lack the technical standards to take off. ‘Ad Format Idol’ is about cutting through the noise, finding what works, and giving it the structure needed to thrive. As we have done for early web advertising and with digital video, we want to set up the whole CTV ecosystem to succeed.”

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2024-10-23T12:18:07+01:00

About the Author:

Tim Cross is Assistant Editor at VideoWeek.
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