Adoption of programmatic trading in CTV is on the rise, according to IAB Europe’s inaugural ‘Attitudes to Digital Advertising’ report, but the trade body’s survey of its members revealed that this adoption is fragmented, with gaps in visibility causing high levels of uncertainty. While 21 percent of respondents now buy or sell over 81 percent of their CTV inventory programmatically, the survey found that 18 percent don’t know the extent of their programmatic activity in CTV.
Given the concern in the industry for wasted impressions and fraud in the CTV ecosystem, this high degree of uncertainty over how advertisers, agencies, publishers and ad tech intermediaries are buying and selling inventory is something of a concern. Wayne Tassie, Chair of IAB Europe’s Advertising & Media Committee, and Group Director for the Netherlands at DoubleVerify, attributes the knowledge gap to a combination of signals lacking on the supply-side, and operational silos on the buy-side.
“CTV supply paths can be fragmented and opaque, which can make it difficult for buyers to cleanly identify how inventory is transacted, qualified and also measured,” Tassie tells VideoWeek. “Internal ownership is also not always clear, as CTV often sits at the intersection of linear TV, digital or programmatic teams, which creates quite a bit of inventory ambiguity.”
In addition, reporting is often focused on outcomes such as reach, completion rate or audience segments, rather than the transaction type, so traders may understandably be more concerned with the results of a campaign than the trading mechanism. But Tassie adds that increased collaboration across the industry is helping to improve transparency and provide greater consistency in how CTV buying is understood and measured, including the work of the IAB Europe CTV Working Group, which aims to develop measurement standards and clearer reporting practices.
Buying into sales metrics
When it comes to evaluating those results from CTV campaigns, advertisers and agencies are still predominantly focused on brand and audience metrics, according to the report, with sales and quality-based metrics cited as important by just 17 percent of respondents.
While the more mature CTV market in the US has seen the channel attract more performance-focused advertisers, the findings suggest that in Europe, CTV is still primarily thought of as a brand-building channel.
“From a European perspective, adoption is uneven, as CTV in our region is limited in buying and execution remits, when compared to other markets such as the US, where interoperability is far more advanced,” comments Tassie.
At the same time, the rise of retail and commerce media have “raised advertiser expectations across all channels, including CTV,” according to Tassie, increasing pressure on the channel to demonstrate sales effects. But he notes that the complexity of the CTV ecosystem makes it hard to translate standard sales metrics into CTV environments.
“What is required is reverse engineering of CTV investment that begins with desired outcomes, working backwards to required sales metrics, and then retroactively into planning,” he says. “If we look at greater sophistication in buying models, as well as within agency teams, this will support a more full-funnel approach to CTV campaigns that are outcomes-driven and then focused around the correct sales-based metrics.”
Activating across channels
Another key finding from the report was that cross-channel activation (campaigns that used at least two channels) was relatively low, with just 16 percent of respondents reporting that more than 81 percent of their campaigns are activated across channels. Orchestration was particularly low among advertisers, 78 percent of whom reported using multiple channels in less than 20 percent of their campaigns.
While AI platforms are increasingly helping advertisers run and manage campaigns directly, mostly in social media and search, the results suggest that activating across multiple channels remains challenging without agency assistance. Among agency respondents, 65 percent said they use cross-channel activation in more than 61 percent of their campaigns.
“We see cross-channel activation as presenting as advantageous, but in reality, we know that it is complex to execute effectively,” says Tassie. “So while AI may indeed help, we know that channels are not always comparable, and often continue to operate in silos, such as the aforementioned CTV, both structurally and commercially.”
He adds that advertising teams are often divided into separate units (such as performance versus brand teams) with channel-specific budgets and KPIs, which can limit integration and collaboration within brands. And while AI can optimise spend within individual channels, unifying data rights, supply paths and reporting schemas across different channels proves more of a sticking point – at least for the time being.
“I think it is a matter of time before AI gets there, but the latitude on how much time is still quite ambiguous at the moment,” comments Tassie. “This is where agencies really continue to add value by reducing that governance opacity and helping advertisers navigate complexity.”
Defining curated marketplaces
Meanwhile on the sell-side, curated marketplaces are gaining traction, as buyers seek higher-quality inventory, greater transparency and less waste in the programmatic supply chain.
But IAB Europe’s findings signal a significant lack of clarity when it comes to curation. When asked about their levels of investment in curated marketplaces, a total 26 percent of respondents opted for ‘don’t know’, rising to 33 percent among publishers. Again this raises concerns, since it is their inventory that is being curated. Tassie puts this down to a lack of standardised definitions – another issue being tackled by IAB Europe’s working groups.
“This is a question that I’ve been discussing internally for quite a while,” he remarks. “From my perspective, there is currently no consistent definition of curation or what constitutes a curated marketplace. As a result of this, curation definitions can vary based on the curation partnerships that publishers have in place. Curation often happens via ad tech intermediaries, and publishers do not always have full insight and transparency into curated categorisation or activation.”
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