A recurring theme during this year’s upfronts was interactive and dynamic ad formats, with Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) introducing programmatic pause ads, following in the footsteps of Amazon and NBCUniversal. But as new formats continue to emerge, the lack of standardisation creates friction across CTV platforms. When IAB Tech Lab launched its Ad Format Hero initiative in 2024, inviting companies to submit CTV formats that warrant standardisation, it ending up with more than 100 different ad formats submitted for its consideration.
And while the IAB’s work to standardise emerging formats is helping to drive adoption of pause and home screen ads, part of the challenge is that publishers themselves want to keep their formats unique, according to Jason Higgins, Co-Founder & CEO at OpenGlass TV, a company set up specifically to streamline the trading of dynamic CTV formats.
“Part of the advanced format experience, whether it’s home screen or pause ads, really is native to the operating system (OS), and the user interface (UI) of each publisher,” Higgins tells VideoWeek. “And I don’t think a standard file format is going to be where publishers want to move towards, because it will commoditise that experience. I think a lot of publishers are going to want to retain that creative control on what the asset looks like when it finally renders to the user.”
Pause for thought
During his five years at ad server business Publica by IAS, Higgins saw high demand from partners for emerging formats such as pause or squeezeback ads. But he says these integrations “never really worked” due to the lack of standard specifications and varying creative requirements from publishers in the assets they needed delivered, whether different types of image files or MP4 formats.
“There was excitement from the publisher, there was excitement from the advertisers, but nothing scaled,” comments Higgins. “It would live in these little pockets. One vendor would have one publisher, another vendor would have a different publisher with a different integration. The specs and the formats were all unique and proprietary. The enthusiasm would wane, the revenue would drop off, and it never really worked.”
OpenGlass aims to resolve these issues by translating each publisher’s unique requirements, along with those of the CTV platforms where those streaming services run, and building them into a supply-side platform (SSP) for programmatic activation. Higgins calls it “the first platform built to buy and sell every advanced CTV experience that isn’t a standard CTV spot,” which currently includes pause ads and programmatic home screen placements, with squeezeback, L-bars and side-by-sides launching later this month.
The company is also developing AI solutions that will allow advertisers to adapt their standard 15- or 30-second CTV ads into advanced formats, in order to help smaller brands experiment with dynamic ads “without needing those long creative cycles.”
And with the CTV ad market seeing continued growth, brands are leaning into the channel’s high-attention formats, with the CTV home screen expanding beyond media and entertainment (M&E) advertisers into non-endemic brands. Roku for example saw 30 percent of its ad revenues in Q1 come from non-M&E advertisers, according to the company, which last week revamped its UI for the first time in over 10 years.
Appetite for disruption
But as CTV platforms move to create more ad opportunities and placements on the home screen, Higgins notes that those companies also want to have a differentiated offering for users and advertisers, which creates more fragmentation and therefore holds back spending in CTV as a whole. At the same time, CTV publishers are motivated to keep users within their app and to have viewers watch content where standard ads run, limiting their appetite for interactivity within a pause ad experience.
However, Higgins argues that pause ads help balance those interests by keeping users within their streaming session while driving ad engagement via QR code scans, without the time constraints that exist in 15- or 30-second spots. The format therefore respects the co-viewing experience by allowing viewers to proceed with purchases on their phone, but can also be targeted on a one-to-one basis through data-driven programmatic campaigns.
“Pause ads have been around for a while and advertisers have been buying them direct for a while, but we’re making them available programmatically,” says Higgins. “So where IO-based buys have been great for geotargeting or just broad reach, now you can start doing one-to-one messaging to a customer or a lapsed customer.”
He adds that OpenGlass connects directly to demand-side platforms (DSP), enabling the advanced formats to be measured by the same technology and partners that work in standard CTV formats. And since those DSPs rely on OpenGlass for activating non-standardised, dynamic ad formats, Higgins says that specialism reduces its risk of disintermediation by advertisers and agencies looking to streamline their ad tech stack.
And with programmatic activation on the rise in live sports, understanding when to deploy these dynamic ads will be key, particularly when it comes to major sporting events – as ITV discovered during the Six Nations, when the UK broadcaster trialled split-screen ads, prompting a backlash from viewers who found the experience disruptive. ITV has ruled out using the format during the FIFA World Cup.
For Higgins, “timing is critical” when it comes to deploying advanced formats during live sports without disrupting important plays, and OpenGlass will be “leaning on the publishers” to help determine when appropriate moments arise – whether that is determined by humans watching live, or machines trained on finding those moments.
“And since we’re programmatic, it takes milliseconds for us to request an ad and return it, and make sure we can deliver,” adds Higgins. “So we’re ready for it. It’s just a matter of working with the publisher to understand when that right moment is for both their users and the advertiser.”
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