For years now, TV publishers have proved the industry wrong by locking arms and showing just how much innovation, advancement and convergence in video advertising is possible through collaboration. It’s a stark contrast to platforms who are often defined by their lack of collaboration and transparency. But there is still a ways to go, and collaboration will continue to be a key ingredient to getting there, according to Fox’s Stephano Kim, Paramount’s John Halley, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Ryan Gould and NBCUniversal’s Ryan McConville, who were in conversation with 3C Ventures’s Michael Kassan at OpenAP’s Audience Summit at Cannes Lions.
“TV, whether we like it or not, is being held to a higher standard. We can still deliver on the promise of upper funnel advertising while proving we’re contributing to lower funnel [outcomes].” - Ryan McConville
CTV holds the promise of the future for converged video advertising, but it is still a fragmented marketplace; it’s not a walled garden and should not be evaluated as or compared to such. According to Kim, networks can’t and shouldn’t compete with walled gardens, because the medium serves a different purpose, and they cannot be substituted. Advertisers who go all in on performance channels like social in order to achieve the greatest ROI and levels of down-funnel outcome attribution still end up losing market share because they let brand marketing become an after thought. Premium video provides that space for brands to grow and gain share, a critical component of the consumer journey. After all, you cannot drive lower-funnel outcomes without filling the top of the funnel. “We don’t have the frequency, the capacity or the impressions to really compete at the lower end of the funnel,” said McConville. “Nor do we want to,” added Kim.
“The reality is that how most advertisers buy today is bifurcated. They have a TV strategy and a digital strategy and they are not incentivized to bring those two together.” - Ryan Gould
The solution to overcome the fragmentation of streaming TV is to focus on standards and workflows that allow for buyers to work with and buy CTV at scale. Advertisers still buy in siloes and aren’t incentivized to bring TV and digital buys together. Media owners need to (and are) doing the work to make it easier for buyers to buy convergently, yet buyers and measurement companies lag behind.
“There is no conversion without interest, there’s no interest without any sort of intent, there’s no intent without awareness.” - Stephano Kim
Publishers were forthcoming in identifying a warning sign with streaming that was a driving factor in pushing audiences and advertisers from legacy TV to walled gardens: ad loads. Our panelists agreed that lighter ad load drives more attention and engagement, while also acknowledging that’s hard to quantify and prove. If buyers are optimizing on price, ad loads must increase, which causes viewers to flock from ad-supported to subscription-based services, and in the end, walled gardens win.
“It’s up to us to reexpress the value of premium video.” - John Halley