How To Advertise on CTV

This is where things start to get complicated.

There are 4 key considerations you need to address to run an effective campaign.

• What should I buy? - Inventory

• Who should I buy it from? - Supply Path Optimization (SPO)

• How should I buy? - Buy Type (Programmatic vs Direct)

• How do I know what’s working - Measurement

Let’s unpack each of these.

Inventory - What should I buy?

This part of the process can be relatively straightforward and guided by classic, research-driven planning processes. The goal here is to identify a mix of inventory that over-indexes against your target audience while also providing sufficient reach.

For most brands, while the weighting will be different, the mix will overlap consumption and should, therefore, include many of the apps on the chart below.

Nielsen, Time Spent Watching CTV P2+, September 2024

Supply Path Optimization - Who to buy from

The TL;DR here is to simply focus on inventory owners, not resellers. This approach will yield the best pricing, reduce your exposure to fraud and low-quality inventory, and your impression distribution will more closely align with viewer consumption patterns.

Let’s start by breaking down the market into a few key components to better understand who has access to inventory and why.

While this is a bit of an oversimplification, generally speaking, there are two types of CTV apps.

The first type are dual-seller apps. Apps where the app owner controls and monetizes the majority of the inventory. However, as a function of their distribution agreements with CTV platforms (Samsung, Vizio, FireTV, Roku, etc.), they will share a portion of their inventory with those partners to monetize and sell directly.

Apps in this category include Netflix, Disney+, Max, Peacock, Paramount+, etc.

The second type is tri-seller apps. Like dual-seller the app owner will control and monetize the majority of the inventory. While also providing some to their distribution partners to monetize directly. The third seller in this equation are select content licensors that retain monetization rights within their content on these apps.

Identifying the right path to purchase can be one of the most challenging set of choices to make in CTV.

Apps in this category are primarily vMVPD and FAST apps like Sling, Direct TV, Spectrum, Tubi, Pluto, etc. But also includes Hulu.

As you can see there are multiple paths to purchasing the same or similar inventory. Using Hulu as an example, you can go to Hulu directly, include Hulu as part of Roku buy or a buy with WBD, which distributes some of their content on Hulu.

Confused yet? It’s ok, you are not alone. This is where most of the mistakes are made.

We didn’t even cover the maze of re-sellers in the CTV market, primarily SSPs (Supply Side Platforms) that are packaging all of this up and selling it to advertisers directly, DSPs, managed service providers etc.

How you unpack this mess and the decisions made here make up the foundation of your Supply Path Optimization (SPO) strategy for CTV. A critical component to maximizing reach, reducing cost, and exposure to fraud.

For most advertisers, the best approach to SPO will be to buy from the source. From the app and content owner who controls the monetization of the majority of their inventory. This approach will deliver more efficient pricing and provide the best distribution.

How to buy? - Programmatic vs. Direct

This is a question that many advertisers struggle with. Should you focus on programmatic and the promise of precision targeting, fancy bidding algorithms, or just send over an IO to Hulu?

The former comes at a premium in terms of cost and includes a higher percentage of non-working media fees. In addition to paying publishers for the media, you also incur data costs, SSP (Supply Side Platform fees and DSP (Demand Side Platform) fees. But this method of buying often delivers ROI that justifies the higher costs.

The latter offers limited options in terms of targeting and control but media costs are lower and non-working media costs are close to zero.

For most, the right option is often a mix of both.

Measurement

We aren’t going to go deep here. That’s a topic for a future post.

But there are 3 boxes that you want to make sure you check.

1. Cross-device Household Graph - Pick a solution that you have vetted and are confident will accurately capture attribution from impressions on CTV to conversions on desktop and mobile.

2. Buy Type Compatibility - Your preferred solution needs to be compatible with and capable of measuring both your direct/PG buys as well as programmatic.

3. Smart Bidding - This can be the limiting factor. Your measurement solution should also fuel the bidding algorithm on your programmatic campaigns. It can be very challenging to reconcile inputs and results from different sources.

With all three boxes checked, you can measure and optimize across your full CTV plan. Determining what the best mix of inventory, buy type, tactics, targeting and messaging should be.

The alternative to sorting all this out yourself is to work with an experienced partner. That’s where we come in.

At Dial-Up Media we do CTV The Right Way. Contact us to learn more about how we have helped brands like yours scale and succeed with CTV.