TV and streaming services’ viewership is rising as isolation measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic set in around the world. Nielsen last week released some of the first data on the topic, showing that TV viewing has climbed as consumers have either been glued to news sources, or alternatively sought entertainment for comfort.
While the growth of TV and over-the-top (OTT) consumption is not surprising, the ways in which consumers engage with digital video will evolve. New consumption habits will create both challenges and opportunities for publishers looking to retain viewers and advertisers looking to reach target audiences. As video viewership fragments across various screens and channels, advertisers and publishers would be wise to drive toward a cross-platform strategy.
At the same time, programmatic is gaining momentum in connected TV (CTV) and OTT, creating new opportunities for monetisation improvement for publishers and planning and control for advertisers.
We now have a 40-person team globally – half of whom are engineers – working on a product to help publishers capitalise on the rise of CTV that we plan to roll out in the first half of this year. The idea is to apply header bidding technology, a popular programmatic trading mechanism that allows multiple ad buyers to bid on digital ad space at the same time, to OTT apps. We think there’s a huge opportunity to bring header bidding into the CTV market. The big challenge is, how do you enable a TV-like experience in streaming?
According to the recently commissioned study from PubMatic conducted by Forrester Consulting, Video Advertising Requires New Monetization Strategies, 58.1 percent of European publishers and media professionals have seen maximised ad revenue when introducing video header bidding.
Server-to-server header bidding solves some of the video-specific latency, automation and control challenges and will be central to a successful cross-platform video monetisation strategy for publishers.
Cross-platform video is an equally important opportunity for advertisers as it provides access to premium addressable audiences in brand-safe, publisher-direct desktop, mobile web, mobile app, OTT and CTV environments.
With efficiency driving consolidation trends, buyers will look to fewer platforms to better control omnichannel reach and scale and increasingly favour single solutions for holistic audience and investment management.
Agile and innovative technology partners who can provide brands and agencies with a unified platform to manage campaigns, audiences and workflows that optimise video investments across the supply chain to improve ROI will stand to win.
Now is the right time to dive in and move fast to capture the cross-screen advertising opportunity. Armed with the tools and insight now available to the industry, advertisers and publishers are primed to unlock this new goldmine.
Originally published in VideoAdNews
