It’s an area that immediately shares a lot of its DNA with Linear Television. However, it also promises all the innovations and freshness of social media & digital advertising. Being a nice marriage of the new and old, of course it provides many benefits to advertisers. Unfortunately, there are also 2 main points of consideration when advertising on CTV that have been a constant struggle for advertisers. Those being price (usually looking at CPMs here) and length (no infomercials on the horizon!). Let’s look at some of the ways progress and advances have been impacting these areas to increase efficiency to advertisers on CTV.
Price, being the more contentious topic, is a good place to start. If your bottom line is you need a $5 CPM to make your ROI work, then CTV is going to be a struggle for you when compared to Linear television. For now at least! However, from working on DSPs to working with DSPs, and listening to the outcry of people that just want fair pricing standards, we can clearly see a downward trend in CTV CPMs. While there still exist the extremely expensive CPMs – usually paired with very specific targeting and identity data (which can be very appealing to some advertisers) – the technology is still quite new, and from Modus Direct market research doesn’t always translate to a better bottom line. What we have seen lately, is the willingness of the industry to bring down those costs – not only DSPs charging less of a fee, but also providers giving inexpensive direct buy options. As we see CTV fall more in line with linear, in regard to pricing, we know it will create a healthier landscape for advertisers as a whole, while still offering those more unique targeting options at slightly elevated price points.
The second aspect we see changing is the willingness to take longer lengths. In recent announcements and conversations at industry events, some streaming platforms are starting to offer :120’s! (2min spots). This news are exciting to many folks who need a slightly longer commercial to express their value proposition i.e. many medical based advertisers, with long disclaimers and products or services that are hard to explain in 30 seconds or a minute. The fact that streaming platforms are now allowing these longer lengths means opening new doors for a plethora of advertisers who were, in effect, locked out of running ads on CTV or not willing to try due to their historical need to air :120 units.
With new technologies comes new barriers, and we at Modus Direct are excited watching some of these barriers come down. The more that CTV becomes accessible for more advertisers, the better and healthier the space becomes. With prices coming down and lengths going up, we are excited to see the direction CTV is going for advertisers. Especially as we see more “freemium” pricing packages for CTV platforms, allowing for more total ad time consumed by streaming patrons. So, if CTV is somewhere you’ve been interested in before but have struggled to find a home there; please know that we are seeing these changes every day, and CTV is becoming more and more accessible to everyone.
