How The Death of 3rd Party Cookie Matters to CTV Advertising |   22 Jun, 2021

The evolution of media consumption worldwide turned a page when Connected TVs arrived on the scene. Though the technology had been lingering in the back alleys since early 2000, it only found serious takers in the last decade or so. The global pandemic coupled with the rise of OTT platforms nudged CTV’s popularity in the right direction. So much so that over 70 million American households now own a CTV streaming device on which they end up watching up to 10 hours of content daily.

Coupling this trend with the imminent death of third-party cookie tracking on browsers has given rise to a fresh marketing approach that has got advertisers excited. CTV advertising offers an opportunity to serve ads to an audience that is growing by the day, and the ability to do it in a brand safe environment that puts data privacy at the heart of its operations.

Is CTV advertising the silver lining to the cookie catastrophe? Let’s find out

Benefits of Linear TV, but only better

Brands are increasingly showing interest in CTV advertising because of the many benefits it provides. However, the one advantage that stands out is its ability to boost incremental reach. This metric has become the gold standard for CTV advertisers as ‘cord cutting’ or moving beyond linear TV to streaming platforms is becoming the norm worldwide.

With the surge in consumption of connected TV content, marketers can now leverage CTV advertising in conjunction with their linear TV campaigns and achieve improved incremental lift across audiences that might have been left out on the conventional TV medium. CTV in its origin is subscription based, meaning operators have exclusive access to first-party data like emails, IP addresses, and the like, which can be used to identify segments that can further bolster the targeting efforts.

Optimum Brand Safety

One niggling issue that all brands faced with third-party data was that of brand safety. Having your ads run against the backdrop of content that includes terrorism, gun culture, substance abuse, etc. is never a good thing. CTV advertising offers a respite for marketers in this aspect.

Connected TV as a platform makes use of first-party data points like device IDs and advertising IDs to ensure privacy laws are upheld and consumers get to choose the kind of ads they view. This gives marketers the ability to customize the video ad experience to add a layer of relevancy to ad delivery. While CTV has the ability to deliver relevant ads without using cookies, it also ensures high quality impressions. This is made possible by the private marketplace (PMP) model that allows bidding only by invitation thus attracting verified buyers.

Video Context is the new king

In its essence contextual ad targeting has been around for a long time. With text-based triggers marketers could serve ads that resonated with their target audience. But a step forward in this direction is video contextual targeting.

With the help of nuanced technologies like AI and machine learning, video and image based visual triggers can be identified to create even more relevant targeting opportunities that drive results. This technology also liberates advertisers from the grips of third-party data, since it analyses the content feed directly rather than URLs.

All the trends indicate that CTV advertising is slowly gaining momentum and it will only get stronger now that third-party cookies are out of the picture. Together with advanced contextual marketing is making its presence felt in filling the gap.