Even as viewers spend more time with ad-supported streaming TV and ad inventory continues to grow, a disconnect is emerging between these trends and the share of ad budgets allocated to connected TV (CTV), a report from streaming technology provider Wurl says.
In “The CTV Trends Report—Addressing the Content Signal Gap,” Wurl cites the “dearth of information” ad buyers have on the content they’re buying against as a major reason for the disconnect.
Citing research Wurl conducted with AdExchange, the report said 79% of respondents pointed to “inefficiencies around data quality, fragmentation and interoperability” as limiting the scale and effectiveness of ad campaigns on streaming TV.
Wurl analyzed metadata transiting the CTV programmatic bidstream, revealing: 89% of ad requests lacked a usable program name; more than 3,600 different genre labels appeared in a two-hour window; and 35% of analyzed inventory carried a declared genre not aligning with what Wurl detected the actual program to be.
The report offers an example of the different genre labels revealed within the two-hour window. With regard to drama, genre labels could appear as “genre_drama” or “crime drama.” Similarly, reality shows might surface as “reality,” “reality shows,” “reality & game show” or “genre_reality_tv,” the report said.
“While this may be the result of a well-meaning effort to help advertisers find relevant content, on the flip side it places an operational burden on the ecosystem and risks limiting deal sizes,” it said.
Taken together, these findings reveal the basic challenge facing CTV. “The information buyer need to understand and value an impression doesn’t always make it into the bidstream,” according to Wurl’s report.
The ability to deliver greater audience granularity is a major benefit of CTV, but buyers cannot take full advantage of this strength without the “quality and availability of the signals attached to each ad opportunity,” the report argued, adding, “Today, those signals often paint an incomplete picture.”
Wurl offers streaming industry players a variety of products, including scene-level targeting of ad inventory.
