• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, February 11, 2021

Apple is making dramatic changes over the next few months to how advertisers can leverage user identity across all its devices -- and marketers are not prepared for it.

MediaPost editor in chief Joe Mandese reported Monday that new research from market research firm Advertisers Perceptions found 60% of marketers have not even begun formulating a strategy to deal with Apple’s plan to dramatically limit how advertisers can use IDFA (identifier for advertisers), which currently supports many tens of billions of ads each year, targeted on mobile platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Snap and many others.

As Lauren Fisher, Advertiser Perceptions' vice president, business intelligence, noted in the post, this will cause budget shifts among programmatic marketers, most likely to areas where “they still have the ability to target and measure audiences as they’ve done in the past,” like CTV (connected TV).

I agree with Fisher, and here are five big reasons why:

Forced experimentation is good for the new kid on the block.  The promise of CTV -- truly marrying the best of television advertising with the best of digital -- has been around the corner for years, foreshadowed by lineal ancestors like addressable TV, programmatic TV and advanced TV. However, the explosive growth of smart televisions in U.S. homes -- and market leadership from The Trade Desk, Roku, Amazon and Google’s YouTube -- will solidify CTV’s position and future, as have the emergence of CTV platforms that bring digitally targeted and optimized advertising not just to streaming channels, but to linear TV and video gaming as well.

CTV is about full-screen ads. The world of identity targeting on mobile and laptops is all about a multitude of blinky ads, all on the same page and fighting for the user’s attention. TV ad viewing is about single ads owning the full screen, not fighting for attention and clicks, as the audience leans back and takes it in. Of course, digital marketers have a lot to learn when it comes to developing respectful ads and understanding that they're commanding an exclusive share of voice and can’t be annoying.

CTV opens up access to the full demo stack. CTV platforms can now bring coordinated, automated digital ad targeting and optimization to the three major buckets of video audiences: TV viewers, cord-cutters and gamers. The long sought holy grail of reaching all major demos on the channels of their choice with coordinated, high-impact sight, sound and motion ads is becoming a reality.

CTV delivers full-funnel measurement. TV is unmatched when it comes to delivering top-of-the-funnel branding. Closed loop digital measurement and optimization against business outcomes are table stakes for performance marketers. CTV delivers both.

CTV ads are accessible to advertisers of all sizes. Small and medium-sized advertisers on platforms like Facebook are a big portion of the folks who will be impacted here, and who very much rely on tightly targeting narrow audiences. Historically, TV ads were inaccessible for them, since campaign minimums were too high, TV lacked automated buying, and waiting weeks for reports without any sales attribution was a non-starter. We’re seeing all of those issues solved on most CTV platforms.

Finally, this is bigger than Apple. Google is similarly truncating the power of the cookie and the ability for advertisers to leverage identity on Android devices. All digital advertising is in for a big change, and CTV is certainly in the right place at the right time. What do you think?