• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, September 11, 2023

Despite economic concerns that slowed budget activations early this year, the number of advertisers investing in connected TV rose nearly 4% in Q1 2023 versus Q2 2022, shows the latest report from supply-side platform Beachfront Marketplace.

By category, investment in business, travel and family/parenting saw significant increases compared with Q2 2022, and food/drink, health/fashion and style/fashion showed gains compared to Q1 2022. Beachfront attributes the growth in part to improving supply chain conditions and expansion of retail media networks.

Law, government and politics saw a downtrend in Q1 versus Q2 2022, reflecting a drop-off in political advertising following the 2022 mid-term elections, and investment in technology/computing declined in comparison with Q1 2022.

Looking at CTV platforms, while Roku is up against intensifying competition from the tech giants and leading TV manufacturers, and is now implementing its third round of layoffs since last November, it continues to heavily dominate in CTV ad impressions share. Its share barely ticked down in Q1 2023 (chart above), to 38.76% versus 39.22% in Q2 2022 (chart below).

CTV’s gain was cable’s loss, with the big shift coming in set-top boxes’ drop in share of impressions, to just 12.9% versus 19.03% in Q2 2022. Both Fire TV, which rose to 15.7% from 14.97%, and Samsung TV, which rose to 14.92% from 13.7%, surpassed STBs’ share in Q1 2023.

LG, Vizio, Apple TV and other TV brands also saw bumps in share vs Q2 2022, when their shares were 3.94%, 3.33%, 3.14% and 0.63%, respectively. Beachfront rolled Chromecast into Google TV for the first time in Q1, which helped bump its share from 1.94% to 5.04%.

Looking at impressions by programming genre, comedy saw a 22% lift in Q1 versus Q2 2022, for a 13.25% share; drama saw a 28% lift, for a 11.25% share; and documentary saw a 30% lift, for a 10.68% share.

Beachfront notes that in Q1, it was able to capture a genre signal on more than 80% of delivered impressions, which represents a meaningful improvement in CTV content buying transparency compared with prior-year first halves.

The SSP also expresses optimism for continuing CTV ad growth based on easier cost-effective access to CTV for midsized and smaller businesses, and CTV’s expansion into a greater range of content genres, along with the continuing expansion of CTV adoption in U.S. homes.