The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is working to
establish connected TV (CTV) media as a performance channel, and has released its first guidelines mapping out how the implementation of conversion APIs (CAPI) can accomplish the task.
Many
marketers have begun to recognize CTV as a performance channel -- with the same potential as search when combining targeting with brand building, and with the ability to measure results.
The
industry has been very consistent with advertisers signaling that outcomes matter, stated David Cohen, CEO of the IAB.
Cohen called on the industry to take "action," because without the
standards and implementations of CAPI, CTV platforms will struggle to reach their full potential, and the media will lose performance budgets to more measurable channels.
The first industry
guide on CAPI, “The Role of CAPI in Closing the Outcome Gap for
CTV,” gives brands, agencies, publishers, and ad-tech partners ways to explore and standardize measurement, to enable privacy-safe data collaboration, and to help the CTV ecosystem
deliver performance outcomes with channels such as search and social.
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While 75% of advertisers using a CAPI said they are willing to reallocate budgets based on conversion performance,
72% of publishers cite technical complexity as a barrier to adoption.
The findings from an IAB industry survey that examined the full performance of CTV revealed issues
with fragmentation, limited identifiers, and lack of engagement signals, and suggest that establishing a shared framework will support a stronger move of CTV to performance media -- one where
platforms align on event taxonomies, consent metadata, and data flows.
The IAB guide maps out a clear path for standardized CAPI adoption to help CTV deliver the same accountability and
performance measurement that advertisers expect from other channels.
CTV is one of the fastest-growing advertising channels, per the IAB, but it remains difficult to measure -- mainly because
the implementation of CAPI has been inconsistent.
The challenges include fragmentation, limited identifiers, and technical barriers. When implemented correctly through the new guidelines, the
tool enables secure, server-to-server data sharing that connects ad exposure to outcomes.
Standardizing the CAPI aims to create parity between CTV and established performance channels,
create privacy-safe measurement and support cross-channel optimization and faster feedback loops, and industry-wide collaboration around data interoperability.