Commentary
Cost Still Perceived As Key Impediment For CTV
- by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, March 12, 2021
With the level of focus on connected TV, it’s important to remember that it’s still a young medium, the terrain is continually changing, and marketers’ levels of participation and knowledge vary widely.
No surprise then, that in surveys and on panels, marketers’ expressed enthusiasm for CTV is inevitably tempered by …
Karlene Lukovitz is editor of MediaPost's "Digital News Daily" and writes the weekly "Video Insider" and "Advanced TV Insider" columns. You can reach her at karlene@mediapost.com.
I must say that I'm surprised that the CTV time sellers haven't at least explored some way to document the ad exposure and, more important, the message registration / purchase intention lift benefit of commercials in breaks that are about half the "linear TV" norm regarding ad clutter. The fastest way to get a handle on this is to conduct a number of properly designed ad message and sales point and purchace intent recall studies for a fair crossection of brands when their ads appear in normally cluttered "linear TV' breaks and less cluttered CTV breaks. Just asking viewers in general about this isn't acceptable---you need specific commercials for specific brands measured objectively in both situations.
The basic problem is that such a study may not support the higher CPMs of CTV. If the CTV CPM premium is, say, 100% and the recall lift is only 25-35% then you've got a problem and the study is buried. But if the ad impact lift is at least the same as the CPM difference---or close to it--- then you can argue that CTV is also targeting better so that, too must be considered. In any event, to only way to move forward is to find out what the facts are---using a reputable research company with much experience in this area.