Study: Paid AVODs Beat FASTs On Ad Attention, But Just 33% Of All CTV Ads Win 2 Seconds Or More
- by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, March 22, 2023
While streaming viewers are generally accepting of ads, just a third of connected TV (CTV) ads receive two or more seconds of active, eyes-on-the-screen attention, according to a study from Yahoo and Publicis Media that used both facial recognition and ACR data and a consumer survey to probe CTV ad …
There are many ways to interpret these findings. For example, your typical CTV commercial---FAST or otherwise----captures a smaller percentage of those who were present in the room just before the ad break than it's counterpart on "linear TV". The difference ---which was not reported in this presentation---is about 10-15% in "linear's" favor. How can this be if CTV's superior targeting capabilities brings its ad messages to a more "receptive" audience? And how can it be that" linear TV's"heavily commercialized breaks out perform CTV's generally shorter breaks in delivering ad attentive audiences?
One possible explanation may be that "linear TV" scores higher commercial attention levels because of its pronounced older audience slant---and old folks are less likely to leave the room when a break interrupts program content. Hence they pay more attention to commercials. As for the better targeting explanation, it may be that very few CTV advertisers are fully exploiting this assumed CTV advantage or, if they are, the targeting may need additional refinements to be more effective. There are other possibilities---like the nature of the program content, how the ads are placed and scheduled, what kinds of advertisers are using CTV versus "liner TV", etc.
As we report to our MDI Direct subscribers in an upcoming Alert covering the interesting TVision findings in this study, we are really at the beginning where CTV advertising is concerned and, as was the case with TV when it burst upon the media scene in 1950, there is much more to learn about CTV, which is currently transforming itself into a potentially major "TV" ad platform. Assuming that these early findings about CTV ad attentiveness are accurate, the next step ---before we advance to more sophisticated refinements like outcome attribution---is to find out what are the underlying causes behind these findings. Only then can we move on with a solid understanding of the basics as a foundation for further learning.