Solving for Challenges in CTV Ad Serving – Part 3

In a Q&A that appeared in ExchangeWire, Unruly’s Erhard Neumann, Managing Director of our Spearad ad serving and unified auction platform, discussed the current state of CTV and how TV broadcasters and CTV/OTT content providers can address industry challenges. We’ve divided the interview into quick-hit reads to keep you in the know…fast.

PART 3: Key Considerations for Publishers to Better their Viewer’s Experience

What are the key considerations for publishers when ensuring their CTV infrastructure is maximizing viewer experience? What efficiencies can modern CTV ad servers bring here?

Modern ad servers are built for the transition from traditional linear TV to addressable TV, enabling greater control over the ad break behaviour so that it’s filled in an optimal manner and facilitates a high-quality user experience.

For CTV, it is very important that the viewer receives a traditional TV-like experience – with quality content, ease of use and relevant, non-glitchy advertising, particularly as the ads are not often skippable. To this end, publishers often don’t use an ad server to its full extent, they just use it to connect to monetisation partners. That’s what they need to rethink, to use an ad server or ad decisioning platform which helps them to set better rules so that the ad break is filled far more effectively and efficiently

Advertiser competition is also something that influences the ad break behaviour. On a website you can go on content categories. In the CTV space, you definitely need to have advertiser rules set, such as distance rules instead of category-avoidance rules, in order to make sure you get the same kind of TV-like experience known from traditional TV.

One more thing that publishers should also be aware of is, while there is already a huge audience using CTV, if you add more than two types of targeting criteria, the size of the audience rapidly decreases. I have often observed an overemphasis on targeting granularity, and brands should be aware of the effect of their campaign reach.