A recent Wall Street Journal article reports on a lack of communication between TV sets and streaming devices  which causes an estimated waste of over $1 billion in ad dollars.

In a season where inflation is raging, you would expect an increasing focus by companies on the productive use of resources. The WSJ article explains that some 17% of ads shown on televisions connected through a streaming device, including streaming boxes, dongles, sticks and gaming consoles—are playing while the TV is off, according to a study by WPP PLC’s ad-buying giant GroupM and ad-measurement firm iSpot.tv Inc.

The U.S. connected-TV (CTV) ad market has been growing exponentially in recent years, going from $2.6 billion in 2017 to an expected $18.9 billion this year, according to estimates from Insider Intelligence.

Ad-measurement firm iSpot said it would begin offering advertisers a new product that verifies that commercials are indeed delivered to TVs that were on. The Interactive Advertising Bureau said it is also working on the problem.

Knowing that OAAA CEO, Anna Bager, has a strong background, previously working with IAB and her current work in leading our OOH industry, we reached out to her to discuss this new information, the impact it might have on the CTV ad business and for OOH.

Anna, I am very curious to get your initial thoughts?  Online’s advertising issues are fairly well know, but I will admit I was surprised when I read about these problems with advertising for television and streaming services. 

Any initiative to address potential inflated audience counts is a sign that CTV is maturing,. That said, the numbers are alarming and it means that advertisers are not getting what they are paying for.  There is a view that CTV is more proprietary, with closed off systems and more control, and that it would be harder to be fraudulent in those environments. A lot of online fraud is about overlaying content or putting ads below the fold and counting them as ads even though they weren’t actually seen. Or having phony audiences like bots. Here it is where you shut your device off and it stills shows traffic.

The confirmation that those impressions are being counted – in this case, while the TV is off is crucial information to have.  In conducting its study, GroupM is leaning in on transparency and accountability, which are core tenets of responsible oversight of advertiser media spend.

You also have to read the article with an understanding of what is happening in the TV space too. When Nielsen got in trouble for their TV ratings with the MRC, that wasn’t a new thing.  Even before that there have been different constellations of companies, in that space, that are trying to create solutions for better metrics, data transmission or platform. Whatever that might be to increase their ad sales.

So what does this mean for Out of Home?

Television, in my opinion, is our main competition, because we are a one to many medium, we deliver broad reach unlike any other medium. So anything that shows to marketers that it is hard to advertise in television, that CTV may not be as efficient, could be more expensive, is hard to measure and is plagued by fraud, is good news to us.

What should we as an industry be focusing on?

First of all, keeping ourselves fraud free, because we have to do that. Then positioning ourselves as an alternative to TV, OTT and CTV.  As Out of Home is a platform that increasingly is more into video, we need to steer clear of whatever kinds of problems CTV is having that is causing a perception of fraud.

What do you see as the key takeaway you want to leave with us?

Maybe television in its new CTV form is not a medium that lends itself very well to ads anymore? Consumers are sick of ads. They don’t want to see them, they skip them. It is harder and harder to target in those environments.  At the same time, most of the platforms are not ad supported.  People pay a premium not to have to see ads. So maybe television isn’t, in the traditional advertising form, a good platform anymore? Maybe it’s more for influencers and content marketing and other types of marketing, but not the advertising that we play in.

There is another issue with CTV, especially the big platforms, which is frequency. There is a lot of the same ad playing over and over again. That is not great for an advertiser either. As you are watching a program, you don’t want to see the same ad all the way through. You would rather see a mix of them. Less is more.  You can have greater impact if you don’t spoon feed people.

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