New survey results from Innovid show that brands and advertisers increased their proportion of converged TV spend in 2022 but most are still challenged to have a unified campaign view in the fragmented TV landscape.
The survey, conducted in September 2022, involved 250 senior brand and agency respondents for the vendor’s “The Great Unification of Converged TV” report.
Of those respondents, 92% felt a unified view of reach and performance across converged TV – encompassing linear, CTV and digital video – is important.
And most had put more money into converged TV than last year. The survey found 80% of advertisers increased the share of converged TV ad spend within their overall media mix year over year, including 44% that “somewhat” increased.
Around 45% said they dedicated 20-40% of their total media ad spend to converged TV, while 31% devoted between 40-50%.
Around half (52%) stated that CTV was somewhere in the middle in terms of platform with the highest share of converged TV impressions, while 35% cited CTV as the highest share and 13% the platform had the lowest share.
Still, while converged TV budgets increased and advertisers want a unified view, the report found challenges – with viewer fragmentation meaning the ability to reach audience across different publishers, platforms and devices, ranking as the top ranked pain point (40%) among advertisers.
Innovid said this fragmentation fueled other top challenges – with number two-ranked creative personalization (37%), and the third biggest pain point, inconsistent measurement (32%). Around a quarter of respondents also cited challenges of each identity resolution (28%), publisher fragmentation (28%), converged TV expertise (27%), inventory costs (24%) and proving ROI (23%)
“Reconciling IDs across digital and linear TV environments is not only the ‘connective tissue’ of converged TV, it also empowers advertisers to tell personalized stories, avoid creative oversaturation, better understand the customer journey, and unlock walled gardens,” Innovid noted of the identity resolution challenge.
Despite challenges, many advertisers pointed to benefits of a unified view of converged TV performance – with improved ad relevance the top ranking at 62%. In second was increased data ownership (59%), followed by cost savings by reducing ad waste across platforms and publishers and time savings, each at 54%.
Data ownership is the main reason advertisers said they aren’t getting a unified view, according to Innovid, with just under 90% citing that as the main blockade. Other barriers to a unified view included inconsistent measurement (72%), walled gardens (55%) and team silos (42%).
To improve the performance of converged TV campaigns, 66% of respondents said they needed consolidated technology to streamline and automate ad delivery and measurement, followed by unified measurement and connected data.
In terms of metrics that advertisers are looking for converged TV campaigns, the most important was online outcomes (such as sales, registrations, app downloads), with 72% citing that as their top metric – followed by unique reach, frequency, and offline outcomes (such as in-stores traffic, sales).
“Succeeding in an agile, always-on market means continuously and quickly adapting and scaling media and creative strategies for reach, performance, and personalization. That’s why, with a cross-platform, unified view, KPIs are all the more meaningful and actionable – from in-flight changes to creatives and continuous refinement of the converged TV media mix,” the report concluded.
Over 80% of survey respondents said a unified view of converged TV would mean they would optimize cross-platform media, as well as creative, more often.
"The TV experience is being reimagined," said Stephanie Geno, chief marketing officer of Innovid, in as statement. "As content and consumption offerings evolve to meet the needs of modern viewers, brands and agencies are challenged by a fragmented media landscape – one that is no longer bound by time, platforms, locations, or devices. To truly thrive in this 'converged TV' market – which encompasses linear, CTV, and digital video – marketers need a unified view of advertising and audiences. Not only to understand how cross-platform campaigns are really working, but also to uncover actionable insights to reach and engage with the right consumers where they are."
Innovid itself is one of the players aiming to provide measurement solutions to the media world. Last month the vendor inked a deal with Fox to provide audience data across the company’s media portfolio including ad-supported streaming TV service Tubi. In November The Trade Desk decided to integrate Innovid’s cross-platform technology into its media buying platform in the U.K. and Germany.
While there is marketer interest in reaching audiences outside of traditional pay TV via connected TV and streaming platforms, Innovid’s survey reveals some of the challenges the industry faces
Speaking during Advertising Week New York about roadblocks in moving budgets to ad-supported streaming, Omnicom executive Kelly Metz cited transparency as the biggest barrier – in part for brand safety to know what shows ads are running against. She also pointed to visibility, with the need for program-level detail.
Some in the industry are trying to create more standardized tools, including OpenAP, which is working on a cross-platform clean room product to help more easily measure and distribute data in a privacy-safe environment.