27 Sep 2022 | Jack Benjamin

Combined CTV video ad buying with linear now ‘almost universal’

Combining CTV/over-the-top (OTT) video ad buys with either linear TV campaigns or digital video campaigns is almost universal, according to research by ad software vendor PubMatic.

Just 2% of advertisers surveyed in the US and 4% surveyed in the UK said they did not make any combined CTV and linear buys in the past year, and similar percentages said they did not make any combined CTV and digital video buys over the same period.

For both types of campaigns, these buys tend to be truly combined buys, with a plurality of advertisers saying CTV and the other channel carried equal weight in their plans.

Advertisers are also using a combination of audience-based signals and content-related signals to target their CTV and OTT video ad buys.

More than eight in 10 CTV and OTT advertisers are using user-level audience targeting for video advertising, and almost as many are using contextual targeting.

PubMatic’s study also found that more than half of advertisers in the US (52%) and UK (60%) currently use Content Object signals when transacting on CTV inventory.

Content Object includes parameters that describe the content that impressions appear within, such as the category of the content (e.g., video), the genre of the content (e.g., mystery), and the content rating (e.g., TV-13).

An anonymous UK survey respondent stated: “The more data that you have and the more information you make available through Content Object signals, for example, the more likely I am to invest in your products, because I assume there’s additional value there as well from an insights perspective that I can report back to the business.”

The survey found that six in 10 advertisers surveyed in the US and UK are willing to pay a premium for access to the transparency that Content Object signals afford them. More than two-thirds (64%) of US respondents and three quarters (78%) of UK respondents said the presence of Content Object signals would make them more willing to shift budget from linear TV to CTV/OTT video ads.