Advertisers are unknowingly spending billions on streaming TV campaigns that are delivering outside intended inventory.
Yes, billions.
When global brands invest in expensive streaming TV advertising campaigns, they assume every ad will appear within must-watch content that appeals to their ideal audience segments. What they don’t realize: An estimated $4 billion worth of impressions end up elsewhere, according to DV research.
That’s $4 billion in missed opportunities to connect with the audiences they want within the inventory they paid a premium for.
That changes today. Our industry-first DV Authentic Streaming TV™ solution gives advertisers unprecedented clarity into — and control over — where their spend is going. It delivers better campaign performance and bigger wins for advertisers, streaming providers and even viewers.
Why Advertisers Love (But Stress About) Streaming TV
Streaming TV has emerged as one of the most powerful channels in a marketer’s full-funnel arsenal. In the U.S., the vast majority of viewers use streaming services, and a growing share choose ad-supported options, giving advertisers access to engaged audiences at scale across every stage of the purchase journey.
From building awareness with high-impact premium placements to driving consideration and measurable lower-funnel outcomes, streaming TV offers what few channels can: the emotional resonance of TV combined with the attribution and performance capabilities of digital.
As often happens in fast-growing industries, streaming TV has evolved with systemic obstacles that prevent advertisers from fully realizing this potential. Issues with buying, managing and optimizing streaming TV campaigns cost advertisers time and money:
1. The Content Guessing Game
Streaming TV advertisers often lack content-level insights and advanced contextual alignment. In most cases, programmatic buying offers limited visibility into relevant content details, leaving advertisers without the specifics they crave, such as genres (for example, “family dramas” or “dark comedies”), release dates, and ratings. Even with multimillion-dollar upfront or guaranteed deals, ads do not always appear in the exact inventory media planners intended.
2. The Audience Extension Money Drain
Not all streaming TV impressions deliver where advertisers expect. According to DV research, an estimated 15% end up on gaming apps, text-heavy websites and other non-TV environments that bear little resemblance to the premium streaming experience marketers are paying for. While these impressions aren’t necessarily wasted, they can come at a hefty price. Streaming TV CPMs can be $50 or more. Advertisers paying a premium for premium content should get what they paid for.
3. The “Do Not Air” List Time Suck
To protect brand equity and reach preferred audience segments, media planners naturally want their streaming ads to run only alongside content they consider contextually relevant and brand-suitable. They maintain “Do Not Air” lists of specific content to avoid. The upkeep of these lists is a continuous manual grind that takes significant time. In addition, because the streaming TV industry is made up of numerous independent providers, each requires its own list.
4. Suboptimal Optimization
Streaming TV advertisers can optimize for impression volume and cost. But these dimensions alone don’t help them focus in on the most-relevant content — a key draw of streaming TV advertising.
Without insight into which programming performs best for them, advertisers aren’t able to shift budget to content that delivers the highest ROI. Optimization stays surface-level — “more spend,” for example, rather than “more spend on what the data proves is actually working.”
At Last, a Better Way
We built DV Authentic Streaming TV™ to address these issues. The solution combines detailed program-level information — genre, maturity rating, premiere date, viewer-approval score and buzzworthiness — with core DV metrics such as fraud rates, attention, viewability and more; and applies AI-powered optimizations. It empowers media planners to:
-
Align their ads with relevant content that meets brand objectives
-
Ensure that they don’t pay a premium for impressions redirected to less-premium environments
-
Automate and streamline the grind of maintaining multiple “Do Not Air” lists
-
Optimize for reach, frequency and content relevancy to improve campaign performance
After all, there are far better uses for $4 billion.
What’s in it for Streaming TV Publishers?
Platforms that improve transparency can expect to deliver higher-performing ad campaigns that increase advertiser confidence and trust. Advertisers have long called for more industry transparency, and our solution is the first step in meeting that demand.
DV invites publishers, advertisers, and agencies to work with us to make streaming TV open, accountable and designed for long-term trust and growth.
In the coming weeks, we'll dive deeper into each capability to show exactly how DV can turn streaming TV marketing into performance marketing.
Download the DV Authentic Streaming TV fact sheet for advertisers.
Learn about DV’s Certified Transparent Streaming program for streaming TV platforms.
Contact a DV representative.
