Maximize the Effectiveness of Your CTV Buys This Holiday Season

This year, almost half of consumers said they have seen an ad on their TV streaming device that caused them to pause and shop for the product online. With the holiday shopping season already upon us, we know that brands are looking to reach consumers on the most prominent screen in the home – on CTV! However, it is important to be sure that your campaigns are monitored and protected from media quality challenges to maximize your investments and, ultimately, your bottom line.

CTV Influences Consumer Purchases

This holiday season, consumers plan to begin shopping earlier and spending more compared to last year, and many will still be turning to trusted sources to determine which products to buy and which brands to buy them from.

According to that same study conducted by Roku and The Harris Poll, TV ads are now the second most trusted source for consumers to learn about new products, after word of mouth. However, the way consumers watch TV has shifted greatly in the past year. Post lockdown, 86% of consumers are now TV streamers, with the average shopper now spending 78 minutes more per week streaming compared to watching traditional linear TV.

With CTV becoming the fastest growing video advertising platform in the past year, 3 in 5 adults now watch CTV programming weekly. This means that ensuring your brand is present on CTV is going to be a key component for staying top of mind this holiday shopping season.

Protect Your Campaigns on CTV

In the past year, DV has seen CTV become the number one leading driver of verified video ad impressions in the US, which have increased 87% year-over-year. That said, not all CTV inventory is created equal. It’s important to partner with a media measurement provider who can help you authenticate and protect your media campaigns, avoid costly ad waste and reach your intended audience (not fraudsters) in the most suitable environments for your brand. Together, all of these things can help you increase the chance of purchase online or in the aisle.

Here’s how you can keep your brand protected this holiday shopping season:

Avoid Fraud

As the saying goes, fraud follows the money, and never is that more true than during the holiday season. Increased ad spend in Q4 typically means higher demand and higher CPMs. This provides fraudsters even more of an incentive to spoof already pricier CTV ad inventory in efforts to turn a profit. In doing this, fraudsters can trick advertiser software into thinking they’re offering legitimate inventory. In Q4 of 2020, DV saw 316 fraudulent apps on CTV. Given the importance of reaching consumers on CTV during this critical time, it’s especially important to ensure that your investment is protected.

One way to protect your CTV campaigns from fraud is by using pre-bid avoidance protections that will prevent your brand from bidding on inventory that may be fraudulent. In a test conducted by DV, activating pre-bid avoidance for CTV campaigns led to an 89% reduction in fraud/SIVT rates. If particularly sneaky impressions do leak through, or if your brand is running direct campaigns, ensure that you enable post-bid protection on your campaigns.

For example, DV’s MRC-accredited, industry-first Video Filtering solution evaluates data from an ad request post-bid to ensure that ads are not served to non-compliant environments. If an ad request is deemed unsuitable, it is filtered out, and the publisher is still able to monetize the impression with another ad. Both of these capabilities (Pre-bid avoidance and Video Filtering) can be implemented using DV’s Video Complete solution that protects campaigns across multiple media quality challenges.

Align Your Ads with Safe and Suitable Content

To encourage consumers to shop your brand this season, it’s important to make sure that your ads are memorable – for the right reasons! Appearing on unsuitable content that does not align with your brand can risk your reputation and, in some cases, can actually hurt your bottom line.

The good news is that advertisers have options that will allow them to protect their brands specifically on CTV. Brand suitability categories allow brands to avoid, monitor and filter out certain CTV apps based on their content category. For example, DV is the first media quality measurement provider to offer app-level Brand Suitability aligned with APB and GARM standards on CTV, which include 90+ settings for our clients to choose from, so that they can tailor their suitability standards to their brand’s unique needs.

Additionally, app store data controls, another DV first, allow clients to avoid, monitor and filter out CTV apps based on app store age ratings, star ratings and store categories, such as ‘adult’ or ‘kids and family’. Lastly, inclusion/exclusion lists allow brands to dictate exactly what apps they’d like to target and avoid for added flexibility.

Ensure Your Ads Are Being Seen

In addition to ensuring that your ads are appearing next to suitable content and are not going to fraudulent actors, it’s also important to ensure that consumers are actually able to see your ads. One common misconception about CTV inventory is that all ads are inherently viewable. However, that is not always the case. DV was the first to discover that it is possible for ads to play, even when the TV screen is turned off. Therefore, it is important to ensure that advertisers do what they can to protect their investments on CTV.

For example, DV Fully on-Screen metrics are MRC accredited and solve for viewability challenges in the CTV space by providing insights into:

• Whether ad pixels are 100% on screen and impressions fire after the TV is turned off across certified inventory
• How much of an ad was played through quartile measurement

Advertisers can use Fully On-Screen data to optimize toward more viewable placements and get more eyes on their ads this holiday season.

Get The Most Out Of Your CTV Buy

The holiday season is a time for celebration and sales – ensure that your CTV campaigns are monitored and protected so that you can get the most bang for your advertising buck. DV offers a number of services to keep your brand and investment safe. If you have any questions, or would like to learn more about how DV can help your business, please reach out to Sales@DoubleVerify.com.