As the fourth quarter approaches, it’s time to reflect on what happened in 2023 and how it will inform the next year. One of digital advertising’s major trends in 2023 was the massive adoption of CTV and its evolution from a nascent environment to a mature and sought-after channel. With the proliferation of ad-supported streaming services from major industry players over the past several years, such as Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount’s Peacock and Disney+, and the subsequent increase in CTV viewership, CTV has become a respected and preferred alternative to linear cable TV among both viewers and advertisers. 

For instance, 55 percent of consumer respondents from DV’s 2022 Four Fundamental Shifts Report said they subscribed to additional streaming services within the past 12 months. On the advertiser side, eMarketer expects that CTV ad spend will increase to over $30 billion in 2024 — a 22.4 percent increase from the $24.6 billion spent in 2023.

The increase in CTV advertising has also influenced the growth of CTV measurement and protection. In just a few years, the industry has seen advancements in CTV media authentication solutions in the areas of fraud, brand suitability, viewability measurement and protections such as pre-bid activation and video filtering. These solutions have, in turn, improved the legitimacy of the channel and strengthened advertiser confidence in their CTV buys by allowing them to optimize toward high-quality media.

DV’s 2024 CTV Predictions

What’s next for CTV advertising? DV predicts that three major trends will drive further innovation in 2024 and increase CTV’s measurement parity with other environments.

1. Open measurement adoption. The IAB released OM SDK for Android TV, Apple TV and Amazon Fire CTV environments last year, and DV predicts that early adopters will begin supporting it in 2024. 
2. Video-level transparency at scale. Following years of advertiser demand, DV predicts that top publishers and distributors will begin providing video-level data to buy-side partners.
3. Attention measurement in CTV. Attention measurement is gaining traction as a solution that offers the ability to truly measure and optimize performance across environments. DV predicts that attention measurement will become more widely available on CTV in 2024.  

Prediction #1: Increased Open Measurement Adoption

Since its inception, CTV advertising has faced limitations due to the unique nature of the environment. According to DV data, for example, one-third of CTV impressions serve in environments that play ads and fire impressions long after the TV is turned off, making viewability an important CTV metric. 

To help address these issues, the IAB released open measurement for Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Android TV devices. Open measurement allows providers to access more robust device-level viewability and attention signals which provides more granular, impression-level measurement. 

Although open measurement was released for CTV in the summer of 2022, it’s taken time for suppliers and app publishers to adopt the technology. DV predicts that early adopters will begin supporting open measurement in 2024. 

Open measurement unlocks:

• Full cross-screen viewability measurement using the same underlying expectations and specifications across CTV, mobile and desktop environments
• Exactly how many ads serve partially off-screen or to TVs that are turned off
• Audio and AVOC measurement 
• The ability to transact on viewable impressions in CTV, which is already a common billable metric on desktop and mobile 
• Measurement and reporting based on customized viewability standards

Prediction #2: Video-Level Brand Safety and Suitability Solutions

According to a DV study, two-thirds of consumers are likely to stop using a brand or product if their ads are played next to false, objectionable or inflammatory content. Advertisers have seen or experienced the cost of neglecting brand safety and suitability standards across the board, and these challenges can extend to CTV. To give advertisers more transparency and control over the CTV environments in which their ads play, a number of brand safety and suitability solutions have been released. 

Many verification providers have chosen one of two routes: 

• App-level suitability, with current industry-level limitations, provides the most scale and ability to create brand suitability solutions that allow advertisers to control their suitability settings. Although, it lacks granularity at the channel or episode level. 
• Video-level suitability can provide more granular data, such as network, channel and rating, but is often only available from small suppliers that don’t have much traffic. Video-level suitability also isn’t typically verified independently and can miss larger-scale suitability issues which can best be detected at the app level with the industry’s current capabilities. Because of this, video-level suitability data won’t provide the average advertiser with as much insight into the brand suitability of their ad environments at this time. 

The industry still has a long way to go before CTV can reach parity with the data granularity available on other devices and platforms. Larger publishers and distributors need to provide video-level data access to third-party verification providers at scale to provide the transparency that advertisers want. With video-level suitability data becoming a bigger priority for advertisers, though, DV predicts that it will become more widely available beginning in 2024.

Prediction #3: The Growth of Attention Measurement in CTV

To prove that an ad campaign produced a return on investment, advertisers need to measure its performance on every platform. But this has been challenging on CTV due to the lack of available KPIs to measure performance and optimize outcomes. As a proxy, most CTV advertisers currently optimize campaigns based on cost. However, this presents a challenge when most advertisers are already purchasing inventory at the lowest prices when buying directly from publishers or private marketplaces (PMPs). For this reason, advertisers have been especially overdue for a solution to better gauge impact on this channel.

A key part of evaluating advertiser impact is measuring audience attention, and this consideration is extended to CTV. In fact, research shows that only 30 percent of CTV ads garner two or more seconds of eyes-on-screen attention, which makes attention a critical metric to track and monitor on CTV.  

DV launched DV Authentic Attention® in 2021 and gave advertisers the tools to measure user exposure and engagement of their ads across multiple devices. And in 2023, more advertisers have turned to attention metrics to gain deeper insights into campaign performance. With the increased demand and general advancement of CTV viewability measurement technology, the development of granular attention measurement for CTV continues to be an industry priority. DV predicts CTV attention measurement will become more widely available and see increased adoption in 2024. 

How Advertisers Can Prepare for 2024

There is a lot advertisers can do to prepare for their 2024 CTV campaigns: 

• Leverage existing solutions — media quality issues are common in CTV, so it’s important to leverage existing solutions that will offer you the most coverage and protections considering the industry’s current limitations. 
• Stay up to date with industry trades and communications from measurement companies. This will allow you to be the first to know as soon as new solutions are released. 
• Encourage key stakeholders to provide the information or adopt the technology needed to move the industry forward. You can urge publishers and distributors to adopt OM and support video-level transparency to provide more data granularity into brand safety and suitability, viewability, geo and fraud measurement. 

To learn more, download DV’s 2023 The Ultimate Guide to CTV Measurement or contact sales@doubleverify.com.