By exploring global and regional trends, APAC marketers can gain a strong understanding of CTV’s benefits, tap into its rapidly growing value, and leverage its creative potential to optimise their campaigns.
Connected TV (CTV) is shaking up the digital industry. As a medium that enables audiences to consume digital video content via TV screens, watch traditional linear channels and use subscription streaming services such as Netflix, CTV is capturing the attention of viewers and marketers alike. The ad tech infrastructure in this space is estimated to be worth billions, providing marketers with vast opportunities to enhance their digital strategies and reach engaged audiences.
By exploring global and regional trends, APAC marketers can gain a strong understanding of CTV’s benefits, tap into its rapidly growing value, and leverage its creative potential to optimise their campaigns.
The global rise of CTV
Due to widespread lockdowns over the past 17 months, the increased amount of time spent indoors has changed audience behaviours — and CTV is taking centre stage in their media consumption. This is especially the case in the US, but also in Singapore, Japan, and Australia, where CTV is rising in popularity.
Combined with this rapid growth in consumer adoption, developments within the digital industry are also leading marketers to diversify their media mix. Increasing global data regulation and privacy moves by the big platforms – Google preparing to remove third-party cookies by 2023 and Apple’s crackdown on its Advertising Identifier (IDFA) – are changing how marketers understand, reach, and engage with audiences, as traditional targeting methods are phased out.
Having never relied on third-party cookies, CTV has additional appeal for marketers. With its potential to unite TV’s phenomenal impact and digital’s precision, this medium is shaping up to be highly lucrative, provided the industry proactively addresses identity targeting while simultaneously getting ahead of any measurement issues. Big brands are already recognising the power of CTV; sportswear company Under Armour was able to reach over 100,000 viewers through a recent CTV campaign, 32% of which were digital-only viewers – underlining the significance of CTV targeting compared to linear TV alone.
Why the APAC region is primed for CTV
Video consumption has risen at exceptional rates across APAC, with reports revealing a 56% year-on-year (YoY) increase in video ad inventory during Q2 2020. What’s more, certain markets have recorded even higher increases, for instance Singapore (101%), Japan (74%), and Indonesia (60%). This explosion of media consumption indicates marketers need to adapt their strategies to current viewing habits and ensure a flexible approach moving forward. CTV ad inventory specifically witnessed the most significant YoY increase in Q2 2020 at 282%.
While the smartphone is still Southeast Asia’s streaming device of choice with 76% of users watching digital content on smartphones in Indonesia alone, the uptake of CTV is on the rise and its popularity will no doubt continue to grow across APAC audiences.
Alongside viewers being increasingly receptive to CTV and expanding its reach, this medium benefits marketers in terms of viewability and engagement. Research shows that APAC’s display viewable rates are falling behind other regions. CTV ads capture viewer attention due to their creative video formats, with studies showing a 309% lift in engagement when marketers leverage advanced creative. Additionally, video completion rates average more than 85% for interactive ad formats. Considering this, it’s time for marketers to harness CTV’s potential and become frontrunners in this space. So, how can they use it effectively within their media mix?
Harnessing CTV’s rich creative capabilities
As a visual medium that offers premium ad formats, CTV lets marketers deploy powerful, engaging creative. To ensure they make the most of CTV ad inventory, marketers should optimise their creative production and targeting methods.
Enabling CTV ads to be more responsive to specific audiences will allow marketers to cater for different interests and behaviours with their campaigns, boosting both relevance and personalisation. By using dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) technology, for example, marketers can deliver high quality ad creative at speed. By analysing multiple data points — with just one example being the kind of CTV content viewed — DCO platforms streamline creative production and deliver thousands of ad variations with highly personalised messaging.
Innovative steps are being taken by industry players to support marketers in tailoring ad creative and driving impact. For instance, YouTube is preparing to integrate CTV contextual signals into its Display & Video 360 targeting capabilities. This update will give marketers the means to select CTV inventory based on genre, length or live-stream content, heightening the relevance and effectiveness of ad creative.
In another example from the US, Netsertive’s CTV offering enabled leading automotive dealers to market out-of-stock vehicles in a cost-effective way. Its DCO solution made intelligent, automated adjustments to campaigns based on lease payment changes, inventory changes, and dealer localisation — without the expenses that creative customisations typically incur. Furthermore, including CTV in the media mix allowed Netsertive to engage target audiences at an average cost of $0.36 per household. By adopting these tools and tactics, APAC marketers can boost the efficiency and outcomes of their ad campaigns.
The global pandemic has accelerated the popularity of CTV for consumers and brands alike. Marketers must now take hold of this opportunity; harnessing its premium environments and using dynamic creative to implement and perfect campaigns so they effectively reach their target audiences. If they do this successfully, CTV will become the perfect medium for consumer engagement in the post-cookie era.
