By Gulab Patil, Founder & CEO, Lemma
Move fast and break things may have been Mark Zuckerberg’s mantra for the early days of Facebook, but it’s not a great approach for companies who operate in high-trust environments, such as media platforms.
This is especially true considering how advertisers are navigating a rapidly changing environment and rely on trust with regards to their media partners, DSPs, and those media platforms to communicate authentically and accurately with them.
Recently, a breach of this trust has threatened a viable and valuable medium, which many call connected TV (CTV) digital out of home (DOOH) – a name I recommend we change later in this piece.
Some companies that provide video streaming in various venues – like in restaurants, bars, and elevators – have categorized themselves as CTV, which advertisers have, upon finding out, deemed a worrisome deception. There are real differences between the two, and advertisers were not happy when they found out they were running ads “out of” instead of “in” home.
The worst part of this miscategorization is these platforms are great opportunities for advertisers. In this piece, I hope to reset the conversation, call to action for the publishers in this space that seek to embrace transparency, and to reassure advertisers that this marketplace is very valuable.
Key takeaways
- Accurate categorization is crucial for trust in the system
- Venue-based streaming is its own thing, with clear values, and we need to describe it correctly.
- As such, advertisers and their agencies should ensure their creative is super relevant for venue-based streaming
Let’s get specific
DOOH encompasses many different platforms, such as highway billboards, urban panels, digital walls, and TV screens. While the latter is an important component of DOOH, it would be better served if it broke into its own category, as it shares some similarities with CTV. To avoid the issue further, I believe we need a specific terminology for this content: venue-based streaming.
The location of the viewer is now important to notate. The keyword “venue” here makes it clear that the content is being shown in a place someone goes for a specific purpose, and definitely isn’t inside of their living room.
How it happened
Simply put, some overzealous providers of out-of-home real-estate claimed their inventory was viewed on connected devices, when advertisers didn’t expect it. Because the digital environment still relies on self-identification and reporting, this wasn’t discovered by advertisers for some time.
CTV is a powerful, unique advertising medium that should be recognized for its full potential. The rise of in-home streaming through CTV as a result of the pandemic has not waned as newer viewers grow accustomed to the choice it provides.
It is a true lean-back experience that rightly is the talk of the advertising industry for the past five years. But venue-based streaming is its own platform that needs its own marketplace.
Why did those bad actors obfuscate? Some were just trying to ride the CTV hype train. Others felt it was too difficult to educate the marketplace on what made this medium so special, and decided to use CTV as a short-hand.
The end result is confusion and anger leading to many DSPs and agencies blocking the biggest offenders. That is a massive roadblock to adoption in a critical time.
Why the differentiation is important
The biggest truism in media is context matters. Someone at home watching their favorite program on a couch is in a completely different environment than that same person watching a TV screen in a bar while waiting for the bartender.
The reality is that the second scenario is actually a captive audience in a “commerce” frame of mind. That is a very valuable placement that several advertisers would do very well placing.
For example, Figure, a fintech company targeting homeowners, experienced a 21% jump in web conversion rate compared to the previous period when it worked with Taiv to run ads at restaurants located in residential neighborhoods.
What the marketplace should do
Understand the differences: For example, imagine a bar at 8pm during an important sporting event. An advertiser and its agency partners can make some broad decisions about who might be at the bar and what narratives they would be receptive to and which products would make sense to promote. Or imagine an elevator in a major business hub at 9am; that audience is wildly different from the same audience watching CTV at home at the same time. BMW, locked out of traditional TV broadcast sponsorship of the NBA playoffs due to Kia owning the rights, reached basketball enthusiasts through venue-based streaming and experienced 5x more efficiency than CTV advertisements.
Appreciate the power of venue-based streaming: Firstly, advertisers should recognize that venue-based streaming is a valuable medium for reaching in-market audiences and give it another chance. Its biggest strength is that the audience is in a consumption frame of mind. Someone watching in a doctor’s office, supermarket, or restaurant is already in the process of purchasing something.
Audit your current media spend: Advertisers need to understand what percentage (if any) of venue-based streaming is still bucketed in CTV. If there is uncertainty there, they need to have their agency partners do a full accounting. No winning campaign strategy begins from duplicity.
Demand accountability: Providers should be more authentic in their metrics and pricing. But if they won’t do it willingly, then the advertisers must exert pressure on the marketplace to clean up its act. In addition, venue-based streaming, while powerful, must realize its limitations and price accordingly.
Venue-based media cannot guarantee the same level of attention as CTV, which is likely to have a family watching intently in unison. While there is the opportunity for more eyeballs at once, the reality is there are varying degrees of attention depending on their position and viewing of the screen. With more variability and uncertainty, the price point should fall below a standard CTV placement.
The future is bright for venue-based streaming if we don’t mess it up
Now is the time to eliminate the confusion and provide a clear blueprint for why venue-based streaming is an integral part of future media mixes. Everyone with a vested interest in the space should clearly communicate the benefits of this medium and insist that everyone in the industry should move forward with transparency and a clear communication of why this is different, but as potent, as CTV.
