Connected TV Advertising: The Do’s, Don’ts and Best Practices

Connected TV has been gaining traction in India in the recent times. According to the FICCI-EY M&E report 2021, Connected TV sets increased to 10 million in 2021. The report further projected that Smart connected TVs will exceed 40 million by 2025, thereby ending the monopoly of broadcasters on the large screen and leading to around 30% of content consumed on large screens to be social, gaming, digital, etc.

Day 2 of the 6^th edition of DIGIXX Summit & Awards 2022, the flagship event of Adgully, dwelled on ‘Connected TV Advertising: The Do’s, Don’ts and Best Practices’. The panel discussion was moderated by Prabhvir Sahmey, Senior Director, Samsung Ads, while the panelists included:

Chintan Soni, Vice President - Digital at Madison World

KA Srinivasan, Co-founder and CRO, Amagi

Nikhil Kumar, Vice President, India & SEA, Mediasmart, an Affle company

Paras Mehta, Business Head, Matterkind India

Commencing the discussions, Prabhvir Sahmey shared his perception on CTV and said, “I have observed over the last two years, being in this role and trying to understand what publishers are actually talking about CTV, to get a view from the advertiser and the buyer ecosystem. There are some interesting dynamics. They are definitely based on observation between what an agency thinks versus what a buyer thinks and even what an advertiser thinks.”

Sharing his views on Connected TV, KA Srinivasan said, “Connected TV is any TV that is connected over the Internet, where we receive content and advertising over the Internet. On the other hand, there are smart TVs that are not connected over the Internet and receive regular linear transmission. CTV advertising is that which is streamed to you on your large screen TV – everything from banners to lock screen, or the home screen advertising to traditional 30-second ads to a 30-minute infomercial.”

Paras Mehta added here, “From the agency lens, When we are looking at CTV, it’s not like the traditional digital medium, where the media planning is one mobile device per user, so you plan that fit. However, when it comes to CTV, we consider the entire household. The planning needs to have some bit of TV media planning aspects; it’s roughly about 4.25 users per TV set.”

“The other question that usually pops up every time we speak to most of our advertisers is whether the Airtel Xstream box and the Firestick are considered as CTVs. The short answer is yes, but sometimes we are also asked when viewers stream from the mobile device on a TV set, whether that is also CTV?. To that, the answer is no, because in that case technically those things are considered as mobile devices and not diligent devices. So, these are the nuances of how we define CTV and thereby how the advertising is measured and reported.”

Chintan Soni said, “When we talk about 120 million scorecards, what we really mean is the number of people and not the number of devices.”

These are edited excerpts. For the complete discussion, please watch below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDgY6Zy-Jwk