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Marketing Architects. Hello. You're about to hear a special episode of the Marketing Architects podcast. This is from a presentation our Chief Media Officer, Kathryn Walsted did at Shop Talk this spring. She does some CTV myth busting and it's full of the effectiveness principles you know and love. Hope you enjoy.

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Thank you for joining me. My name is Kathryn Walsted. I am the Chief Media Officer at a TV agency called Marketing Architects, where I get to spend all day, every day, helping brands like you figure out how to make TV and CTV work harder for you. And I've seen there's all kinds of excitement in this channel, but there are a lot of misconceptions, too. So we're going to talk about that today a little bit. So it's no surprise, obviously, that literally almost every US household has a smart TV today, and 25% of the time that we spend on this earth is spent in front of that tv. So as a marketer, obviously you can't ignore that. So this isn't going to be a does CTV work? Conversation. It's going to be how can we do it better? So I hear this one all the time. CTV is just like digital, and that's a reasonable perception to have. It's got clear targeting, it's got clear measurement. It should be easier to buy. But the problem is that belief creates a lot of myths. And today we're going to do some myth busting together, starting with cost. You often hear that CTV is the affordable version of tv, and that is half true. You can test CTV with a smaller upfront budget than you can with linear. You don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars to get on air. But accessibility is not the same as efficiency. If you're buying linear efficiently, CPMs can be significantly higher in CTV versus traditional linear. Not only are the base CPMs higher, but then you've got these tech and targeting fees that get layered on top when you buy through a traditional DSP. And so while 500 bucks, yeah, can get you on air and can get you a CTV campaign, that's not going to be enough to actually move the needle and see a business impact. The visibility, the awareness and the accessibility and credibility that are the whole reason to do TV in the first place can require bigger investments. So if you come from a performance marketing background like I do, repetition can really feel necessary to get somebody to convert. But in TV frequency can become the enemy really fast. We've all had the experience of seeing the same ad over and over and over again, and it not only annoys people it's wasteful. If we look at response, that first impression does the most work and after that happens response, literally the return drops off of a cliff. I'm not suggesting that you should only reach everybody one time. That's impossible. Right? Multiple impressions are effective and can still produce a positive roi and they can support brand recall. But frequency is a problem in ctv. We've all seen it and it needs to be managed and monitored. Next up is premium inventory. The I've got to be on Netflix or I've got to be on prime or I've got to be on Peacock. I get it. This myth is super common when brands are feeling pressured to be seen. Platforms like Hulu and Disney and Netflix, they all command really high CPMs. And it's because they have a high perceived value. And the difference in price, as you can see here, is really significant. But we have yet to see any evidence that these premium platforms actually drive more valuable customers and a bigger impact. So I mean, don't get me wrong, these platforms are amazing. I watch them all the time. They have lots of opportunity for advertisers. But limiting advertising to just a few platforms is going to not only limit your reach, but it's going to limit performance potential as well. If we're chasing after premium for quality, we've got bigger issues. CTV buys, they can spill into non CTV devices. They can get into gaming apps and sketchy placements. If you're not policing your supply. Ad fraud is still a very real issue. Most of this inventory is bought programmatically and according to Doubleverify, without the protections, more than a quarter of CTV video impressions go to waste because of fraud. So it's no wonder that a third of us doubt the effectiveness of CTV advertising. And then there's the targeting myth. This one could be the most damaging because it can limit reach. It can really drive up costs fast and give us a false sense of certainty. Most CTV targeting relies on IP addresses. But the problem is IP doesn't equal people. In fact, IP addresses alone are basically worthless for targeting. To make them worthwhile, they need to be mapped to a consumer profile using first or third party data, both of which can be expensive and very error prone. We had a situation recently where IP matching was 13% accurate. That's a really low number. Obviously you're going to want to see things north of 60, 70, 80, 90%. 13% is really terrible. Truthset reported that CTV advertisers are on track to waste $7 billion this year on bad identity data. Measurement is where things get super messy. Because CTV is delivered through apps and devices, we assume that it's clean and it's attributable. But the problem is if you ask five people how your CTV is performing, you're going to get five different answers. It's really hard to measure. We see weak test design, weak control groups, attribution windows that are way too long, IP accuracy issues and claims of incrementality, but with no proof behind it. Here you can see the outcome of four different measurement approaches for the exact same campaign, and they're wildly different. If you are relying too heavily on one set of data, it can lead you down the wrong path. And it's like, which one do you believe? So if CTV isn't like digital, what is it? I like to just call it tv, right? Consumers already behave this way, they already think this way. It's literally anything they can see on their TV set, whatever's on the screen, on the wall. So if CTV is tv, we've got to change how we approach targeting, how we approach measurement and how we approach buy. AI is everywhere right now. The guy that was just up here before me was talking about AI, right? It's not just a buzzword in tv, it's doing some real work behind the scenes. When you've got as fragmented of a marketplace as we have right now in television, buying efficiently requires analyzing billions of data points across pricing, across inventory, across viewing behavior and all sorts of other things. It's impossible for a human to effectively optimize all of that manually and not for the entire TV landscape. So AI can really be helpful here to help identify areas of opportunity and predict performance before the buy even goes out. This approach can be way more efficient and help reduce the high cost of the channel also. So what if we could target smarter? That'd be awesome, right? Instead of relying on third party data, Smart smart targeting allows us to access media based on what's most predictive of viewer engagement. This would allow a brand to reach new audiences without the third party data and that IP guesswork that I was talking about earlier. So for our clients, using an approach like this has Translated to a 2x performance gain over the traditional third party targeting. With measurement, you cannot rely on a single metric. We believe you need a system of measurement. We combine all of these different types of measurement, incrementality, IP matching, econometrics, brand studies, all of that stuff to see the true impact of ctv. This is really what it needs to look like. Multiple attribution models are going to ensure that you're seeing a complete and accurate picture across the entire landscape, one that is going to instill confidence and allow you to take action. Finally, there's the topic of linear tv. We've all heard the phrase linear is dead. Ctv. Yeah, it's the future of advertising. But too many marketers are counting linear out too quickly. According to a survey of more than 300 marketers, three and four of them agree that CTV and linear work really well together. Or on the linear side of things, you can get that broad base of reach and awareness, then CTV can come in and help convert those to customers. So we really feel like it's important to consider both. So, yes, it's hard to get CTV right, but if you do, it can have a huge upside. It provides an opportunity to get ahead of your competition and show up exactly where your audience is watching. Many of us are planning to grow our CTV investments over the next two to three years. 83% of us to be exact. And we know CTV isn't broken. But the way we're buying it, the way we're measuring it, and the way we are targeting in it today needs to evolve. And the brands that win in this space aren't going to be the ones that are spending more money. It's going to be the ones that are spending that money smarter. So thanks so much for your time today, guys. If you found this helpful, you can listen to our team talk more about CTV and all kinds of other marketing topics by scanning this QR code here. So thank you.