CTV Advertising Takeaways from TVOT Live! 2021

Last week, Innovid showed up in full force at TVOT Live! 2021 with appearances from our Co-Founder and CEO, Zvika Netter; our Co-Founder and CTO, Tal Chalozin; and our GM Measurement and Analytics, Jessica Hogue. While much was discussed among the 100+ industry leaders driving innovation in TV, here are some of our key takeaways from the week:

Consumers chose CTV, and marketers must adapt. 
While marketers control budgets, consumers control behaviors. Consumers dictated the massive CTV spike we saw during the pandemic. They voted with their time and money to increasingly connect their TV to the internet and to install more and more apps. As eyeballs transitioned, so did marketing budgets. We’re now seeing marketers seeking a deeper understanding of CTV (especially as it compares to linear TV), figuring out how to achieve personalization at scale, and consolidating the tech stack to stay closer to technology and data. Consumers have spoken, and those who don’t make CTV an integral part of their omni-channel marketing efforts will quickly get left behind.

Delivering the right message at the right time? It’s finally possible on TV. 
Though the concept of serving the right message to the right person at the right time has taken forever to reach television, the day has come, and the technology exists to help marketers pull it off at scale. Today, marketers can quickly create multiple renderings of a video ad, easily swap messaging to stay relevant with dynamic creatives, and even transact advanced creative programmatically. During the pandemic, marketers got a taste of what true agility looks like because they were, in some respects, forced to experiment with dynamic creative optimization in order to respond to constant changes. The ease with which they’ve been able to adopt the technology and the success they’ve seen shows us that dynamic creative optimization is here to stay.

Take a privacy-first approach, not a tracking-first approach.
Privacy is on everyone’s minds as we consider the future of TV advertising and, specifically, the future of measurement within that landscape. It’s important for companies to self-regulate and build the right technology from the get-go as we work towards a new measurement standard. Perhaps the approach is less about reaching individual viewers and more about reaching households. Regardless of what the ultimate solution(s) ends up being, it’ll likely require a collaborative, cross-industry effort.

It was a jam-packed week, but we walked away feeling invigorated and as excited as ever about the future of television! To keep up with what we have in store, subscribe to our newsletter here.