The Great Unification of Converged TV is Here

TV is amidst a revolution. There’s more content than ever before, and the modern viewer consumes it on their own time, in their own way, and via a variety of devices. 

This fragmentation means one thing for brands and agencies: They need to reimagine the TV advertising experience. And that’s why the shift to “converged TV” (linear TV + CTV + digital video ads) is having a transformative effect on the buy- and sell-side alike. TV is no longer bound by time, platforms, locations, or devices. 

Innovid was hungry to learn more about the shift, so we went out and surveyed 250+ advertisers about the challenges and opportunities aligned with a unified view of converged TV advertising. 

You can access the full report, “The Great Unification of Converged TV” here. In the meantime, here are some big insights we dug up!

Converged TV spend is up and up 

As expected, advertisers increased investment into converged TV, with a whopping 80% doing so in 2022. Among that group, almost 45% allocate a sizable cut – 20-40% – of their total media ad spend to converged TV. 

Increased converged TV spend also means a more diverse video mix. Advertisers are no longer funneling the majority of their media budget into one platform. Instead, our respondents confirmed a wide range of impression allocation across linear TV, CTV, and digital video. 

…But it also brings some growing pains 

Even though converged TV is gaining more recognition, thanks to its plentiful opportunities for reaching and engaging audiences “where they are,” it’s not without challenges. 

“Viewer fragmentation,” defined as reaching audiences across separate publishers, platforms, and devices, emerged as a top-ranked pain point among 40% of surveyed advertisers. It also served as a catalyst for many other pain points. “Creative personalization,” meaning producing data-driven ad experiences at scale, was listed as a challenge by 35%. “Inconsistent measurement” followed closely behind at 32%. 

Converged TV is siloed by nature, which causes disparate measurement and creative optimizations across the plethora of platforms at advertisers’ disposal. That’s why a unified solution that “connects the dots'' is increasingly essential.

Right now, there are converged TV solutions that can help 

A unified view of converged TV advertising eliminates silos, brings consistency across platforms, and surfaces the metrics that matter most. With that, teams ultimately gain back more time and resources.

Overall, our data validated that fact. For one, 92% said that a unified view of converged TV reach and performance was either “important” or “very important”. So, clearly, a unified view of converged TV investments is highly desirable. But why aren’t more advertisers implementing it now?

Among respondents, 66% said “consolidated tech” to streamline and automate ad delivery and measurement was needed. Hurdles that followed included, “unified measurement” (63%) and “connected data” across linear TV, CTV, and digital video (62%). 

Concluding thoughts 

In our current agile, always-on market, advertisers are compelled to scope out opportunities for continuously and quickly adapting and scaling media and creative strategies. That’s precisely why a cross-platform, unified view can ensure KPIs are accurate and substantial. More so, those KPIs become actionable.

All together, these figures accentuate the missing puzzle piece in many advertisers’ converged TV approach–a unified view. But with consolidated visibility into performance across these growing channels, advertisers can be empowered to optimize in-flight for much greater campaign reach and engagement.

Want more? Check out Innovid’s new survey, “The Great Unification of Converged TV”, here.