How the Converged TV Disconnect Hits the Entertainment and Financial Services Industries Hardest

The converged TV disconnect is real. It’s especially real for the entertainment and financial services verticals — but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

First, let’s briefly explore what the converged TV disconnect is and how it is a challenge for the advertising industry. Innovid’s recent research uncovered a disparity between the time advertisers spend measuring their convergent TV ad campaigns and the time they spend optimizing them. 

In short, brand and agency professionals spend significantly more time measuring their campaigns than optimizing them. This gap is the converged TV disconnect, and it poses a problem — because advertisers may be allowing poor-performing ads to run for far too long, jeopardizing ROAS. 

This divergence between time spent measuring and time spent optimizing is magnified in the entertainment and financial services sectors. Read on to explore how the converged TV disconnect impacts different vertical markets to varying degrees. 

A 2024 boost in converged TV ad spending 

The key verticals that Innovid surveyed in its research were entertainment, financial services, travel, technology, and retail. 

In each of these vertical industries, most respondents plan to invest more in converged TV advertising in 2024. Leading the way were the large majority of respondents in the entertainment vertical, 73.1% of whom say they will increase their converged TV budgets next year. Travel had the second largest majority planning to spend more in 2024, followed by technology (64.6%), financial services (58.2%), and retail (54.3%). 

In each of these verticals, respondents say they also invest significant time in optimizing their campaigns. More than three in five (60.2%) of respondents in the entertainment industry say they spend more than half of their time optimizing campaigns, which was the highest percentage of any vertical in our survey. Majorities in the other verticals also spent more than half of their time optimizing campaigns: travel (56.6%), retail (53.1%), financial services (52.8%), and technology (52.1%). 

Advertisers optimize campaigns less frequently than they measure them

That data implies that all vertical sectors are measuring their campaigns frequently — although significantly less often than they are optimizing them. 

Ideally, the frequency of optimization would equal the frequency of measurement. That’s not the case in any vertical industry we surveyed, and it’s especially not the case in the entertainment sector. 

Our research shows that 75.0% of entertainment brand and advertising professionals measure their converged TV advertising campaigns at least weekly, But only 63.9% optimize the media in those campaigns at the same frequency. That’s a more than 11-point gap between measurement and optimization in the entertainment sector. The bottom line: this gap may be causing the entertainment sector’s ROAS to fall short. 

The financial sector has an even more significant gap. Innovid’s research indicates that 76.5% of financial services brand and advertising professionals measure their converged TV advertising campaigns at least weekly. At the same time, however, just 54.6% optimize the media in those campaigns at the same frequency. That’s a troubling 21.9 percentage point difference. 

A troubling and magnified disconnect

These numbers are the converged TV disconnect in action for the financial services and entertainment sectors. The disconnect can create issues for advertisers: When optimization lags behind measurement, marketers may be airing underperforming ads for far too long. 

Most respondents in most verticals acknowledge that optimizing convergent TV campaigns is a challenge. Sixty percent of brand and advertising professionals in financial services say their optimization efforts fall short. The data is similar in the other key verticals: Retail (59.6%), technology (55.4%), entertainment (52.8%), and travel (49.1%). 

Part of the reason why brand and advertising professionals in these vertical industries are dissatisfied with their optimization efforts — and are experiencing the converged TV disconnect — is that they are using separate platforms for measuring and optimizing their campaigns. Here’s the percentage of advertisers in each vertical who are measuring and optimizing on separate platforms:

• Entertainment 66.7%
• Travel 66.0%
• Technology 63.5%
• Retail 59.6%
• Financial Services 58.2%

Using one platform to measure campaigns and another to optimize them often results in inefficiency and reduced ROI.

How to fight the converged TV disconnect

A platform exists today that can aid media and creative professionals increase the effectiveness of their optimization efforts. This technology enables measurement and optimization on the same platform, delivering increased efficiency and improved performance. It’s one path that brand and agency professionals in any vertical sector can take to fight the converged TV disconnect. 

Innovid is the only platform that connects converged TV ad measurement with the ability to automatically optimize to drive results — all in a single, fully integrated platform. 

Download the infographic 

*Innovid’s Converged TV study was conducted online by PureSpectrum and surveyed more than 250 brand and agency professionals in North America in August 2023. Marketers surveyed included both brand (55%) and agency (45%) professionals across various industries, including auto, retail, entertainment, and finance.