The connected TV (CTV) space is gaining traction in Australia: audiences are flocking to BVOD, streaming services - both international in Netflix and local in BINGE - have introduced ad-supported offerings and the Virtual Australia measurement system, better known as VOZ, is set to bring together broadcast viewing on TV sets and connected devices to provide all-screen, cross-platform planning and reporting for Australia’s television industry.
Cathy Oh, global head of marketing for Samsung Ads, said that she thinks while streaming is surging on a global scale, it's still going to take some time for different markets, especially ones like Australia, to see streaming becoming not just an equal viewership player to linear, but perhaps one day a prominent viewership player in the market.
“We're seeing a growth in that - certainly it's been outpacing subscription video on demand (SVOD), especially in Australia also, which I thought was very interesting,” Oh told AdNews.
“I find it fascinating that the advertising video on demand (AVOD) global revenue is expected to hit $70 billion by 2027. It's just tremendous to see that type of number out there.
“Two to three years ago, even in a country like the US where I think AVOD was perhaps first introduced and perhaps even more well adopted, I don't think I would have been able to predict such a number.”
As for how marketers can tap into this huge opportunity, Oh - who is based out of New York City - said that they have to ask themselves what role CTV should play as they’re planning out the media mix.
While the answer isn’t going to be the same for every company or every brand, she says it's important for marketers to identify how they want to reach a growing audience that is utilising streaming more and more.
“It's not going away, and if anything, it's only going to grow, so I think it's more about how much investment do you want to put into reaching this audience?” said Oh.
“Because it's not just about reaching them one time, especially when it comes to CTV media buys and marketing - it's actually about those learned experiences and insights that are gathered from that target audience, and you're going to be able to pursue that same audience campaign over campaign."
Oh said one of the most common and successful ways that a linear buyer or brand can utilise CTV for targeting and scale is thinking about the linear ads that are running, identifying audiences that have either seen the ad or haven't seen the ad, and then being able to reach them elsewhere, whether it's going to be on CTV, through other AVOD platforms or even FAST (free ad supported streaming TV) platforms..
"Specifically in Australia, CTV is much easier than people think it is," Oh told AdNews.
“The ability to put CTV and marketing dollars [into a media mix] is fairly easy, especially when you're working with a company like Samsung Ads, that knows your consumers and has the technology to do that.
“One of the recommendations I always have, especially with brands and marketers that are new to CTV, is to do a test: give us some dollars and we’ll try it, because I think the benefits that one will find is that there's a level of insights that you're never going to be able to get purely from broadcast or linear.
“This is a very dynamic year - every dollar counts. I have spoken with marketers and agencies around the globe and not a single one of them is saying that they have plenty of dollars to throw at experimental. People are hyper-focused on performance and I think that CTV is going to afford them an opportunity to be much more performance-driven and transparently more ROI driven.”
Oh said that she thinks the knowledge base of CTV has a long way to go in Australia, but that it's going to happen at a faster velocity.
“The questions that are being asked here, the very intriguing probing that I'm hearing from agencies and buyers, is incredibly sophisticated and smart,” Oh said.
“I think it is not so much about understanding the education of what CTV is, or what FAST is, but it's more about getting to that comfortable point of change of understanding what role does CTV play in the whole mix of all of our media that we currently have today in Australia.
“Certainly, there's going to be the tried and true and passionate broadcast believers; there's going to be those that are going to believe linear is going to continue to be dominant. Samsung Ads has never once said that linear is going away, but we do see that there is a shift in having both streaming and linear play in the mix.
“Now it's going to be more challenging for marketers to think about how to reach those right audiences to ensure that you're not duplicating or having region frequency issues and just making sure that your dollars are working smart."
Despite the positive outlook, there are number of problems confronting the CTV space, both domestically and internationally, the foremost being a lack of defined currency around metrics and cross-platform measurement solutions as well as an issue around co-viewing, where a couple or family may share the one connected TV, making it harder for both advertisers to target specific demographics as well as to track who saw what ad and when.
With VOZ having been announced in Australia, and other measurement platforms such as Nielsen and Ipsos in the US, there is hope on the horizon – at least in terms of answering the measurement question – but Oh said that she’s still personally “thinking and assessing” around what the answers to such quandaries could be.
“One of the things that I will say is that when we work with ‘big marketers’ - marketers who have invested multi millions of dollars in CTV, specifically with Samsung Ads as partners - the way that we've been able to work with them is to have a level of trust in our data, which serves as our currency,” Oh told AdNews.
“There’s benchmarking that we develop that we're able to see that becomes true foundational numbers, because we're doing dozens and dozens of campaigns and seeing those metrics and click through actions and being able to showcase whether there's performance-driven metrics against it.
“To tie that now consistently across the board, we're talking about having to look at metrics that are going to be comparable with other platforms and players and I think it's going to take a little bit of time. Agencies are certainly finding ways to band-aid the solution, but it's still an unsolved area.”
Despite the economic headwinds faced by the industry at the current juncture – in what Oh termed “a tough year for marketers” that features budget cuts, employee layoffs and subsidised divisions, as well as history proving that marketing budgets are typically the first to go – she sees reason for optimism.
“I think that marketers are smart, and while their budgets may be reduced, they're actually thinking about how to use their budgets more in a measurable way,” said Oh.
“I will tell you that in the US, I am really proud to say that our partners have still maintained a healthy budget with us and continue to drive CTV spend. If anything, we're finding that the CTV spend and work that we're doing is actually better informing them on how to use other budgets elsewhere.
“That's one of the areas that I would love for us to really bring to Australia to showcase that with the spend that they have with CTV, or Samsung Ads specifically, is actually going to better inform them on their entire marketing media mix, not just the spend that they have with us.”
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