The handful of trends emerging from the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity all point to an ad industry in a state of transition. And perhaps no sector exemplifies this state of flux more than TV.
As of May 2024, streaming now accounts for more than 38% of total TV viewing in the U.S., and connected TV ad spending is projected to hit $29 billion in the U.S. this year. Yet despite this undeniable march toward a digital future and a shift in ad budgets from linear to streaming, the buy side and sell side still seem to be catching up to the creative possibilities of advertising on CTV.
“The pandemic helped CTV growth significantly, and it actually woke up the OEMs as well,” said Serge Matta, president of global ad sales at LG Ad Solutions, during an Ad Age panel on the VaynerX yacht during Cannes Lions. “There’s a massive opportunity here to not only monetize CTV, but also home screen inventory. There’s a lot there, and we’re still in the early days.”
Matta joined Sam Bloom, head of partnerships at PMG; Emily Bromley, VP of growth at FreeWheel; and John Dioso, editor of Ad Age Studio 30, for a look at the dynamic opportunities—and challenges—the new streaming TV landscape offers advertisers.
“We have advertisers with very different kinds of objectives,” said Bloom. “Some are focused on performance, some are focused on consideration, and obviously some are focused on creating awareness. You measure all those objectives in CTV.”
Leveraging data for personalized advertising in CTV
As with all natively digital platforms, the great appeal of CTV for advertisers is the ability to leverage viewer data to optimize ad campaigns.
“CTV creates opportunities for new ad formats like a home screen display and then tying that into streaming,” said Bromley. “It creates incremental supply opportunities for new advertisers to get in where they probably couldn’t have in linear. It’s addressable, it’s measurable and you can do full-funnel attribution.”
Bromley also pointed to how distribution of live sports is dominating the conversation on streaming and how it’s disrupting TV advertising.
“Peacock broke the internet for the AFC playoffs last year,” she said. “The Super Bowl was dynamic, but it mirrored the linear feed. So this is certainly an opportunity for the taking, especially for the creative and marketing side.”
For example, Bloom talked about how Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s used data to tailor ads to different demographics and regions. The QSR chain ran a limited-time offer to give away free burgers in order to drive app loyalty, in-store visits and sales. After targeting male consumers in specific regions in the U.S., the brand saw a 35% lift in incremental visits, a 152% increase in incremental sales and 2.2 times return on ad spend.
However, one misconception among some advertisers is the idea that CTV is primarily or predominantly for incremental reach, he added.
“I can make the case for many clients that CTV ads should be the first thing they should buy, and then they should layer on linear,” said Bloom. “You can aggregate the inventory in very interesting ways to drive outcomes. Post Super Bowl, our campaign for Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s on home screens across LG and a number of other OEMs, as well as on Roku and Amazon, was the clients single biggest day in corporate history in the last four or five years. So there’s real scale there that is moving the needle.”
Matta echoed the sentiment that advertisers are just beginning to recognize the creative potential of advertising on CTV. As a global brand, LG Ad Solutions offers an international perspective on what some of those possibilities are. Matta cited a recent first-of-its-kind 3D campaign that luxury jeweler Chaumet did in France that generated enormous buzz. LG Ad Solutions teamed with the creative media platform Teads to create the 3D pop of diamond rings and bracelets that jumped out at LG's home screen viewers.
Overcoming challenges, maximizing viewer experience
While the opportunities in CTV are vast, measurement and attribution continue to vex the industry. Bromley emphasized the need to focus on interconnectedness and interoperability to improve the execution of CTV campaigns.
“As a platform, CTV has always been complex,” said Bromley. “The industry still has a ways to go, but it’s a huge opportunity. Ultimately if the consumer is what matters—and we all agree on that—we need to focus on the viewer experience as an industry and getting everyone to have more conversations about how do we make that work better?”
With so much focus on the viewer and advertiser experience taking place on OEM home screens, Matta addressed the suggestion that LG and other OEMs were becoming the new walled gardens.
“Some have decided to be a walled garden,” Matta admitted. “We see ourselves as more of a gated community, where we have more control over who accesses our data and opportunities within the LGverse—which is a happy medium.”
About LG Ads Solutions
LG Ad Solutions is a global leader in connected TV and cross-screen advertising, helping brands find hard-to-get unduplicated reach at optimal frequency across the fragmented streaming TV landscape. We bring together LG’s years of experience in delivering world-class smart TVs to consumers worldwide with big TV audience data and Video AI designed to connect brands with audiences across all screens.
