PubMatic Jumps On The Show-Level CTV Targeting Bandwagon
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By Alyssa Boyle
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Connected TV advertisers are still pining after show-level control. And programmatic platforms are scrambling to deliver more granular targeting ahead of their competitors.
PubMatic announced on Thursday that contextual targeting at the episode level is available to media buyers accessing streaming TV inventory through its supply-side platform. The new feature is made possible through a collaboration with Silverpush, an AI-based contextual data intelligence company that centralizes metadata about TV and video content.
In plain English: Buyers are “finally getting to a place” where they can buy streaming TV ads based on the context in which they appear, said Jay O’Brien, group director at WPP Media. PubMatic joins a shortlist of other ad tech vendors shoring up show-level data to attract more ad spend.
But advertisers have been demanding improved program-level transparency in their media buys for years. What’s the holdup?
From an operational standpoint, publishers differ in the type and detail of information they share about their own content. And those publisher signals can be limiting, in part because they aren’t standardized, said Abbie Reichner, VP of customer success at PubMatic. For example, some content owners label the first episode of the first season of a show as ‘S1E1,’ while others might label that episode as ‘Sea1 Ep1.’
So PubMatic tapped Silverpush to introduce some consistency to the show-level data conundrum.
Context is everything
As part of this collaboration, PubMatic packages contextual data segments from Silverpush into its platform. Buyers can then use that information to curate ad inventory based on what’s happening within the programming before bidding on it.
For instance, a travel brand looking to reach people in a traveling mindset can choose to buy inventory within shows that are about traveling and/or include scenes about traveling. One example would be the Smithsonian Channel on Paramount+.
Before this integration, though, Reichner said travel brands working with PubMatic to achieve similar goals would typically rely on third-party audience segments, such as travel enthusiasts. But activating a travel enthusiast audience “has nothing to do with [a show’s] context at all,” she said.
Instead, consumers get categorized into off-the-shelf travel enthusiast segments based on interest- and behavior-based data, such as purchase history at airlines and hotels. CTV advertisers might then try to target those segments by tying IP address data to other identifiers that may be associated with those consumers. But that approach doesn’t give advertisers information about what content those consumers watch – which is a very useful data signal for serving relevant ads as well as adjusting ad frequency.
Which is not to suggest audience-based targeting lacks importance to TV media buyers. But, at the same time, brands long for the program-based targeting that was a staple for media plans in the heyday of linear TV.
It pays to be able to tap into the mindset viewers are in at the moment they’re consuming content, said Jeff Rich, EVP and managing director at Silverpush. From the company’s perspective, “we think you can learn a lot more about a person by understanding what they’re watching, as opposed to tracking their IP address,” he said.
Staying on target
As PubMatic leans more heavily into contextual targeting, it still plans to make audience-based ad targeting available to streaming TV buyers. But using both audience- and contextual-based targeting for the same media plan could limit scale, Reichner said.
Agencies seem to agree with that sentiment.
At WPP, for example, “we don’t add a lot of audience targeting onto contextual segments,” O’Brien said. Doing so isn’t always necessary, he added, because contextual targeting is a “top performer” among the agency’s connected TV media strategy that often drives higher return on ad spend (ROAS) compared to audience targeting.
For example, WPP ran a contextual CTV campaign for a large educational institution and saw one 20% higher conversion rates compared to industry benchmarks, based on data from Lumen Research.
WPP looks at this kind of incremental lift as one of the most important metrics necessary for raising ROAS and achieving “higher-quality leads,” he said, referring to ad exposures that reach people more likely to convert after seeing an ad.
The bottom line, Reichner said, is that when marketers get more information about the environment surrounding their ads, they’re more likely to see better outcomes.
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