#OTT/CTV

Each year in May, television (and now streaming) networks invite the industry to come together and bask in the advertising glory of the year to come. This is the TV Upfront event, where major new shows are revealed, big announcements are made, and advertising deals are struck. It’s a time when all the major outlets are looking to win over programmatic dollars and a timely snapshot into the health of the OTT/CTV medium.

Programmatic advertising has cemented itself as the premier digital marketing avenue, representing the vast majority of digital ad spend in 2023 – the exact percentage depends on who you ask, but the lowest we found was about 80%. Not only is it big, but the numbers also confirm that it’s growing. Programmatic covers a variety of mediums, all of which experienced their own ups and downs worth examining. In this week’s blog, we’re taking a look at how the mediums collectively and individually grew in the year 2023 – as well as comparing them to Genius Monkey data – so you can know the trajectory of industry moving forward.

In a stunning move, three big names in the world of live sports streaming are teaming up to build a “new and exciting platform” launching later this year. Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery are all contributing to a new yet-to-be-named streaming entity in an unprecedented partnership that aims to streamline (or monopolize, depending on how you look at it) the sports-viewing experience. This has the potential to upset the way many marketers reach their audience through sports broadcasting and programmatic OTT, but Genius Monkey users have nothing to worry about, and can even look forward to the exciting new marketing opportunities it provides.

In early 2023, a startup called Telly boldly declared its intention to revolutionize the television industry. Many took notice because the founder and CEO is Ilya Pozin, the former CEO of the wildly successful Pluto TV streaming platform. Even more stand-out was the novel approach to selling televisions: giving them away at no charge. The basic premise is to sell ad space on the TV that subsidizes the cost of the panel itself.

Netflix Reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers in April 2022. They attributed the loss to factors like increased inflation, password sharing, and shutting down service to 700,000+ Russian accounts during the Ukraine invasions. This is the first time in 10 years that such a loss has been reported, and Netflix is fighting to stay ahead of the competition. Is Netflix Now Open to Ads? Though he was once firmly against it, Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings may now be changing his mind about ad-supported streaming, saying that they are “quite open to offering even lower prices with advertising, as a consumer choice.

It’s a new year with a whole new–and bright–outlook on fraud prevention in the programmatic landscape. The pandemic of 2020 dramatically accelerated digital business efforts, and while some have speculated this could potentially make the digital supply chain more vulnerable to fraud, new research has shown that a good portion of fraud is already being effectively prevented. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) is a global program composed of several digital supply chain contributors and ad tech companies–including Genius Monkey–that have banded together in a combined effort to fight fraudulent activity and promote brand safety within digital advertising.

Over the top TV (OTT) or Connected TV (CTV) have pretty much made their mark on the advertising landscape — enough to stake their claim as a mainstay in the advertiser’s official bag of tricks! Currently, there are more than 130 CTV applications1 available to viewers, and that number is growing rapidly; like a new city popping up in the middle of the desert. But, with any new city comes new bad guys.

The year of 2020 has been a wild ride and it’s still going strong. This year has thrown marketers from every industry for a loop when it comes to customer patterns and advertising predictability, and while much of what we’ve learned this year has come at a high cost, we’ve learned a plethora of lessons involving consumer behavior, trends and overall ad effectiveness–and savvy marketers are continuing to adapt their campaign strategies accordingly.

When the pandemic forced billions of people to stay home earlier this year, over-the-top (OTT) media skyrocketed as consumers began streaming more video content than ever before. This wasn’t entirely surprising, though. With video streaming revenue expected to grow to $30.4 billion by 2024, OTT has been a marketing go-to for several years. But there’s an often-overlooked OTT video platform that’s held strong and steady despite the turbulence of 2020, and continues to climb even still: mobile video ads.

More and more people are “cutting the cord” with traditional cable TV services and moving to television streaming services, instead. According to a report by PwC Consumer Intelligence, 78% of households use one-or-more streaming platforms, such as Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and many more. These are known as online streaming providers because they connect users to TV programming without a cable connection. Why consumers are making the “cut” Cord-cutters are turning to TV streaming services not only because they’re more affordable, but because they add convenience to the watching experience.