Contextual Advertising for CTV and FAST Raises the Bar on CPMs
The challenge with FAST advertising is how to serve appropriate ads when limited first-party data about the consumer is available. Contextual advertising can provide targeting for this untracked FAST audience adding scene-by-scene detail of exactly what a viewer is watching.
“If you are on the publisher side, you don’t have any information. Hence, they struggle with the fill rate and CPMs,” says Raghu Kodige, founder and CEO at Anoki, a company that specializes in AI-powered contextual CTV advertising. “Anybody who has more data is able to fill and charge more. This is what you will normally hear from the Samsung’s and Roku’s of the world, who have more demand than supply at times, because they have that data.”
Scene-by-Scene Detail
“The early versions of contextual in video was taking the audio [from video] and converting it into text, and then looking for keywords within the text,” says Kodige. Now they do multimodal analysis of the content, audio, video, and closed captioning. “We generate metadata that says how we describe a particular scene. There can be multiple outputs from that: not just ‘this is a bar scene’ but ‘this is a bar scene set in Boston.’ Or it could be a beach scene, with metadata that says, ‘this is a beach scene featuring a couple sitting.’ There's lots of data that gets generated. We store that in embeddings [how AI companies store vast amounts of data] so that you can stitch that back together depending on what the query is.”
“As content is being streamed to the end user, we can generate additional metadata. Then going into an ad break, we can look up, ‘What was the scene that the user just saw?’ and use that additional information, whether it's bid requests or PMPs [private marketplaces],” says Kodige. This scene-level data creates a much more targeted and valuable CPM.
This newer technology is also very attractive for agencies because it allows them to place ads in the right context and be also privacy-safe. “You’re not collecting any information about the users. So, as we move into this cookie-less, more privacy-centric world, this solution becomes very, very attractive,” he says.
Metadata to Increase CPMs
Anoki announced a partnership with Amagi in early August. Anoki’s ContextIQ platform generates contextual scene-level metadata on select content served by Amagi using multi-model generative AI that goes much beyond genres and text analysis. This ensures hyper-relevant ad placements.
“CPMs in the FAST advertising space can fluctuate based on content quality, audience demographics, ad format, and competition,” says James Smith, EVP & GM, ADS PLUS at Amagi. “Generally, CPMs tend to be higher than traditional linear TV due to the targeted nature of FAST advertising and the premium audience it attracts. We’ve observed a steady upward trend in CPMs as the FAST ecosystem matures. The promise of CTV was always based on the opportunity to reach the most qualified audiences for your ads,” he explains. “Advertisers increasingly leverage granular data to reach specific audiences, enhancing campaign effectiveness.”
“We started doing this our own app, but once we had the data on our service, [we realized] that the same channels also get distributed to other platforms,” Kodige says. “So we started working with the content partners and platforms like Amagi, where we can add this contextual data.”
Improving on ACR
Previously only hardware companies (Roku, Samsung, LG, Vizio, etc.) could use automatic content recognition (ACR) on linear viewing to do a better match for advertising targeting. “ACR is only for the manufacturer, and that's why all the content partners struggle with targeting because they don't have access to that,” says Kodige. “If you are a broadcaster or studio providing the content, you don't have access.”
They also work directly with content partners to allow their sales team to sell their share of inventory. “It doesn't have to be only through Amagi; it could be a partner that is coming in through different system, like Frequency or some of the other vendors,” Kodige says.
While matching content to advertising seems like a common use case, they also can match advertising to content. “Someone can upload one of their creatives and then we can analyze the creative and come back with, ‘Here are all the scenes where this creative would be very appropriate,’” says Kodige.
How much more can somebody get on a CPM level for contextual advertising? “I think anywhere between eight to $10 CPM uplift is what we see,” says Kodige. They have started offering this in the US and are expanding to Australia and Western Europe later this year. This kind of contextual targeting has the ability to raise the bar on ad inventory targeting and prices, which is just what the industry needs.
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