Connected TV Ads Have Scale: Here's Why Marketers Should Care

Connected TV ads have seen strong growth lately. Video marketing platform Innovid divides the ads it serves into three areas: desktop and notebook, phone and tablet, and connected TV. Guess which area has made the most gains?

"The big screen OTT or connected TV has been skyrocketing, moving from less than 5 percent a little over a year ago to crossing 20 percent of overall ads that we deliver," said Tal Cholozin, CTO of Innovid. "Right now, more than 1 out of 5 ads that we deliver on a daily basis or an hourly basis will be or is viewed on a TV screen. Which means that it's way higher quality, that it's expected to be delivered. People do not really tolerate buffering, the viewers do not tolerate lower quality and expect it to be television-quality."

In other words, the living room big-screen market is finally ready for mass participation. It offers addressability and scale, while avoiding the pitfalls of desktop video.

"A marketer's job is to align the brand with the most premium content that is relevant to their message at large scale," Chalozin explained. "Right now, OTT is a very premium type of a market: There is no fraud, there is no viewability. It's 100 percent brand-safe. You can't really multi-task. You're on the big screen; this is as premium a content as is out there. And we've reached a threshold of scale: Right now we estimate a little over 50 million households in the United States are watching ad-supported video on their big-screen TV on a weekly or a monthly basis."

For marketers waiting for the right moment to experiment with connected TV buys, Innovid says it's arrived: "Scale is there, the premium content is there, and now it's the time for more and more marketers to explore the space," Chalozin said.

Scroll down to view the full Beet.tv interview, used with permission.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net