Will CTV Advertising Continue Its Reign in 2022?

Most of the digital ad industry buzz in Q1 and Q2 2021 centered around customer data and legitimate ways to obtain it upon the deprecation of third-party cookies. But the second half of the year was all ears on metaverse. 

Blame it on Facebook’s rebranding, or its rivals’ promises to release new AR devices in 2022, but the center of the audience’s attention has shifted to the capabilities of the next iteration of the internet — and people’s activities in it, respectively.

Meanwhile, the heated discussions around CTV have turned into somewhat routine talks among experts, most of whom were finally ready to admit that many of the measurement and attribution challenges in the niche were yet to be resolved. 

Does this mean the reign of CTV in digital video advertising is over? Or are CTV ad businesses just keeping things quiet, while ramping up their product tech core?

Related: What 2021 M&A Deals Tell Us About the Future of Online Advertising

Programmatic CTV to accelerate 

Following the similar trends in other niches of the global online ad market, the CTV sector has been rapidly shifting the focus of its development to programmatic advertising over the past 12 months. 

More importantly, this trend is only likely to accelerate in 2022, particularly due to the massive market capitalization and the rapid growth of FAST and AVOD services we’ve been tracking. 

In this respect, what we can already predict is the introduction of new CTV adtech software, specifically aimed at the better verification of video ad viewability, higher transparency of programmatic ad deals in the niche, as well as the more enhanced programmatic SSAI mechanisms. 

In addition, we’re also likely to see the further upgrade of the video ad player and video ad server tech solutions on the global scale, which will need to add and/or enhance their capabilities with regards to the CTV environment in order to keep up with the competition. 

The fight for CTV audience data to heat up

Undoubtedly, the importance of access to first-party data in the CTV segment is hard to underestimate. However, while the key holders of such data are known to be streaming providers, continuously striving to maintain and increase their subscription rates and advertisers’ base (in case with ad-supported services), the fact is, they’re not the only ones. 

Namely, CTV OS operators have just as much access to audience data, including their streaming patterns and content/ad preferences. And this type of data, currently monetized via proprietary streaming services, if any, can easily become a valuable second-party data asset in 2022.

Related: From CTV to Programmatic Product Placements: Marketing Trends to Embrace in 2022

The reasoning behind this is clear. 

First, the share of each OS operator on the market isn’t likely to grow big enough to form data monopolies. Second, the accelerating increase of programmatic ad deals in the segment will be fueling the demand for the more precise audience segmentation.

And last, but not least, the overall video ad spending on CTV will push the streaming market further in its evolution, hence opening the way to the launch of many more new relevant apps and services.