Audience Measurement of Connected TV

Why is CTV measurement important?

Connected TV is basically another form of television and thus, an ideal advertising medium for mass reach. Therefore, it makes sense to evaluate CTV advertising using traditional performance metrics such as net reach, frequency, and gross rating points.

Without these performance metrics, it is difficult for advertisers to assess the effectiveness of their CTV advertising campaigns, and they risk investing “in the dark”. This is all the more important in a fragmented media landscape in which advertising spend must be distributed and orchestrated across a large number of different advertising media and platforms in order to efficiently build up the reach required for mass advertising. Advertisers are, therefore, dependent on performance metrics that are comparable across all channels in order to manage and plan their investments effectively.

In the interplay between different advertising channels and platforms, CTV plays an increasingly important role in the overall media mix due to its increasing use, particularly in younger target group segments, but also due to its comparable usage to linear TV, and the associated greater receptivity to advertising messages. Therefore, understanding the role of CTV is essential for advertisers when planning and allocating their advertising budgets.

How can CTV be measured?

Audience measurement is associated with several challenges in connected TV. These include co-viewing, i.e. the fact that, in contrast to other digital devices, more than one person usually consumes the content on CTV simultaneously. Other challenges are the completely cookie-free environment and the large number of content and device providers with different options and limitations regarding measurability.

In general, CTV inventories can be divided into two categories regarding their measurability:

• Open (with pixel-based measurement)
• Closed

With pixel-based measurement, a tracking pixel is delivered together with the delivery of the ad, which generates a logline with information such as the IP address, the user agent, the operating system and other data points on the measurement server. The information from the loglines generated when measuring a CTV campaign is assigned to the panellist households using a household graph, in which private households were previously identified, and other nodes, such as offices or cafés, were excluded.

In closed systems where pixel-based measurement is not feasible, the corresponding loglines are not created via pixel retrieval on the measurement servers but are provided to the measurement service provider in a double-blinded data clean room. Email addresses encrypted using the same algorithm are generally used to identify the panellists.

In both cases, a hybrid method of census and panel measurement is used. Total impressions are collected in full using a census measurement. Other metrics (such as net reach, average contacts, demographic profiles, and incremental reach), as well as deduplication and channel overlaps, are determined based on the sample of identified panellists.

The user agent, provided in the loglines, is used to identify “big screens” in the data set by means of a comparison with a positive list. The impressions measured via these “big screens” are multiplied by a so-called co-viewing factor, which takes into account that content on the big screen is consumed by more than one person on average. This co-viewing factor is based on market research and usually ranges between 1.3 and 1.9. After multiplying the reach by the co-viewing factor, the co-viewed impressions are projected onto the reach curve to determine the corresponding co-viewed net reach.

What can you achieve through CTV measurement?

The measurement of CTV campaigns provides a better understanding of the total net reach achieved and the incremental reach of individual channels, both within digital channels and in comparison to linear TV campaigns. Advertisers and agencies can use insights into which target group segments have overlaps in different channels for better planning and targeting, and thus, optimise their campaigns for more efficient reach build-up. Publishers and marketers can prove the value of their CTV inventory to buyers by documenting their incremental reach contribution. In addition, using proven performance metrics enables comparability with linear TV and makes it easier for advertisers to understand and assess the value of CTV campaigns.

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If you are interested in learning more about how CTV measurement can help you get the most value from your media investments or inventory, please fill out the contact form below.