Over the last decade, there has been a significant shift from linear TV to CTV. And this transformation has allowed marketers to collect more data while providing a better user experience.
But what will the future of CTV advertising look like?
In this episode of Infutor’s Identity Revolution podcast, our host Cory Davis welcomes Tal Chalozin, the CTO and co-founder of Innovid, an adtech firm focused on the creative optimization and measurement of video ad serving. They talk about the inevitable switch from linear TV to CTV, why measurement will play a crucial part in this transformation, and the main predictions for the future of CTV.
The switch from linear TV to CTV was inevitable and expected.
“We started back in ’07, a little after Google acquired YouTube, and that was the time that Hulu was kind of in inception mode. And back then, the idea of the television moving to the internet seemed like a pipe dream. But it was obvious for us that it would happen. We had no clue what the components of it would be. Obviously, a lot of things are pending right now, but it is obvious that for the lion’s share of time people will spend watching television, so this experience will not go away, but it will get replaced by a different cable.”
Everyone understands that CTV is the future.
“The biggest thing is to explain what I just described (the switch to CTV), clearly and in a much more in-depth manner, to a lot more public market investors that were pleasantly surprised to see that everyone is unanimous – that everyone understands that this will happen. We thought that we would need to explain to people about this transformation, but thanks to Roku and Netflix and many other companies like Disney+, streaming is a given. No one is actually challenging that.”
More types of advertisers
“There are the main advertisers in linear television, but we were always sure that as television moved to streaming, it will not only create a better experience for viewers and for marketers, but also open the floodgates to many more types of advertisers and would lower the barrier to entry.”
Will the future of television look like TV or like digital?
“Here comes digital that did a lot of things, but one big thing about this conundrum of the buying-and-sales side is that it pushed a lot into the buy-side. Programmatic, DNP, and many other things pushed a lot of technology to the buy side. I think an interesting step — if you kind of study history and say what the future would be — is just fast-forward, we’re clearly kind of in a musical-chair-type of moment in what would the future look like? It’s an interesting question. Will the future of television look like television or look like digital? So that’s one very interesting thing, at least considering the two sides. Who will be the bigger buyer of technology, and who will be the owner of more data?”
[3:38] “It needs to be a better experience, both for marketers and for viewers. We set out on a journey to do that. Then we didn’t really pivot in 15 years. We stayed true to what we said back in July 2007, which was that we want to create better TV experiences on the web, and that is what we’re doing.”
[11:33] “There’s a lot of new technology that enables different attributes and different capabilities to be measured, and the whole streaming world is in its infancy or still in early innings. So a lot of the shaping of the industries is happening right now.”
[17:30] “I’m sure everyone listening is somewhat partaking in the marketing, and specifically the marketing technology space. I’m sure it’s not news that the market is super dynamic. Every day, you open whatever publication you read; there’s something, somewhat shocking, that is happening. So it’s not news that this is rapidly changing.”
