With the ubiquity of smartphones as part of our everyday life, marketing is constantly evolving to keep up, and changing how brands engage with their audiences in real time and relevant moments. Digital marketers have adapted as well, driven by the need to deliver relevant content and app updates quickly, taking advantage of faster internet and ad servers, improved technology and global connectivity, and the wealth of behavioral data available. This has positioned programmatic advertising at the center of this evolution.
Mobile app advertising is now a dominant force in programmatic advertising, with mobile app revenues breaking growth records year after year. Even with a wide range of apps at their fingertips, consumers remain loyal to TV—whether it’s for shows like the final season of Game of Thrones, live sports events like the World Cup, the Champions League, or the Super Bowl, or a nostalgic throwback movie night.
While phones are the most-used devices (forecasted at 242 minutes per day by 2025 according to eMarketer), Connected TV (CTV) is catching up quickly, with usage expected to rise as Smart TV adoption skyrockets and on demand content becomes more enticing. In Q2 of 2024 alone, 30.1 billion hours were streamed on Roku. This trend is set to grow, especially in regions like Brazil, Mexico, and the Asia-Pacific (APAC), where Smart TV use is on the rise.
With more CTV devices globally, brands now have an exciting opportunity to connect with audiences in new ways. CTV combines powerful targeting with engaging storytelling, offering a fresh way for brands to reach households.
In this blog, we will explore the brief history of CTV—how this channel emerged, how it differs from OTT, and why it matters to modern app marketers. You will also discover its advantages and key considerations for incorporating it into your marketing mix strategy and getting a leg up in today’s competitive CTV landscape.
Brief History of CTV
Connected TV (CTV) has gained a lot of media attention and focus in the AdTech space as of late, but it’s not a newcomer. Streaming services and devices have been a part of early-adopters living rooms for over a decade.
CTV refers to any physical TV set connected to the internet. These include smart TVs produced by a number of consumer electronics companies, TV (streaming) sticks, and gaming consoles. CTV advertising on the other hand is the inventory bought and sold, and then displayed via CTV devices.
Netflix paved the way for the category by revolutionizing how viewers consumed entertainment. It’s hard to connect the dots to Netflix’s ‘DVDs days’, as they have become synonymous with on-demand. Roku was also early to the scene, offering an alternative stand-alone option for streaming titles to your Internet-connected television from a remote control.
Later, ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) platforms like Hulu, YouTube, and other emerging streaming services, such as Tubi and Peacock (NBCUniversal Media Group), launched ad-supported models. With new supply, consumers’ habits changed and they opted to watch these ads in exchange for on-demand access to stream over-the-top (OTT) content, ranging from video and audio to live TV.
OTT is the method of delivering content–whether consumed via mobile, desktop, and Smart TVs–while CTV is the device it is streamed to. OTT streaming content goes “over” the conventional content schedule of a service provider such as broadcast, cable, or satellite TV stations.
This change in content models further led advertisers to shift budgets from traditional linear TV to CTV advertising. Programmatic CTV advertising also began to find its footing, which enabled real-time bidding (RTB) for CTV inventory similar to how ads were served on desktop and mobile web environments.
A significant shift occurred after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic that has forever changed the category and consumers’ reliance on these comforts and services. “Cutting the cord” became a household phenomenon, wherein people let go of their expensive cable TV service providers and opted for subscriptions to internet-streaming services to cater content for them. An entire generation of younger Millennials and Gen Z families and professionals skipped this phase entirely, opting for streaming and smart-TVs from the get-go.
Two important factors have made CTV the advertising darling of 2024
- Effective targeting through data: CTV enables advertisers to leverage geographic and behavioral data, making ads far more relevant compared to traditional TV spots.
- Household-level targeting: Rather than showing the same ad to all viewers, CTV allows for tailored ads to be served to different households—and their connected devices—based on specific criteria.
CTV and Why It Matters to Marketers
Connected TV (CTV) devices and the streaming services untethered to former programmed TV schedules have introduced novel advertising formats. In these environments, users engage with your brand in a different setting from mobile or web, allowing for unique opportunities to build awareness while keeping them entertained.
Interestingly, this up and coming channel also offers incredible crossover capabilities. With myriad targeting and audience possibilities, creative freedom mirroring storytelling legacies from linear TV, and seamless tie-ins across channels and devices, CTV can elevate full-funnel campaigns—from Branding and User Acquisition (UA) to Retargeting. All reaching new heights for both branding and performance marketers.
Simply put, CTV holds enormous potential for advertisers. In fact, ad spend in this space is projected to grow 22.4% in the United States alone in 2024, according to eMarketer. And tackling it through a multi-channel approach can add phenomenal layers of branding and holistic discovery moments, driving the success of your brand.
What’s in It for Marketers?
After being a longtime staple in global households and public spaces (sports bars, coffee shops, gyms, community centers), linear TVs have given way to the high adoption of SmartTVs, stand-alone streaming devices (such as Roku, Apple TV, Tizen OS (Samsung), Google Chromecast OS, Amazon Fire), and gaming consoles, which have all played their part in this massive shift in behavior and consumption. In 2023, Statista reported that 88% of US households had at least one internet-connected device at home. While the rest of the world gains traction, the US continues to lead in CTV adoption and advertising spend.
Bigger screens and distinct global inventory, combined with the fact that most viewers are in peak comfort-mode at home when watching their CTV make an interesting testing area for user acquisition and branding. Following the success of mobile advertising and the key performance indicators (KPIs) developed amongst top brands and performance marketers, CTV provides a unique, scalable, and multi-device proposition for comprehensive campaigns that blend channel methodologies.
As app businesses are constantly seeking new channels to connect with their audience, CTV emerges as an ideal option due to its growing popularity and ability to reach a broader, engaged audience.
Reasons to Adopt CTV to Your Brand’s Marketing Mix
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Massive Scale: Broader reach on a medium that remains relatively undersaturated, offering significant opportunities for growth.
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Desirable Target Audience: Reach savvy, high-value users, similar to engaged mobile users, with the potential for effective targeting and segmentation.
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Immersive Experience: Capture users in relaxed environments on larger screens, encouraging cross-device and multi-screen interaction.
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Creative Expression and Emotive Copy: Leverage the power of on-screen storytelling and emotional connections felt towards entertainment to showcase your brand’s value proposition in a compelling and relevant way.
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Capture Their Attention: Unskippable ads and ad pods provide brands with the opportunity to make a lasting impression through varied, back-to-back messaging.
Things App Marketers Should Keep in Mind with CTV
Audience Shifts
As CTV has evolved from traditional TV advertising, the availability of certain inventory—particularly in specific regions or languages—may not yet meet the growing demand. This can limit reach in some markets. However, with 98% of internet-connected households accessible through open programmatic CTV ads, the broader reach and personalization potential should still be considered.
Adjusting Habits
CTV ads are not clickable unlike their mobile ad counterparts, and served video impressions will not lead directly to app install pages. While this may seem like a drawback, it also encourages app marketers to craft stronger CTAs and develop creative strategies that motivate users to search for and download the app on mobile devices.
Pricing
Finally, high CPMs can be a hurdle–or at least a data point to get accustomed to–for many app marketers as they navigate a new spending category. It’s crucial to partner with trusted technology providers who offer clear, transparent data to help optimize for strong return on ad spend (ROAS).
Protected Inventory
Finding transparent CTV partners with protected inventory is important to the quality of your campaigns. Like the ad inventory available for web and mobile, ad fraud is a topic marketers need to be aware of and take precautionary measures to limit. Advertisers should be keen to mitigate their exposure to bot fraud, the use of fraudulent ad exchanges, and unethical reporting of audience extension services.
How can RevX Help You Achieve Your App Growth KPIs Through CTV?
Our programmatic DSP scales your app with effective Retargeting and UA campaigns providing high-touch management services backed by machine learning-fueled automatic bidding and optimizations serving various ad formats. Our platform also works to eliminate fraud and offer transparent reporting data corroborated with top Mobile Measurement Partner (MMPs).
To drive further engagement, our CTV advertising inventory, accessed through partnerships with reputable Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs), offers advanced targeting options, including geo-level, content genre, and content language targeting. This creates opportunities for creative testing and optimized CTAs, building awareness and driving down-funnel actions such as increased app installs, in-app events, and conversions
In Summary
CTV holds a number of unique characteristics that make it an imperative choice for the savvy app marketer, especially as an addition to your media mix modeling (MMM) strategies. This shift towards interactivity is paving the way for continued innovation in brand and performance marketing.
Like with all unpracticed things there is a learning curve; one for the industry, as well as a period for users to adapt to unfamiliar advertising formats. However, now is the perfect time to make your app stand out by experimenting with CTAs in ad pods and developing best practices for strategies native to CTV, mobile, and cross-platform environments. In a competitive ad-inventory space, those that can stick out the initial warm-up or experimentation phase, will see quicker pivoting for campaigns down the road, as both consumers and the AdTech industry make way for CTV to stay and further evolve.
Stay tuned for the next part of our series on CTV. If you have any questions about launching a campaign or enhancing your mobile app or brand’s growth strategies, feel free to reach out to our team of CTV experts.
Lauren Heineck
