Advertising on connected TV has growth healthily lately, after a pandemic viewer surge combined with the maturation of the platform.

But what will it take to sustain that growth.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Sling TV’s programmatic partnerships account executive Andrew Tint says education will be needed.

Education needed

EMarketer forecasts US connected TV ad spending will reach $18.29 billion by 2024, more than double the amount spent in 2020, driven especially by YouTube, Hulu, and Roku.

According to eMarketer’s data, US CTV ad spend jumped 27.1% through 2020 – a year when viewing was swelled by staying at home and advertising was boosted by both US elections and a range of new AVOD entrants.

US Connected TV Ad Spending, 2019-2024 (billions, % change, and % of total media ad spending)

But Tint says ad sales staff are going to need to change tack.

“In order for CTV to continue that growth outside of audience adoption, which has already occurred is, (ad buyer) education,” he says. “That is going to be one of the most important pieces of 2021, because I think that is still frankly the largest gap for a lot of buyers

“We went from ‘the year of mobile’ for 10 straight years … to really what I believe was the first year of CTV in 2020 and there are still a lot of marketers who I think are trying to figure out where CTV exists within their media plans, how to push it successfully in market – there’s an ecosystem between DSPs and SSPs, programmers and data vendors and it’s complex.”

CTV experience

Tint says connected TV is great for targeting ads at individual households.

He says it affords advertisers the opportunity to use TV to go beyond upper-funnel brand goals, extending down to the lower-funnel, where it can drive results.

But Tint doesn’t think the fundamental experience of TV ads is going to look much different to viewers.

“I don’t think we’re going to get to a place for some time where the ad breaks look different,” he says.

“What will be different from a consumer perspective is the relevancy of those ads.”

You are watching “Making CTV Happen: A New Ad Infrastructure Emerges,” a Beet.TV leadership video series presented by Publica. For more videos, please visit this page.