LONDON – Connected TV has burgeoned in recent years thanks to new over-the-top TV services and, latterly, stay-at-home viewing growth.

Now the new year is set to see it take off even farther.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Daniel Clayman, Xandr VP and MD for Northern Europe, explains what 2021 means for CTV growth in his region.

Big and ready

Clayman explains that, in Europe, CTV is a little less mature in some ways than in the USA.

“CTV is probably a couple of years ahead in the US just by nature of how TV and distribution of TV works, it’s quite different to Europe,” he says.

“Whilst the number of opportunities is smaller, they’re still very large and we plan to be going off to them pretty significantly next year.”

In Europe, entrenched broadcasters, many of them public broadcasters, have got their CTV game in order, bringing authenticated multi-platform viewing environments to market for consumers, and bringing consumers’ data to market for advertisers.

Identity for TV

It’s not just market maturity that is different across the Atlantic. Strict privacy regulation has also thrown a curve-ball to TV ad targeting, limiting some aspects of advanced viewer profiling.

Even so, many CTV deployments actually lack audience identifiers in the first place.

The ways which CTV practitioners have found around that challenge actually make them more developed than some peers who are pondering the demise of desktop and mobile cookies.

“We’ve found some great partnerships with the likes of InfoSum that will allow us to take a unique stance to the buy and sell side on that front,” Xandr’s Clayman says.

CTV growth

Xandr emerged after AT&T’s acquisition of ad-tech firm AppNexus – the Big Bang for what is now an expanding luxury of opportunity available to Xandr itself.

Xandr launched Invest TV, a platform for TV ad buyers to transact using data across multiple linear programmers, in March 2020 – just as COVID-19 was taking hold, but just in time for a boom in connected TV viewing.

The suite began with Xandr parent WarnerMedia, AMC, and Disney on the system, and recently added A+E Networks and Crown Media Holdings.

AT&T Marketing, Hearts & Science and Media Hub also came on as buyers.

Transparent TV

The company’s Clayman says ad buyers and sellers want transparency in connected TV.

“We’ve worked for the last two or three years in terms of signing contracts with our publishers that would allow us to share our SSP or technology take rate with the buyer that we charge to the publisher,” he says.

“That allows us to bring 100% working media to the supply chain. Clients can see exactly where their money goes.

“Most SSPs and DSPs won’t sign those types of contracts. The footprint on the sell side, plus our ability to get these contract signed has given us a very unique proposition that isn’t in market elsewhere.”

You are watching “Where We Go From Here: The Lessons and Opportunities of 2020, ” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Xandr. For more videos, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on @robertandrews