CANNES — It wouldn’t be the International Festival of Creativity if ad creative wasn’t high on the agenda.

But, in a world of advanced targeting and analytics, is the message more important than the medium anymore?

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Beau Ordemann, VP, Head of Advanced TV, Yahoo Advertising, gives his view.

Creativity is key

Yahoo conducted a study earlier this year, CTV Ad Attention & Receptiveness, in collaboration with Publicis Media, to determine what drives attention and receptiveness. The study analysed TVision data using facial recognition and ACR data to generate attention metrics for 66,000 ads, totalling, 1.3 million impressions, 5,000 households and 15,000 people, while Open Mind also conducted a quantitative survey. Among the findings:

  • “A third of the ads in CTV have active attention,” Ordemann says. “81% of consumers, when they’re not looking at the screen, are actually listening to the creative.”
  • 82% of viewers expect free CTV services to carry ads.
  • A third of CTV ads achieve more than two seconds of active, eyes-on-screen attention.
  • Ad attention time increases for older viewers.

Ordemann notes a transition of investment towards streaming and OTT platforms during the TV upfront ad sales season, driven by consumer viewing patterns and the increasing number of streaming players with ads: Y”CTV households, according to eMarketer, are going more than double linear households by next year.”

Two significant trends Yahoo is tracking in the upfronts include:

  • increasing investments in running upfront deals programmatically in a DSP.
  • the proliferation of audience-based strategies.

Ordemann explains that moving from programmatic guaranteed to private marketplaces that are more biddable in nature gives the buyer more control over audiences and frequency holistically.

Simplifying the Landscape for Marketers through Partnerships

Yahoo is partnering to simplify the landscape for marketers. Ordemann mentions a few examples of Yahoo’s partnerships:

  • Addressable linear: Teaming with MVPDs like DirecTV, DISH and FIOS to bring addressable live linear together with connected TV. “Addressable linear is a market that’s going to grow to $4.2 billion next year, which is double where it was in 2020 and represents 6% of overall TV spend.”
  • Data: Another area Yahoo focuses on is connecting the dots between linear and digital by partnering directly with TV data companies like Vizio, DirecTV, and Samba TV. These partnerships provide diverse signals to Yahoo’s platform, enhancing cross-channel measurement capabilities.

Yahoo also recently announced the launch of Yahoo Backstage, its direct-to-publisher solution. Ordemann says. This solution aims to provide a direct line into over a hundred premium publishers, driving supply path optimization, better results, and more transparency.

For more videos from Beet.TV’s Cannes Lions 2023 coverage, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on @robertandrews