NEW YORK – As connected television rapidly reshapes the advertising landscape, Dennis Buchheim, global head of go-to-market for adtech, martech, media and entertainment at Snowflake, sees an evolving ecosystem where data strategy, collaboration and privacy will determine success.
Speaking with Beet.TV’s Lisa Granatstein at the Premium Programmatic Summit, Buchheim pointed to the immersive power of CTV for performance marketing, calling it a format where “you’re reaching an audience that’s very leaned in to the experience.” He added that creative in CTV tends to be “more immersive” and “more memorable a lot of times than it is in other environments.”
One distinct advantage of CTV, Buchheim said, is its ability to influence entire households.
“There’s a level of influence that happens because… you’re among friends and family, which is not a small thing,” he said. This shared viewing dynamic contrasts with the solitary nature of mobile or desktop advertising, where reach may be limited to just one person in a household.
Data strategy first
While many in the industry aim to unlock the full potential of CTV through supply, demand and data collaboration, Buchheim cautioned that most organizations haven’t laid the right foundation.
“You really need to step back and think about your own data strategy first,” he said, adding that companies must assess their internal assets and determine what second- and third-party data they need to enhance their capabilities.
Identity resolution, clean rooms and measurement tools are all part of the solution, he noted, but companies must be selective: “Select the right partners that will augment what you have in-house… whether you’re an advertiser, agency, or publisher.”
That’s a key reason he joined cloud-based data platform Snowflake.
“I think this company is in a really interesting position to help connect different data in a very private, secure, controlled way,” he said.
Household targeting: A paradigm shift
Buchheim, a veteran of digital advertising, admitted that adjusting to household-level targeting in CTV has been a mental shift.
“Thinking in terms of households has almost been like a break-my-brain sort of exercise,” he joked. While identity resolution across individual and household data has improved, he stressed the need for stronger consistency and privacy adherence across the industry.
Balancing immersive creative with performance
As advertisers invest in richer, more immersive creative, now often aided by AI, Buchheim said success depends on smarter evaluation.
“You need to be evaluating on a creative-by-creative basis, on a person-by-person or household basis… what’s effective, what’s not.”
He also pointed to a trend toward longer lookback windows, allowing marketers to understand how a CTV ad might influence a purchase weeks later.
“There’s been a move to more advanced ways to assess incrementality and the overall impact of large-scale campaigns,” he noted.
Snowflake’s role in measurement and brand safety
At its core, Snowflake aims to be the connective tissue of the modern data ecosystem.
“Being the AI data cloud… as a connector of all of those disparate data sources,” Buchheim explained, gives the company a unique role in enabling brand safety and cross-platform measurement.
This includes securely connecting advertiser and publisher data, often via clean rooms, without compromising sensitive information.
“There’s a real opportunity to learn what you need for measurement without violating any privacy or intellectual property considerations,” he said.
Still, Buchheim warned that CTV’s trajectory won’t be purely upward.
“There are going to be bumps along the way,” especially as privacy regulations and data governance become more stringent. But for those who embrace secure, collaborative approaches to data, he sees “a huge opportunity” to drive better outcomes in the CTV space.
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