Connected TV (CTV) continues to dominate the advertising landscape, with ad spend forecast to almost double within a few years. Providing brands with new ways to connect with engaged, responsive audiences, CTV offers advertisers the opportunity to tap into real-time, richer data signals for a more personalised ad experience.
2025 is set to be a particularly transformative year for the streaming TV market, marked by an unprecedented surge in inventory from platforms shifting to ad-supported tiers. This is happening alongside more viewers ‘cutting the cord’ and turning to CTV for their entertainment, as well as the “cord-nevers” who have never engaged with linear TV.
This growth, however, has led to fragmentation across platforms and models, with transparency in CTV considered lacking. Recent research indicates that this is the primary issue amongst media planners, complicating efforts to maintain consistent quality media campaigns and campaign performance.
CTV’s distinct technical characteristics and industry-specific constraints demand advanced solutions to measure and protect inventory. Technology is available to support media planners, promote transparency and drive meaningful business outcomes. Artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, can assist advertisers in analysing and utilising various digital signals, enabling them to protect media quality, minimise waste, and maximise their CTV investments.
Leveraging AI to optimise CTV campaigns
In previous years, uniting data signals across CTV and other over-the-top (OTT) environments would have been tedious and time-consuming, leading to limited scale. Now AI-powered tools can do everything from optimising programmatic buys to providing deeper, more actionable insights, enabling more effective management of TV media plans.
AI and machine learning-based solutions enable advertisers to process vast amounts of data and use it to enhance the performance of CTV media buying. For example, custom bidding algorithms can leverage demand-side platform (DSP) impression-level data, first-party data, and third-party measurement data from CTV providers to dynamically drive brand-specific outcomes, improve operational efficiency, and reduce manual effort.
AI tools can also ensure that CTV ads avoid fraudulent or unsuitable content. Just as on other device types, CTV content can also be unsuitable—even on top platforms. This can be considered inappropriate to certain viewers, which can harm the brand and, ultimately, the business. Fraud, meanwhile, is a major challenge in CTV, as the inventory’s premium price point attracts fraudsters looking to maximise their own profits. For example, early in 2024, an extensive scam, CycloneBot, generated up to 250 million falsified CTV ad requests, leading to a monthly financial impact of up to $7.5 million for unprotected advertisers.
AI technologies are crucial in detecting this activity, providing advertisers with actionable insights that can be applied to campaigns while in flight. These solutions can enable them to tackle fraud and inappropriate placements. By leveraging these solutions, advertisers maximise the value of their CTV investments and maintain brand safety and suitability.
2025: The year transparency takes centre stage in CTV
After years of constrained inventory that drove cost per inventory (CPM) and reduced supply-side incentives to provide transparency, 2025 will be a turning point. Advertisers will expect complete oversight of the content that their campaigns run alongside, ensuring that ads are aligned with brand safety and suitability standards and brand-specific outcomes. Those platforms that provide buyers with this transparency will be front-runners.
Advertisers who utilise AI-powered tools will ensure seamless protection and access to powerful media quality and performance insights. This will enable them to plan and dynamically optimise campaigns with enhanced precision and efficiency, which, in turn, will help media planners achieve future-proofed results as TV continues to evolve and viewing habits shift. By utilising these solutions, advertisers will confidently navigate CTV’s challenges, achieve stronger business outcomes and unlock its full potential in the years ahead.
This article originally appeared in the April issue of TVBEurope, available to download here.
