Key Points

  • Embrace the Multi-Screen Revolution: The pandemic turned our homes into streaming hubs, with audiences diving into content across multiple devices and fragmenting user attention.
  • Rethink Traditional Linear TV: While linear TV still shines for live sports and news, its general appeal is fading as viewers flock to streaming platforms. For brands, this means following the audience to new digital spaces.
  • Go Platform-Agnostic for Maximum Impact: This strategy allows for smarter frequency management and real-time campaign optimization across multiple platforms, helping you reach a broader audience more effectively.
  • Navigate COPPA Compliance with Confidence: Advertising to younger audiences in any environment is tricky but the CTV space presents unique complexities, especially with COPPA regulations tightening. The right partner and platform can be a game changer if simplicity, scalability, and safety are your top priorities.

Remember gathering around the living room TV for a prime-time TV show? TGIF – those were the days. Unfortunately, those days are fading faster than last season's hit series. Now, it’s all streaming content all the time.

For advertisers, that means embracing Connected TV (CTV) advertising. Let’s explore what that means, how it works, and why you should make it a cornerstone of your advertising strategy.

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The Multi-Screen Revolution: How 2020 Changed Everything

Picture this: It's early 2020, and suddenly everyone's stuck at home. What happens? That dusty tablet becomes a personal TV, and the guest room gets its own streaming setup. Just like that, the multi-screen household is born! 

This shift has led to several key changes in viewer behavior:

  • Multi-Screen Usage: Audiences are watching different content on various devices, often simultaneously.
  • On-Demand Viewing: Scheduled programming is giving way to on-demand content.
  • Attention Fragmentation: Viewers are splitting their attention between the big screen and mobile devices.

The impact of this change? Huge. 

While linear TV still holds value for live sports and news, general viewership has shifted dramatically toward streaming TV platforms. Consumers increasingly turn to subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services like Netflix and ad-supported platforms like CTV and FAST (Free Ad-Supported Television) channels instead of traditional TV – even if they have a cable subscription. 

For advertisers, this shift presents both challenges and opportunities. The fragmented viewing landscape means they have more opportunities to reach target audiences, but succeeding requires a more nuanced approach. 

The New Prime Time: Sports, News, and Everything Else

While cord-cutting hasn’t completely eliminated the importance of linear TV, its role has fundamentally changed. It's now primarily there for live sports and news. Even traditionally must-watch events like awards shows are losing their appeal. 

This shift has massive implications for advertisers:

  • Sports and news now command a premium and are among the few "appointment viewing" options left.
  • Entertainment content is increasingly time-shifted or streamed, making traditional ad buys less effective.
  • Younger audiences, in particular, are abandoning linear TV in droves, gravitating towards streaming platforms and interactive content.

For brands, this means rethinking their entire approach to TV advertising. The days of reaching a mass audience with a single prime-time slot are fading fast. Instead, advertisers need to follow their audiences to new platforms and adapt their strategies accordingly.

Navigating the New Ad Tech Landscape

The shift from traditional television to CTV and digital streaming platforms is about more than just where you place your ads. It’s also a fundamental transformation in how advertising works. 

As a result, advertisers face some interesting new challenges: 

  • Complexity: Unlike linear TV, where a single ad buy could reach millions, digital campaigns require managing multiple platforms, ad formats, and targeting options.
  • Resource Intensity: Digital ad campaigns often require more hands-on management and optimization, increasing the workload for marketing teams.
  • Scalability: Achieving the same reach as a traditional TV campaign can be more difficult and time-consuming in the digital space.
  • Efficiency: Advertisers are seeking ways to maintain the efficiency of linear TV buys while adapting to the fragmented digital landscape.

The key for advertisers is finding partners and solutions that can help bridge this gap, offering the reach and simplicity of traditional TV with the targeting and flexibility of digital platforms. And here at Playwire, we can help you do exactly that. 

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Using Platform Agnosticism to Maximize Reach and Efficiency

With its multitude of apps, content types, ad formats, and devices, CTV is an inherently fragmented landscape. That’s why a platform-agnostic approach is so crucial. 

Platform agnosticism offers two key advantages:

  1. Frequency Management: In other words, making sure users aren’t bombarded with the same ad across different platforms.
  2. Campaign Optimization: Because you’re not tied to a single platform, you can shift budgets and impressions to where they're performing best.

This approach allows you to:

  • Reach audiences across multiple platforms with a single ad campaign.
  • Avoid managing multiple separate campaigns for each streaming service.
  • Optimize performance in real-time based on cross-platform data.
  • Reach a bigger audience more efficiently compared to platform-specific campaigns.

For brands looking to navigate the complex CTV landscape, partnering with platform-agnostic solutions like Playwire can offer a massive advantage.

COPPA Compliance: Navigating the Complexities of Advertising to Younger Audiences

CTV advertising is complex enough. Trying to reach kids through CTV ads makes it even more complicated. 

The Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA) is a U.S. federal law that protects kids’ online safety by limiting the collection of their personal data.  Currently, COPPA applies to kids 13 and under, but the recent passage of COPPA 2.0 would extend protections to teens up to 16.

What does this mean for advertisers? In a nutshell: an expansion of the challenges advertisers already faced for kids under 13. So, no personal data collection without parental consent and a heavy reliance on contextual targeting.

Despite these challenges, kids are loyal viewers, and their habits can influence entire households. And that’s not even considering the spending power commanded by teens.

So, how do you tap into this market without running afoul of COPPA? 

This is where partners like Playwire come into play. We’ve done the heavy lifting of establishing relationships with multiple platforms, creating uniformity in contextual targeting across these platforms, and ensuring KidSafe+ COPPA compliance every step of the way. 

By leveraging these partnerships, advertisers can achieve incremental reach and connect with audiences at scale, all while staying on the right side of COPPA regulations. 

Best Practices for CTV Advertising Success

Want to prepare for the future of CTV advertising? Here are some key strategies to consider:

  • Embrace Scale and Efficiency: While linear TV advertising isn’t gone yet, advertisers need to optimize their media mix with something that's just as efficient, high-reach, and scalable. CTV is a great choice if you use it strategically.
  • Rely on Platform-Agnostic Solutions: Working with partners who are platform-agnostic allows for better frequency management across platforms and optimization of campaigns based on performance.
  • Simplify the Process: Look for publishing partners who can provide a single point of contact across multiple streaming platforms. This makes it a lot easier to navigate the complexities of CTV advertising.
  • Ensure COPPA Compliance: For advertisers looking to reach younger audiences, understanding and adhering to COPPA regulations is non-negotiable, so you’ll need to prioritize it from day one.
  • Think Beyond CTV: CTV is already fragmented, but the truth is, so is audience attention. So consider a holistic approach that includes formats like rewarded video, in-app playable, and interstitials for a comprehensive and attention-grabbing advertising strategy.

By following these best practices, you'll be well on your way to creating a more effective, revenue-amplifying connected TV ads strategy. 

Create an Effective CTV Advertising Strategy with Playwire

CTV advertising is complex, fast-moving, and ever-changing. If you want to succeed, instead of getting left behind, you need to adapt and lead the way. Your audience is already there, streaming TV content and waiting for you to find them.

But with the increased scrutiny of COPPA 2.0 and growing saturation within this environment, you’ll need both creativity and vigilance to reach your target audience while staying compliant. 

The good news? You don’t have to go it alone. 

Playwire can help you run a more powerful CTV ad strategy and deliver the performance and revenue results you need – even if you need to reach younger audiences.

Check out our COPPA resource center if you’re interested in learning more about how to safely reach kids online and get in touch with our CTV experts to learn how we can help skyrocket your brand into the CTV space.

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