A report from Gracenote, the content data business unit of Nielsen, identifies a misalignment in connected TV (CTV) advertising: While marketers are prioritising top-of-the-funnel brand building objectives for their CTV campaigns, in practice, many are employing targeting tactics better suited to reaching smaller audience segments with precision.

Current reliance on user- and audience-based targeting is impacting marketers’ ability to achieve critical scale and effectiveness with their large investment CTV buys. This is likely why 32 per cent of media professionals surveyed by Gracenote for the report say they don’t view CTV to be very effective as a media channel.

Marketers understand that CTV is where consumers are today so naturally the channel is playing an increasingly important role in their media plans. In fact, the IAB expects US ad spending on CTV to reach $26.6 billion (€22.6bn) this year, up 12 per cent from 2024. According to the Gracenote survey, nearly one-in-three survey respondents report allocating 40 per cent or more of their budgets to CTV.

When asked about objectives against this sizable CTV spend, media professionals indicated that brand awareness was the top goal, followed by revenue growth and customer acquisition. Customer retention, which typically leans on performance marketing, ranked a distant fourth. To better meet their strategic objectives, the Gracenote report asserts marketers should evolve their approaches and leverage more content-based targeting to reach new potential consumers and maintain premium brand alignment.

By focusing on what consumers are watching in addition to who’s watching, marketers can open new opportunities to meet their top objectives and achieve the scale needed to drive brand building and customer acquisition. The availability of programme-level data organised in a structured taxonomy enables the industry to better leverage contextually targeted CTV advertising to drive business results.

“CTV has not delivered the scale and premium reach that marketers expect of the largest screen in the house largely based on the use of narrow targeting tactics,” said Jake Richardson, VP of Partnerships at Gracenote. “By taking better advantage of contextual targeting capabilities with their CTV campaigns, they have new opportunities to drive both return on ads spend and the scale they’ve been looking for.”

The new Gracenote report captures data from a recent survey of US-based brand and agency executives with influence over media planning and buying decisions. Industries in focus included media and entertainment, telecommunications, retail, financial services, automotive, consumer packaged goods and health care/pharmaceutical.

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Categories: Advertising, Broadcast, Connected TV, Headline, Markets, OTT, Research

Tags: advertising, CTV, Gracenote, nielsen