All forms of digital video advertising are growing rapidly. According to the IAB, the digital video channel has grown over 50% since last year. This is largely being driven by the surge of users who are now enjoying a variety of streaming and digital video offerings online, with CTV being the most recent beneficiary. And with Nextflix planning to get in on the game with an AVOD offering, this space is only going to get hotter.

Brands hoping to reach these audiences are spending more than ever. But continued growth relies on transparency and measurement becoming a core pillar of how these channels operate. Publishers looking to capture higher CPMs and brands seeking increased exposure through CTV and video must advance measurement efforts to improve optimization opportunities and performance.

Online video measurement shows the path CTV must take

Some progress has been made on the measurement front. Through VAST, and later VPAID and Open Measurement development, new measurement standards and tools have become available that improve performance and revenue. While there is still more work to be done, it’s clear that measurement has helped this channel mature to drive results for buyers and sellers.

The measurement challenges for CTV are not new. As we’ve seen with online video over the past decade, measurability improvements have led to ad performance gains over time, benefiting buyers and sellers alike. If history were to repeat itself, publishers benefit most when they expand their tech stack and data tools to benefit from improved measurement as it becomes available.

CTV limitations highlight opportunity for publisher adoption

While millions of users flock to CTV, the industry is building out the required infrastructure to ensure additional advertising inflows. One of these has been particularly difficult to implement: viewability.

VPAID, which enables viewability measurement in online video, is still not fully adopted by the industry. Less than 40% of desktop and mobile impressions support VPAID and it is not supported at all on CTV, mostly due to its own limitations that the industry wants to move away from. New standards for viewability such as Open Measurement are not yet supportive of CTV as a channel. We’re working on this, through tools like Fully On-Screen measurement, which is designed to help buyers more roughly understand whether their ads are actually being seen. However, is more work to be done before brands feel comfortable moving large portions of their budgets to CTV.

Case Study:
How audibility and viewability work together to improve ad recall and brand awareness

As just one example to illustrate how measurement advances can benefit the industry, let’s look into the case of audibility measurement for video advertising. A Google study based on YouTube indicated that an audible and viewable ad saw a 1.6x improvement in brand awareness over an ad that is only viewable, and a 3.8x improvement over an ad that is only audible.

Given these results and what we’re hearing from clients, we’ve learned how audibility measurement can improve publisher revenue when it’s properly taken into account and optimized against. By expanding access to these metrics in alongside CTV metrics such as fully on-screen insights, buyers and sellers can expand the shared language of data that accomplishes performance and revenue goals.

In these nascent stages of measurement innovation on new channels, publishers have an opportunity to provide value to brands looking to feel more secure in their ad spend. Whether it’s through fully on-screen measurement, audibility or other metrics, publishers can begin optimizing performance today.

In DoubleVerify’s work with advertisers and publishers, we are developing more video-level transparency for toolkits on both sides of the industry. Since standardization is set to follow new measurement technology, buyers will look to these tools as a way of measuring KPIs. Instead of waiting for this to take place, proactive teams can use these tools to improve ad quality and performance before the competition.