Connected TV ad impressions jump 193% in 2018, study finds

Dive Brief:

Connected TV (CTV) ad impressions increased 193% from 2017 to 2018, accounting for 44% of impressions in Q4 2018, according to findings by Extreme Reach on the growth of CTV in the ad industry. In Q4 2017, just 16% of impressions were served to CTV.
In Q4 2018, premium publishers ran more than half of their impressions on CTV platforms, a 154% jump year-over-year. CTV is seeing increased ad length, lower rates of General Invalid Traffic and higher video completion, per Extreme Reach. Desktop devices showed a 36% decline in impressions from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018, while tablets dropped 54%.
Six-second CTV ads saw a 78% drop in impressions from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018, with 30-second spot impressions more than doubling to 58%. Fifteen-second ads dipped 43%. The average time spent with video ads increased by 35.3% from 17 seconds in Q4 2017 to 23 seconds in Q4 2018.

Dive Insight:

The Extreme Reach report highlights how the video ad sector is shifting to CTV and away from mobile, which dominated video ad impressions in 2017 with a 39% share. CTV continues to gain ground, as the format shows better performance in click-through, completion, viewability and quality impression rates. The report predicts that more major media companies will enter the CTV market to tap into the growing and engaged audiences.

The prediction that 30-second ads will continue to grab a larger share of impressions aligns with other research pointing to how consumers prefer longer ads both on TV and online. More than 40% of viewers said 30 seconds was the optimal length for engaging with ads, according to Research Intelligencer and Pollfish. Extreme Reach also suggests that the preference for 30-second ads over super-short formats could lead to an increase of even longer spots.

With the rate of cord-cutting continuing to rise and live TV viewership steadily declining, marketers are investing more in CTV and over-the-top (OTT) TV formats. Ad spend on OTT was projected to jump 40% to $2 billion in 2018, according to a fall update of Magna's U.S. ad forecasts, which also predicted that 80% of U.S. households would be reachable through OTT.

CTV device ad requests grew 1,640% year-over-year, reaching nearly 30 billion in 2018 compared to 1.7 billion the year before, a Beachfront analysis revealed. Roku accounted for more than 87% of the CTV ad requests, followed by Amazon's Fire TV, LG, Samsung TV, Vizio and Chromecast. The increase is likely due to the high completion rates linked to CTV, which average around 90%.