As streaming TV continues to grow, programmatic technology is rapidly evolving right alongside it. We’re finally seeing technical implementation catch up to surging viewership and adoption. This is good news for streaming TV publishers and platforms looking to strengthen their programmatic monetization strategies.
By fine-tuning your approach, you can unlock more ad revenue while enhancing the viewer experience. Here are six tips for optimizing your programmatic monetization.
1. Adopt OpenRTB 2.6 and support ad podding
Pod bidding support in OpenRTB 2.6 has been instrumental in recreating the linear ad experience in streaming TV. It brings new features that solve for duplicate ads, allow for dynamically constructed ad breaks through flexible podding, enable positional transparency to indicate the position of an ad pod or slot within a pod, and, most importantly, reflect the true length and structure of the pod for each impression opportunity.
All of these features help you optimize yield and grow revenue, while also improving the ad experience for viewers and offering media buyers more effective ad placements that maximize their media investments. Plus, ad podding drives further efficiency and sustainability throughout the programmatic supply chain. A study we conducted with IAS and The Trade Desk showed an 84% drop in ad selection carbon emissions by adopting OpenRTB 2.6.
“As a company that supports viewers across both linear and digital, we strive to create a viewing experience that integrates the strengths of both mediums. The implementation of OpenRTB 2.6 has enabled us to manage competitive separation more efficiently and reduce the occurrence of duplicate ads. On top of that, this optimized approach to ad serving allows for the ability to accommodate a higher volume of ads in a break, improving the fill rate across various endpoints and immediately driving more revenue.”
David Pudjunis, VP, revenue operations and partnerships
AMC Networks
2. Share content-related signals
Media buyers are increasingly looking for contextual signals to help them reach the right audiences through premium, brand-safe streaming content. Supporting content signal transparency and passing metadata to buyers provides them with stronger contextual relevance for more informed targeting. Aligning more closely to linear TV buying practices—and thus meeting buyer expectations—can open new campaign opportunities for you.
We recommend starting to share a few top-level content object signals, such as genre and livestream information, then expanding into additional signals like rating, language, network or channel, and series name. These signals offer valuable insights for buyers, allowing you to attract demand and increase the value of your inventory.
3. Optimize deal setup
With the premium nature of TV buying, deals are essential to transacting in the programmatic streaming market. They allow you to offer more transparency and content signals with pricing that accurately reflects that added value, while helping buyers reach their desired audiences more efficiently.
With an array of available targeting options, you can easily control how you merchandise your streaming inventory to increase demand among buyers. Optimizing your deal setup and adding targeting to new and existing deals can boost overall efficiency, and lead to higher bid rates and increased win rates. For example, consider adding targeting for content attributes such as content rating, genre, livestream status, as well as the app bundle. You can also add targeting based on ad units, including duration and skippability, or even around price range, to help buyers meet their campaign KPIs.
4. Improve addressability with Unified ID 2.0
We’re in the midst of a major shift in addressability in digital advertising, and that extends to streaming TV, too. Notably, we’re finally reaching a tipping point in the adoption of alternative identifiers like Unified ID 2.0 (UID2). An industry-wide initiative introduced by The Trade Desk, UID2 protects consumer privacy while enabling targeting and cross-device frequency capping and measurement.
UID2 improves addressability in streaming, an environment where authentication is inherent as consumers are typically required to log in. As media buyers recognize its effectiveness, adoption has accelerated, demonstrating widespread scalability and creating an opportunity for media owners to realize meaningful revenue gains by supporting it. There’s now a sizable demand pool, and offering improved targeting and measurement through UID2 will help you attract higher CPMs and increase revenue.
“Philo’s advertising philosophy is based on the idea that for advertisers to reach the audiences they used to reach in linear TV in today’s fractured CTV world, they need to be able to target and measure across publishers in a trusted manner. UID 2.0 has opened up Philo’s universe to that pool of demand.”
Reed Barker, head of advertising
Philo
5. Ensure app-ads.txt compliance
App-ads.txt, a standard from the IAB Tech Lab, is designed to combat ad fraud and ensure transparency in the programmatic ecosystem. It allows media owners to identify who’s authorized to sell their inventory. However, because of the many ways to distribute content to consumers, app-ads.txt compliance in streaming TV is more nuanced than in other app environments.
Any time an app-ads.txt entry is missing, unreachable, or incorrectly implemented, you risk losing out on revenue as buyers undervalue unauthorized supply and choose not to bid. In fact, we’ve seen authorized streaming TV supply generate twice the value compared to unauthorized supply on our platform.
As the streaming TV market continues to attract larger budgets and high CPMs, expectations for transparency will only increase. Adopting the IAB Tech Lab’s guidance on ads.txt and app-ads.txt for streaming TV and declaring inventory sharing agreements will maximize safety for buyers and yield for your business.
6. Define workflows and parameters to support political ads
Political ad spend will be higher than ever in 2024, with $1.8 billion expected to go toward streaming TV. It’ll be a significant revenue source, but given its nature, accepting political advertising does require additional oversight.
As political spend ramps up, we recommend defining the criteria you’ll use to approve and run political ads, including ad placement guidelines and deal structure, and communicating that with all of your partners to ensure successful campaigns. It’s important to implement a streamlined creative approval workflow, which is often the biggest hurdle as political creatives require close review and marketers expect quick approvals. Working with trusted ad quality partners and ensuring human review of all creatives will help you protect the viewer experience.
Though the streaming TV market has accelerated incredibly fast, we’re still in the early stages of programmatic maturation. Optimizing your approach to programmatic monetization by implementing the new technological advancements and adopting the latest industry standards will help you increase revenue and position your business for success in the evolving streaming landscape.
Learn more about the streaming TV opportunity or contact our team to see how you can transform your programmatic monetization strategy.
