Connected TV: Connected India Watching Television

Television’s past in India

Televisions can be found in billions of households around the world today but 100 years ago, nobody even knew about it. The First Electronic Television was designed in 1927 by an inventor named Philo Taylor. India got its first TV service in 1959 & Dr Rajinder Prasad (President of India) inaugurated it from Vigyan Bhavan of Delhi. In those earlier days, there were just two shows of one hour each in a week & the government kept a count of TV sets because you needed a license & pay a fee to own a TV. Color TVs reach Indian homes in 1982 & it was ad agency Lintas who created the first TV commercial Liril’s in 1985. DD received its higher viewership & ad revenue in 1987 by Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana & BR Chopra’s Mahabharat in 1988. In 1991 Congress govt allowed private & foreign broadcasters to engage in broadcasting & channels like CNN, and STAR TV, and private domestic channels such as Zee TV, ETV & others started satellite broadcasts in India. Much Before Netflix, & Spotify it was Doordarshan who brought international shows & music in India like Star Trek, Didi, oshino & international singers like Michel Jackson, and Whitney Houston.

There are five basic types of television in India: broadcast or “over-the-air” television, unencrypted satellite or “free-to-air”, Direct-to-Home (DTH), cable television, IPTV, and OTT or over-the-top services. Over-the-air and free-to-air TV is free with no monthly payments while Cable, DTH, IPTV & OTT requires a subscription. As the audience and advertising grew on TV, India developed its audience metrics & rating called TRP to tell which channel and the program are viewed most & indicate the popularity of a TV channel or a program. The first audience metric was DART (Doordarshan audience research team) which was used to calculate these ratings as that time only channel available was Doordarshan. DART still exists and provides a TV viewing pattern for the rural population of India. As the market became fragmented with many international & private broadcasters, TV joint industry body appointed TAM (television audience measurement) which was joint venture between Nielsen & IMRB. Around 2010 advertising industry body created BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) which became world’s largest scientific industry body. It was set up according to guidelines of the Indian Ministry of Information & Broadcasting & uses audio watermark technology to measure viewership of TV channels & measures time-shifted viewing & simulcasts.

Television’s Present in India

TV is still at the center of India’s family living room and the most powerful way for brands to connect and interact with consumers. Indians are watching more television than ever but mostly on connected television which allows them to receive and display two types of content on a big screen.

1) Programming from broadcast and cable TV networks, delivered via the internet.

2) Digital-only streaming content (ex:- YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video & Hotstar)

Connected TV advertising combines the targeting capability of digital ads which means all ads will be served programmatically, the convincing power of video which give brands a chance to tell their story in 15 to 20-sec video commercial & captive audience of television without the big price tag, reaching cord-cutters and highly engaged viewers.

To understand the audience data, Connected TV manufacturers i.e. Samsung, LG, Mi & others use a technology called ACR (automatic content recognition). When users install a smart TV, manufacturers take permission from the initial setup screen to track what they are watching and in return provide suggestions of similar shows/movies. ACR data received from TV manufacturers are raw in nature & this needs to be combined by third-party data providers like Beatgrid, kantar, ACR Cloud, Zapr Media Labs, and Shazam who give anonymized ACR data sets which tell markets about audience data points i.e. viewer watching linear Vs OTT, what shows/ commercials they are watching on a second-by-second basis, what are viewers demographics, IP address & location along with viewing behaviors like content preferences, ad completion rates, average watch time, channel surfing patterns, completed view rates, and other parameters.

Bring Linear TV & CTV together to achieve incremental reach

Linear TV still has a strong reach with the TV viewing population of India & hybrid viewing pattern is likely to remain in place for years to come. Instead of having separate teams for linear and connected TV buying, marketers/agencies are bringing those specialties together to achieve the goal of reaching viewers on any screen. ACR can bridge the linear & connected TV ecosystem to achieve incremental reach for campaigns.

Here are a few ways to do it …

First, to drive incremental reach use Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data to segment households that were exposed to the linear TV campaign and those that had not been exposed.
Next, Target non-exposed households with ad on connected TV.
Balance your frequency by targeting light TV viewers and cord cutters more heavily than heavy TV viewers.
ACR can identify households watching the competition ads and target them on different digital devices.
Combine second screen targeting (Second screening” is a term for when viewers are watching television but are also using a secondary electronic device during that time) with your TV campaign.
CTV ads are served programmatically so you can target audiences that have streamed content by genre, movies, TV series, actors, or directors. On Amazon DSP you can do this for by creating an Amazon Prime Video-based audiences cohort.

Connecting the linear and CTV ecosystems can bring incredible benefits to how advertisers tap into quality inventory, reach audiences across screens and measure and attribute what matters.

Commercial break in CTV

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)’s VAST 3.0 first introduced the concept of ad podding in 2012. There are limited commercial breaks on CTV, hence advertisers shall use ad podding to serve the best creative to viewers. Ad pod is a term used in CTV advertising to specify multiple ads sequenced together and played back-to-back within a single ad break, like linear TV. If advertisers start using Ad pods in CTV, they can avoid running ads alongside the direct competition. In pre pod bidding scenario, advertisers can choose to bid for the first slot in a selected content & pay the premium or do the ad-sequencing. Another vital benefit of ad pods is that publishers can ensure, users never get duplicate ads within a single ad break hence for advertisers its appealing as it guarantees they won’t have any wasted impressions. At CTV publisher ends they can find out whether viewers watch all ads in a pod or skip any, which could indicate they might have too many ads in a single pod or if viewers are more likely to skip pre-roll,mid-roll or post-roll.

Best of both worlds: – Data & CTV

Connected TV function just like any programmatic campaign & you can make full use of data. Let’s say you are an apparel brand preparing for off-season discount sales and want to build a campaign that gives a 30% discount to customers who have downloaded your app or abandoned a cart. you can use any demand-side platform to reach their first-party audience as they’re streaming their favorite shows on connected TV. Most of the DSPs platforms also have audience extension/expansion available in CTV. By utilizing contextual and geo signals, DSP Platforms will create a model to find CTV streamers who are similar to your first-party audience. There is limitation of scale with first-party data & for to solve this you can use third-party data segments created by data providers like lotame , eyeota , LiveRamp which offers custom and ready-to-target pre-packaged TV audiences categorized by Program, Network, Show, Genre, Viewer Type, Dayparts, and Tentpoles that can be activated through any DSP. Another example of first-party data usage on smart TV comes from Samsung. Samsung audience advisor is an analytics/planning tool that uses Samsung’s own first-party data & combined with third-party data, to give advertisers & agencies a view into how much time specific audiences are spending viewing AVOD, as well as their content preferences.

CTV Ad-Fraud & Brand safety: The Game of Cat & Mouse

Digital ad fraud is the biggest hindrance to adex growth globally. After the cyber-crime, digital ad fraud is possibly becoming second largest organized crime & as a newer advertising channel, CTV has been major target for fraudsters. The recent ICEBUCKET operation uncovered by the White Ops team has opened advertisers eyes to an alarming threat in the CTV space. In the ICEBUCKET operation, fraudsters “spoofed” the IP addresses of 2 million devices in 30+ countries when 99% of the traffic was coming from just one country – the US. The marketer then buys the CTV ad space thinking it would be served to a particular group of people, but ad spending ends up to bots. Another CTV ad fraud detected by Doubleverfiy involves fraudulently setting up online SSAI servers and then producing CTV inventory across an unlimited number of devices, apps, and IPs.

Not just advertisers but supply-side partners, device manufacturers, and server-side ad insertion all of them need to be vigilant & opt for Ad fraud solutions that cover all type of frauds like app fraud, device spoofing, Server-side Ad Insertion (SSAI) manipulation, non-stop ads & malware-hijacked CTV devices that run invisible ads in the background.

Brand safety & suitability: – Brand safety & suitability is a difficult challenge to solve in the CTV space because of the sheer volume of content & lesser understanding of content sentiments.

We need two levels of filters.

App-level: – Brands should ask for access to classifications of CTV apps and can use this data to govern if their CTV inventory that does not align with their brand safety requirements.
Channel & content level: – Brands should be able to understand and define the CTV programs that they want their advertising to appear alongside.

Here are tactics that advertisers can put in place to protect themselves.

Bring a third-party vendor like Double Verify, Integral Ad Science, white Ops, Moat, etc that detects fraud pre-bid level for protection against Digital ad fraud.
Monitoring the location and device for all CTV ads interaction & stick to premium inventory.
All parties buying & selling CTV inventory should follow IAB guidelines, for CTV/OTT knows as IFA ( Identifier for Advertising (IFA) series).
Build a clean supply chain and remove the middlemen selling CTV inventories.
For Brand safety Advertises should use keyword blocking, and category blocks like sensitive & unprofessional content & work with the third party at pre-bid level for brand safety.
Pre-Bid filter of brand safety for checking App star ratings, age ratings, and store categories.
In brand safety “Add blocking” should be available on all CTV inventories to prevent ads from serving next to risky content.
Give preference to programmatic inventory enabled with app-ads.txt.
Avoid audience extension and long-tail “no-name” apps unless 100% transparent tracking and favorable terms and conditions are in place.
The stringent clause at IO (Insertion order) for all level report transparency.

Television’s future in India

Cord cutting audience will continue to grow and next 5 to 7 years all TV in India likely to become smart television with the ability to watch on-demand content, stream music, view photos, and do video calls all from your TV itself. Future TV will become more personalized & social and will have a user profile, where based on users’ like or dislike it will recommend content and provide an opportunity to co-watch or share what you are watching with your friends & families. Smart TV will become portable as most of TV will start using cloud computing & wherever you go, you can watch your favorite content anytime anywhere. In the future TV is not just for watching as OEM are adding services like Gaming and health & fitness. Samsung in its smart TV added a gaming hub where users tap into any of the video game libraries & play game without a console or PC. Remote-controlled TV will become outdated as tech companies are adding Voice based & XR-controlled smart televisions. The technology to shop directly on your TV’s interface is still developing and somehow limited to QR codes but tech platforms like Amazon & Google are testing shoppable content ads. Imagine you watched a movie on amazon prime and would like to buy a dress that the actor is wearing. Amazon uses a service called “X-Ray” which is an exclusive set of features on Prime Video that helps you experience more of the stuff you love to watch, while you watch it. This is available on favorite movies, series, and live sports. Amazon could likely integrate a similar functionality called “purchase” where we’ll eventually also see the actor’s purchasable products and buy it on amazon.

YouTube already provides video action campaigns to connected televisions. When a viewer sees a Video action campaign on their TV, they are invited through a URL at the bottom of their screen to continue shopping on the brand’s website from their desktop or mobile device — without interrupting their viewing session.

About the author:

Prashant Nandan, Senior Vice President – APEX ( Digital & Traditional Media), Publicis Groupe