The Key to ShowHeroes’ Success With Connected Television

AN INTERVIEW WITH SARAH LEWIS, GLOBAL DIRECTOR CTV

Connected television (CTV) has grown exponentially. It’s a format that adapts to consumer preferences and the audience’s changing tastes, the main reason why advertisers should also take into account the positive CTV trend and its impact on the advertising industry.

CTV has great power in today’s environment allowing advertising campaigns made for traditional television to gain even greater reach. ShowHeroes is the leading independent provider of in-stream video solutions for publishers and premium digital brands in Europe, driven by semantic technology and video content. MarketingDirecto.com sat down with Sarah Lewis, Global Head of CTV at ShowHeroes Group, to discuss the CTV landscape.

AFTER THE GLOBAL SUCCESS OF CTV (CONNECTED TV), WHAT DO YOU THINK DIFFERENTIATES YOU FROM THE COMPETITION?

At ShowHeroes group we are both a content creator, through ShowHeroes Studios, as well as a technology partner. This gives us a unique position to not only understand the needs of the publisher/broadcaster but also to develop technology that helps to improve the viewer and advertiser experience. We also have a combination of global and local teams, giving crucial local market knowledge as well as scale.

Sarah Lewis:

WHAT MAKES CTV SO RELEVANT IN THE WORLD OF COMMUNICATION?

CTV is now an integral part of how Europeans now watch TV. Users are switching to CTV as it’s a flexible, user-friendly option where the user can search for the content that they want to watch when they want to watch it. SVOD services such as Netflix drove initial growth, but users are now turning to AVOD services in order to access free, quality content. CTV adoption is also being driven by the increasingly high penetration of smart TVs. Many manufacturers now only produce TV sets with built-in internet capability, which makes it even easier for users to switch over from cable or satellite. As users are moving in droves to this platform advertisers need to follow.

WHAT IS THE WAY TO SUSTAINABLY STRENGTHEN THE POSITION OF THE SHOWHEROES GROUP IN THE MARKET?

We focus on developing products that are tailored to the CTV platform and truly understand the ad experience of the user. We also partner with the leading publishers across all of our markets so that we can provide premium inventory to our clients.

CTV ADVERTISING IS GRADUALLY DEVELOPING, WHAT CHALLENGES DOES THIS SECTOR HAVE TO FACE?

CTV has faced challenges due to the technical differences between the TV platform and other digital video platforms. TV devices do not accept cookies, which has been a core part of online video strategy for a long time. This initially meant that measurement and targeting options were limited. Now though we are seeing more cookieless solutions emerge and CTV is fast becoming more measurable and with more sophisticated targeting solutions. Another challenge for CTV in Europe has been fragmentation. CTV inventory is spread across lots of different publishers and platforms. In order to have a consistent scalable campaign, therefore, it’s best to work with a partner who can unify these inventory sources and provide you with one buying point.

HOW DID SEMANTIC HERO COME ABOUT? AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

At ShowHeroes we are experts in semantic targeting across online video, so it was a natural next step for us to transfer this expertise to the big screen. With SemanticHero we use a number of data sources including EPG data, keywords, and video metadata to fully understand the context and sentiment of the CTV program. We then use this to target the most relevant content for the advertiser.

DO YOU THINK THE SPANISH MARKET WILL WELCOME CTV?

Yes! Spain is an extremely important market for our CTV solutions and we’re already working with key publishers and advertisers in this market. Spanish audiences are increasingly switching to CTV devices, so as viewership grows, we expect fast growth in CTV campaigns.

Read the original article in Spanish published on marketingdirecto.com.

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