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If we had to summarise the vibe for the Adtech Industry in 2023, it would be “cautiously optimistic.” After dismal earnings reports in the last quarter of the previous year, each one of the tech giants has gone back to the blackboard to either refocus on areas that truly matter or completely reinvent the wheel.

While Netflix and Apple changed their stance on ads, Microsoft is steadily and surely focussing on grabbing a bigger share of its customer’s living rooms. 

Anand Gopal and Kavita Shenoy break down the key trends impacting the AdTech industry in 2023 and how content creators and advertisers can win as they face the winds of change. Read on.

OTT

Riding the CTV Wave: What’s Next for Content Creators

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How CTV is changing the future of television has been a subject of discussion for a long time. Talking about the top 2023 trends, Mark Rotblat, Chief Revenue Officer, Tubi , said to The Current, “There’s going to be some seismic shifts in how big players do business. You’ve seen some of the consolidations over the last year, year, and a half. There’s probably going to be more of that as the costs of producing content need to map to the value of the channels in which they’re being produced. For a long time, it made sense to do the things that cost $10 million per episode. A lot of that is getting called into question, so how does the media landscape address that? One is to really be more rigorous in the businesses they operate. In some cases, that just means more mindfulness about the content being produced.”

The Voiro View

The definition of TV has undergone a significant shift. Traditionally, the largest screen at home is considered the focal point of everything related to content and entertainment. Earlier, for a content creator to get on that screen, he had to jump through multiple regulatory hurdles and tackle various other barriers to entry. But, with CTV, the rules have changed. Content creators now have different avenues to promote or host content and build an audience through multiple channels and screens. The ability for people to create homogeneous channels based on their preferences and have appointment viewing at the same time is something that has changed the dynamics between content creators and consumers.

For the longest time, the largest screen in the house was not fed from the Internet. It was fed from broadcast and then from cable. And so the consumers who had access to the content pipes were broadcasting companies, operators, and massive media conglomerates. The smallest thing in the house started with user-generated content, and now everyone can do everything because the pipes are becoming common to both. Therefore the idea of what a connected TV is, is taking a very interesting shape, and it differs across geographies here. Paul Gubbins, VP, of CTV Strategy, at Publica TV, said, for the consumer, buzzwords like linear TV or Connected TV do not matter. All they understand is TV is becoming better.

Ads

Are We Ready For Google’s Black Box?

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Google unveiled its first ad product, which covers all of Google-owned media. Known as Performance Max or PMax, this product offers Google more control over campaigns run across Google-owned media. While most advertisers agreed that “it works,” many are still hesitant over giving up so much control.

The Voiro View

Google’s PMax is a result-oriented black box. There have been a lot of issues with where ads appear and how the ads are being tracked and served across different media. PMax makes all of this more efficient and that’s how advertisers know it works. PMax might just be the future, but for it to be a widely adopted product, there needs to be a mindset change.

Newsmakers of 2022 and Trendsetters of 2023

Apple’s pivot into ads and building Apple One

Apple has downplayed its foray into ads but it made enough of a splash to make the industry sit and take notice. According to Evan Shapiro, “Apple will use 2023 to pivot, hard, to Ads, Sports, Music, and their big Bundle: Apple One.” Apple One may just be a money spinner for the tech giant, similar to what Prime is for Amazon. 

Microsoft’s Surface Moves

Microsoft is now the summation of all their products and Minecraft, LinkedIn, Xbox, Game Pass, Zander, and possibly Netflix. At a press conference on Surface, Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows and Windows Live Division, said that “everything Microsoft has done is coming together.” Currently, the Surface has Windows RT, Xbox content stores, and Xbox Music service. 

Google’s foray into CTV

The CTV market is one pie everyone wants a share of. Google announced its intention to break into the CTV industry by unveiling a new streaming dongle, Chromecast. The dongle offers Google’s Chromecast Tech with an Android TV interface, where viewers can choose movies and TV shows from various publishers and stream them onto the home screen.   

DCaaS: Deal Curation as a Service 

As per Scott Messer, 2023 will see“publishers seek more DCaaS in lieu of carrying expensive direct sales teams, especially during periods of budget contraction. Further, this class of vendor will gain in popularity as their aggregation powers help buyers coalesce around scaled publisher solutions.” At the end of the day, direct sales are safe, usually premium, high-value, and solution-based. Programmatic is a great enabler and it’s something that you must have in your wheelhouse. But if publishers can optimise and push as much revenue as possible in the direction of guaranteed direct, high-quality relationships, then they are setting themselves up for the right kind of growth. A lot of publishers believe that direct sales are expensive and it’s hard. But, when done right and efficiently, they unlock massive value.