CTV: The Key to Premium Audience Extension

In July, for the first time ever, linear (broadcast and cable) TV viewership made up less than 50% of total TV viewership. This significant milestone is one that’s been coming for a while — as consumers cut the cord in droves.

And as audiences move to streaming, so do advertisers. Connected TV ad spend is on track to hit $26 billion globally this year, and Forrester projects that the percentage of streaming platforms’ revenues from advertising will rise from 21% in 2020 to 38% by 2027.

With more ad dollars coming in, streaming advertising is advancing, opening up new opportunities for creativity and targeting to reach more precise and relevant audiences. 

All of this means that CTV now offers a prime opportunity to reach new audiences. Our Chief Revenue Officer Jon Kaplan explains: 

“Reach extension allows advertisers to find more of their desired audience across all media and it's primarily used in two ways.

First, advertisers can take a first-party audience segment - for example, a streaming subscriber list or a CRM list - and find those same people outside of a single media property. 

Second, they can take a demographic that they're already targeting on one property, say auto buyers, and extend that audience segment everywhere else.”

Related content: The local programmatic market—digital reach extension channels

1. Precision and control

Connected TV offers the best of digital precision and the premium TV experience. In the world of TV advertising, marketers are used to knowing exactly where they’re ads will run. As advertisers shift to the streaming TV world, it’s critical to work with a DSP who speaks the language of TV. This means providing complete insight into where campaigns run including publishers, geographies, devices, and more.

2. Fraud Protection at Every Step

“CTV represents a fantastic opportunity to deliver big-screen, targeted advertising to audiences that have switched away from linear delivery,” explains Anything is Possible CEO Sam Fenton-Elstone in an article on The Drum.

Thankfully, there are adtech platforms like Madhive built for CTV — with the massive data processing capabilities and holistic fraud prevention tools necessary to reliably identify valid (and invalid) ad requests.

Related content: CTV Ad Fraud—What Advertisers Need to Know in 2023

3. Transparent measurement and reporting

With the right partners and tech stack, advertisers have full visibility into where their ads run — down to the publisher, zip code, and device level. Plus, they can measure impact beyond impressions and awareness, getting insights into foot traffic, brand lift, and other lower-funnel KPIs. 

Many types of companies can benefit from audience extension. Here are a few examples:

How Audience Extension Delivers Results: CTV delivers national reach for linear groups

Broadcasters have historically been limited to local markets with commercials aimed at audience segments within their footprint, based on content and time. 

Even the largest station groups face geographic boundaries with the linear TV model, limiting the markets they can cover — and their revenue potential. Some of Madhive’s larger broadcast clients could only cover between 9% and 35% of the nation with linear TV, and some had no presence in the top 10 most desired DMAs at all.

But advertisers want far more reach. 

CTV expands the ability of local TV stations to advertise nationally, to highly-targeted audiences. 

Broadcasters that have adopted the Madhive CTV platform to provide audience extension have driven the following results:

Audience extension is going to play an integral role in the future growth of CTV. 

As viewers continue to migrate to digital TV, adtech companies need to tune all aspects of the tech stack to maximize audience extension outcomes — while also ensuring control, transparency, accountability, and precision throughout the process.

Learn more about how Madhive provides premium reach extension in our latest webinar replay: Extend Your Reach to New Audiences—And Build New Revenue Streams.