CTV ad spend is up. CPMs? Not so much.<\/p>\n
Midway through the year, buyers and sellers say CPMs are sliding. Depending on who you ask, they\u2019re down anywhere between 10% to over 30% year over year. The reasons vary but the story is largely the same: more inventory, more buyers looking for performance and a growing appetite for efficiency over exclusivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen CPMs drop year over year,\u201d said Dan Larkman, CEO of CTV performance advertising business Keynes Digital. \u201cIt\u2019s around 19%.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s based on ads bought through private programmatic marketplaces \u2014 direct deals between Keynes and TV networks.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just private marketplaces. In the open marketplace, where ad prices are set in real-time, pricing isn\u2019t faring much better.<\/p>\n
CPMs there, along with those from direct deals are 20% cheaper than they were a year ago for clients of Goodway Group, said Tom Swierczewski, vp of media investment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Others have seen even steeper dips.<\/p>\n
Take TripleLift. CTV CPMs it sells to buyers are anywhere between 10 and 30% cheaper depending on whether they\u2019re bought in private or open auctions.\u00a0Elsewhere at media agency Canvas Worldwide, those CPMs are around 20% cheaper than they were a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Few buyers want to quote exact dollar figures \u2014 CPMs are still sensitive territory \u2014 but most say the average CTV buy comes in below $30 \u2014 unless the ads are being bought from top tier platforms.<\/p>\n
Granted, these are all directional snapshots \u2014 CPMs vary widely depending on the buy, after all. Even so, the trend is clear: rates are falling fast \u2014 a first since Netflix, Amazon and Disney started chasing CTV ad dollars. That comes even as the U.S. CTV ad market is expected to hit $33.4 billion this year, per eMarketer. Growth isn\u2019t the issue. What\u2019s shifting is how that growth is valued \u2014 and priced. The market is maturing and with that comes growing pains.<\/p>\n
Part of this is structural. Netflix\u2019s CPM reset last year pushed pricing expectations lower. Others followed suit, favoring sell-through over scarcity. In some corners, it\u2019s sparked a race to the bottom.<\/p>\n
\u201cSupply is growing much faster than the demand at the moment, and as a result the CTV marketplace is undergoing a price correction,\u201d said Omara Hernandez, svp and head of national investment at Canvas Worldwide.<\/p>\n
Even the anecdotal feedback paints a consistent picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the direct response marketplace where Rain the Growth Agency operates, CPMs remain well below market averages,\u201d said Rachel Baker, its svp and head of video investment and partnerships, without giving exact figures. \u201cWe\u2019re continuing to see supply outpace demand, creating a buyer\u2019s market and we expect that trend to persist throughout the rest of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
But not all the pressure is coming from the sell side.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Advertisers are getting more efficient too. With better data and sharper tools, they\u2019re targeting more precisely and negotiating harder.<\/p>\n
Which is why CPMs in both private and open programmatic marketplaces for Collective Measures clients are down 20 to 25% year over year, according to its associate director for brand media, Leah Lam.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was when we explored different new platforms versus existing campaigns experiencing drops, showing it is less about demand changing and more about increasing competition,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n
In theory, this shift should eventually push prices back up. But so far, that rebound hasn\u2019t materialized.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the dip is going to continue for at least another couple of months,\u201d said Swierczewski. \u201cIt\u2019s always tricky to predict Q4 because it\u2019s so unpredictable, but I would anticipate a dip of a couple more percentage points throughout this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the uncertainty, there are signs of resilience for media owners \u2014 if they know where to look.<\/p>\n
In 2023, OpenX removed sellers and stripped out non-CTV content (think fireplace apps, UGC, mobile, etc.) from its CTV supply. Doing so gave buyers greater transparency into what they\u2019re actually paying for and how to value it, said Tyler Romasco, svp of global publisher development at OpenX.<\/p>\n
The other reason: curation. It\u2019s the ad tech trend of the moment, and for OpenX, a meaningful one. More than 60% of its CTV deals now involve curated packages. And those deals are delivering: CPMs are 27% higher and bid density is up 45% compared to the open exchange, said Romasco.<\/p>\n
The message: not all CTV is created equal. Pockets of curated high-quality supply are not only holding value \u2014 they\u2019re gaining it.<\/p>\n
\u201cCTV isn\u2019t about cheap reach any more,\u201d said Eliza Davies, vp of CTV supply at TripleLift. \u201cMarketers want measurable outcomes and are pushing for more deals, discounts and ROI based on real performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the drop in CPMs doesn\u2019t signal a crisis. It\u2019s a reset. The CTV market is growing but the way value is defined \u2014 and priced \u2014 is changing. The sell side is still figuring it out. So are the buyers. Until then, falling rates remain the best indicator of a market trying to rebalance.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CTV ad spend is up. CPMs? Not so much. Midway through the year, buyers and sellers say CPMs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3091],"tags":[51,2441,83822,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-209522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-markets","10":"tag-the-programmatic-marketer","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}