Reaffirming the strength of the connected TV ad market, Extreme Reach said CTV ad impressions rose 23% in the first quarter.
Extreme Reach said CTV’s share of digital video impressions jumped to 38% in the first quarter, up 23% from 31% in the fourth quarter. In the first quarter a year ago CTV had a 41% share of impressions.
CTV’s share increased in the quarter because the number of advertisers using the channel is swelling. Extreme Reach said that 67% of its advertising clients were using CTV for between 50% and 100% of their media mix.
"Since 2018, CTV has led other devices in share of impressions,” said Mary Vestewig, VP of digital account management at Extreme Reach. “When we look at the media mix across ad serving clients, regardless of volume of impressions, we see that for 67% of our advertisers, CTV accounted for 50% to 100% of the total ad mix in Q1. This seems to indicate that we’re seeing a return to pre-pandemic levels across all devices. Of course the video ad market changes constantly in response to shifts in consumer behavior, but as more streaming services adopt ad supported models, we anticipate that CTV will only grow larger.”
As CTV gathers steam, it is taking impressions from mobile devices. Advertisers who focus on CTV impressions devote a smaller share of their marketing efforts to putting ads in mobile apps. The inverse is true as well: those who devote a smaller share of their resources to CTV are buying more ads in mobile apps.
CTV is also taking impressions from desktop ads, which decreased 14% to a 19% share of impressions, the lowest since Q4 2019.
Premium publishers delivered 49% of the CTV impressions, up 49% from Q4.
Digital video increasingly is being dominated by 30-second commercials, with 91% of messages running at that length, the biggest share of impressions since Extreme Reach began monitoring the market in 2016.
CTV viewers are more engaged than in the past, with the video completion rate rising to 79% in the quarter from 75% in Q4.
For all of 2021, Extreme Reach said CTV accounted for 35% of impressions served for the year. Media aggregators accounted for 53% of impressions in 2021, while premium publishers accounted for 47%. That’s a 42% decline in impression volume for premium publishers compared to full year 2019, which indicates that aggregators now have more access to premium inventory, and advertisers have more choices for reaching their target audiences. ■
