By Todd Bender, VP, Business Development

I spent some time recently with writer and longtime media veteran John Osborn, and talked about how Videology is helping our clients reach consumers via connected TVs.  John’s related piece in MediaPost is incredibly insightful, and offers some great perspective on the connected TV market.  I do, however, disagree with John on one small point.  While his perspective is that connected TV has yet to hit a tipping point and asked readers to check back in 2014, I believe that he’s underselling the viability of the platform for advertisers right now.

I’d argue that this year’s CES marked the tipping point for connected TV advertising, and that we are currently experiencing an inflection point.  Connected TV is in 30 million US homes, and despite an incredibly fragmented platform landscape, Videology can now deliver a connected TV audience of 24 million users across most major platforms.   This is by no means the scale of TV, but it is certainly a significant and attractive opportunity to reach consumers. And advertisers are taking notice. At Videology, we’re currently seeing a massive rush by brand to develop connected TV strategies for a few key reasons:

1. Hyper attractive audience:  In general, the connected TV audience is comprised of many people who have migrated from traditional TV and theIf you don’t reach them on connected TV, you might not reach them at all.  Qualitatively, they are at the top echelon by most standards.  For instance, Nielsen research tells us that connected TV viewers have 2.5x the education of the general public.
2. UnclutteredBecause ad models are in the early stages, advertisers currently embracing the space have tremendous opportunity to stand out in a far less competitive ad environment than traditional television, or even the Web.  This window is closing, but smart brands still have an awesome opportunity to capture share of voice, while simultaneously testing and learning on a new platform.
3. MultiplatformAs part of a multi-screen category, advertisers can take advantage of a nascent medium, while delivering—at scale—against total campaign objectives with improved efficiencies.  For instance, a recent white paper by Videology found that a 3-screen strategy using online video, mobile video and connected TV improved brand recall 9x, while decreasing cost by 55%. 

For these and other reasons, advertisers are flocking to connected TVs in 2012, and we’re seeing similar momentum from consumer adoption as well.  We see this as a necessary part of a virtuous cycle that will drive the connected TV space overall.  As advertisers enter the space, developers will have monetization options; as developers have monetization options, more compelling content will come online; and, as more content comes online, audiences will grow.  And the cycle continues. 

Videology is excited to be part of this process by helping advertisers achieve their marketing objectives with the new platform, while simultaneously helping publishers and device owners extract maximum value from their assets.  Our view is that by 2014, we’ll be looking back to early 2012 as the year the connected TV ad model finally tipped. Stay tuned.