In case you weren’t confused enough, CTV can also refer to Convergent TV. That’s how it’s used by Comcast Advertising-owned AudienceXpress, which sells across all screens. They just arranged for Epsilon clients to use their own first-party data and Epsilon’s third-party data for selection, targeting, and results measurement against AudienceXpress audiences.
The programmatic ad system is widely reviled as a hot mess, but tolerated because it expands audiences and saves a lot of work. So it’s not surprising that retail media, connected TV (CTV), and digital out of home are trying to replicate programmatic features. Supply side platform OpenX has announced a TV+, an on-going project to improve programmatic buying for CTV. First step is to remove resellers and non-TV content such as mobile apps from its bidding pool.
Hightouch continues to expand beyond its core business of extracting data from a warehouse. Their latest move is to buy HeadsUp, which predicts customer conversions and loads the results in to a customer profile. They still can’t resist calling themselves a “Composable CDP”, which makes exactly as much sense the Goodyear Tire Company calling itself a “Composable Auto Maker”.
Pretty soon it will feel odd when you can’t click on an ad to buy something. PayPal is advancing that glorious future by transforming open web advertisements into fully functional storefronts. Somewhat related: Dentsu and Roku have advice on what makes shoppable TV ads succeed (hint: it’s more than personalization).