Key Insights into the Future of TV and CTV at Luma’s Digital Media Summit

It was great to connect in person with so many media insiders and visionaries at LUMA’s’s Digital Media Summit. As always, the conversation at LUMA’s event was engaging and forward- thinking.  Here are my thoughts on some of the topics that bubbled up this week.

Alternative TV measurement metrics are at a critical growth point - I was happy to participate on a panel about the future of TV measurement with Kelly Abcarian, from NBC Universal, Sean Muller from iSpot, TV Squared’s Jo Kinsella and Aden Zaman from Samba TV.  The conversation focused on alternative currencies - whether its attention, or attribution - marketers want the opportunity to transact on performance marketing data. Nobody says that traditional ratings are going away, but it is clear that new currencies are emerging as options for marketers. In the future, many marketers will transact in multiple currencies. 

Before new currencies can be fully entrenched though, we will need to see systems like Mediaocean adapt and agencies get more comfortable working in new processes. The first few projects are well underway with market leaders (like NBCU and others), and I expect growth and adoption of these metrics will spread quickly. 

One point to note is that the newer entrants are well-positioned to capitalize on their growing market share. All of the alternative metric providers - whether big data sets like iSpot or panel providers like us, at TVision, have significantly lower operating costs than the entrenched original providers. 

Is this the end of SVOD? 

Well, no. But announcements from Netflix and Disney+ that they will soon roll out ad supported options, as well as the recent news about CNN+ do signal changes in the CTV landscape. For the last several years these SVODs saw substantial growth as consumers made the switch from cable to CTV and invested in the original SVOD apps. But now subscriber growth is harder to come by, and content remains incredibly expensive to produce. Companies like Peacock and Paramount+ are spending a billion plus on content. Without a steady increase of new subscribers, ad supported models become critical to sustain growth for the largest players like Netflix, and more niche providers as well. As advertisers clamor to invest more in CTV the opportunity remains healthy and strong for these CTV providers. 

Not to be forgotten, linear TV Is still growing

While CTV is certainly the hotter topic right now, linear TV is still the giant in the room. Set to account for $68 billion in advertising this year, linear TV is huge and still growing - that number is $3 billion more in ads than last year. And the linear TV players are not just standing still - many of them are incorporating digital attributes, including attribution into their TV stack. 

Growth, change and more growth - Those are my key takeaways from a positive day talking about the future of media with LUMA and friends.