Why CTV?
The COVID-19 pandemic provoked an extraordinary acceleration in connected television adoption, led by streaming devices from Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Google TV, et al., along with native offerings from Smart TV manufacturers, like Samsung, Vizio, and LG.
Evolutions in video distribution projected to take more than a decade were suddenly compressed into barely three years. Marked by the onset of COVID-19, viewers have abandoned cable, satellite, and broadcast by the tens of millions – YoY. These irreversible trends have led to an evolution in consumer engagement, with CTV emerging as the apex video distribution modality.
Connected television is the virtual equivalent of an African watering hole, where demographically diverse tribes of cord-cutters, cord-shavers, and cord-nevers have coalesced into a single, easy-to-reach bucket.
The cost of owning a connected television “channel” (i.e., CTV app) has become so affordable that even producers of micro-niche content (for micro-audiences) can justify upgrading their video distribution options from a patchwork of social media outlets (owned by others) to their very own television network – consisting of individual CTV apps, one for each of the major CTV platforms.
After an explosive growth period, almost 90% of US households now own at least one CTV device, and the average American spends more than two (2) hours PER DAY watching video on a connected television.
Social platforms (especially when accessed through mobile devices) continue to remain critical components for (most) video distribution strategies; however, thanks to a growing number of CTV channels with hyper-targeted programming, CTV users now spend more time watching video on a TV screen than anywhere else, including smartphones.
If you’re not distributing through connected televisions, then your content assets are substantially underleveraged. Launching your own CTV channel(s) under your own brand will increase consumption of your content, grow your viewership, elevate brand equity, and generate deeper engagement with both current and potential stakeholders – guaranteed.
