Innovid and Verizon Take a Major Leap Toward Scaling Interactive Ads on CTV

At this point, we don’t have to tell you that TV viewing behavior has changed. Nearly 60 percent of U.S. households have either never had, reduced, or cut traditional pay TV subscriptions and are not likely to go back. Not to mention the 66 percent year-over-year growth we observed in connected TV (CTV) ad impressions for August alone. It’s clear that there’s an opportunity for massive reach for advertisers, but with more advanced units, massive engagement as well. In fact, these ad types produced an engagement rate nearly six times higher than mobile devices. However, what you may not know is that while CTV offers innovative and interactive ad units like TV-to-Mobile, historically this has been a largely manual process that was difficult to scale. 

This is a topic we’re quite familiar with at Innovid. After all, we served the first interactive ad execution for Pringles during the 2019 Super Bowl and released a first-of-its-kind study on CTV advertising. So believe us when we say, we are extremely excited to team up with Verizon and other key partners to make buying interactive ads a lot less manual, and a lot more programmatic.

The main reason these advanced ad units have been bought directly and have not been widely implemented is mainly because ad tags have not been standardized across CTV. As a result, a software development kit (SDK) has to be integrated to support them properly and ensure all interactive ad experiences are consistent across publishers and devices. Innovid’s proprietary technology is not only integrated across premium publishers, but also enables tried and true demand side platforms (DSPs) like Verizon DSP to independently transact programmatically at scale. For publishers, this means a new revenue source in addition to direct purchases. For advertisers, our technology can provide automated programmatic executions across premium publishers without any inventory access headaches. Given emarketer’s prediction that 63 percent of all CTV inventory will be purchased programmatically next year, the timing couldn’t be more appropriate.

The combination of Innovid’s technology with Verizon DSP’s programmatic prowess provides advertisers with a seamless approach to executing interactive ads on CTV. To learn more about our programmatic partnerships and interactive CTV solutions, contact us.