Our Insights

Hosted by AdExchanger, Cynposis, AdMonsters, and Chief Marketer, CTV Connect brought together connected television (CTV) stakeholders for a first of its kind summit in New York City in March 2024.  The conference drew in global brands, agencies, publishers, networks, streaming companies, tech platforms, demand side platforms (DSPs), supply side platforms (SSPs), and measurement providers to discuss the key issues facing the industry. Topics ranged from scaling data driven CTV, how to measure success, and what buyers want and need from CTV. It offered an opportunity for the discussion of ideas, insights, and solutions for bringing the power of digital advertising to the streaming TV world and we sent Angela Parrish, Senior Lead of Video and Audio to take it all in.

Pepsico’s Katie Hanniffy, Head of Media Strategy & Investment offered insights from the brand, and spoke of the need to drive scale to drive outcomes. Standardization across partners and platforms, data transparency on performance, personalization at scale, and upstream creative collaboration were key issues Hanniffy called out as goals for Pepsi. Creative was another key challenge highlighted “We have to get different versioning to customize creative based on data,” said Hanniffy.

McCall Gridley, Head of Sales and Partner Experience for Tastemade, and Stephanie Hemmann, Sr. Associate Manager Integrated Media for Hershey presented about a multi-channel campaign for Hershey’s Rolo candy.  Through working directly with Tastemade, Hershey’s Rolo was able to leverage a customized streaming series to achieve impressive results for the brand. 

The future of television was a recurrent theme discussed in several conference sessions. Television is in a transformative stage because of the growth in streaming – but still offers the broad reach many clients are looking for. The recent upticks in viewership for The Oscars and Superbowl LVIII were highlighted as examples of broad reach programming opportunities. Several presenters talked about the need for the industry to move to a holistic video strategy, rather than a siloed approach to budgets. In a moment of industry humor, one presenter joked that if linear and programmatic had a baby, it would be CTV. And we know that in many ways, CTV can in fact offer the best of both worlds for advertisers.

While TV is not dead and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere soon, here at Lewis Media, our ability to incorporate linear television with CTV allows us to have a holistic view of the media landscape and to drive scale.  We also agree that a holistic view of media strategy is crucial — we specialize in media top to bottom. We consider every avenue, platform, and channel available to achieve results for our clients.  Lewis Media has been placing CTV since the early days of its inception, and we have seen the success of CTV coupled with linear for many of our clients.

Lewis Media Partners values the opportunity for ongoing industry education that conferences provide.  Change is a constant in our dynamic industry, and networking with and learning from other experts in the industry is an important part of how we stay ahead of the competition.