We’re in a CTV currency bubble – and it’s time to pop it

But then came another surprise! Amazon started publishing its weekly numbers, presumably, to compete with Nielsen’s numbers. Naturally, the numbers differed. For instance, in the first six weeks of the 2022 season, Nielsen claimed viewership averaged 10.3 million viewers, whereas Amazon claimed the number was actually 12.1 million.

So, some analysts asked: in a world where CTV has eclipsed linear TV in viewership, are we through with needing companies like Nielsen to estimate audiences?

Yet, surprisingly, this narrative didn’t get much oxygen.

It was an under-discussed canary in the coal mine. Yes, even in a fully digital world, there is a need for third parties in measuring audience size – there’s a need for audience profiles; there’s a need for co-viewing models; there’s a need for an audit function so no one’s putting their finger on the scale. But even the sum of these parts isn’t as big as what we’re told is coming in the great currency revolution of 2023.

As a sanity check, think of who would have the accurate count of clicks in a standard Google pay-per-click campaign: Google, or a third party with a browser spyware panel estimating the clicks? That’s a silly question. Is there still a need for vendors to provide insights on search campaigns? Absolutely. But Google is doing the basic counting. Perhaps this is a midwit trap, where the simplest view is actually the most insightful, but most people fall into a middle ground of overthinking.

In this case, a simpleton view of ‘all video will soon be served digitally, so ad servers will make third-party currencies unnecessary‘ usually gets dismissed as an unsophisticated take. The smarter folks point out that reality is more nuanced: linear is still too important, so we need sampled measurement of that; and personification models are a whole layer of intelligence on top of a simple ad pixel. Plus, no buyer will let the seller grade their own homework.

The only conclusion I can reach hearing those arguments is, “Yeah, true – but all video will soon be served digitally, so ad servers will make third-party currencies unnecessary!”

Yet the buzz around currencies is so palpable. Some of this is fueled by decades-long fantasies of taking down the monopolist Nielsen – the feeling that we’re finally storming the Bastille! Every conference panel on measurement, every fireside chat with a broadcast or cable executive, every inbound PR request I get is about currency. So much that I posit – and I'm ready for the tomatoes – that we’re in a currency bubble.

Knowing how many people saw an ad is of course critical, and we should solve for this need. And I understand the frustration of media companies who think their inventory has been miscounted for years, costing them billions. But think of what we’re focused on – we’re not talking about if the ads worked; rather, we’re talking about how much to charge the buyer. Which of these do you think CMOs care more about when they’re doing their five-year planning? And isn’t it telling that the heat around currencies is being driven by the historically broadcast-oriented media companies? Streaming platforms aren’t looking at the situation and saying, “We want Nielsen alternatives” – they’re saying, “We already have these numbers.”

Imagine that in another industry – say, sneakers – the biggest conversation topic was not product innovation, evolving consumer preferences, production or supply chain innovation, but rather counting how many sneakers were sold. Sure, that sounds critical, but it seems like an issue that should be quickly solved so that industry stakeholders can move on to more important topics.

Our industry is making this mistake. We’re spending too much time talking about how many, and not enough about who (advanced audiences) and what happened (outcomes – why brands advertise in the first place).

I’m convinced we’re hyping a shrinking market. In five years, will streaming leaders want to be signing massive checks to currency providers who tell them how many people saw the ads they served, when they know the precise number themselves? I suspect not. They’ll want to write checks to learn advanced insights about their audiences, and prove they drove meaningful outcomes.

In my estimation, ad servers are the pin that will pop CTV’s currency bubble. Only time will tell if I'm the simpleton or the intellectual in this debate.

Chris Kelly is co-founder and chief executive officer at Upwave.