“CTV has often been confined to ‘Total Video’ activations. Yet it offers unrivalled power within omnichannel plans, combined with DOOH for example.”
With Azerion recently announcing a CTV partnership with Stamp, we spoke to Mehdi Aroussi, Senior Director Global Partnerships at Azerion, to understand the ambitions of this tie-up and discuss the future of connected TV.
Mehdi Aroussi: First, I think it’s important to go back over Azerion’s positioning and our purpose. In an industry dominated by the big American platforms, we are positioning ourselves as Europe’s leading omnichannel and cookieless platform. Our mission is to offer advertisers and media agencies an alternative to these market giants, by simplifying access to inventory and audiences across all digital platforms. It is with this ambition in mind that we have begun our discussions with the Stamp teams.
Azerion recently announced a CTV partnership with Stamp, can you tell us more?
M.A: Stamp offers a unified marketplace that brings together the different types of inventories available on the TV screen and data from its various publisher partners, making it easier to buy this space. The main aim of this partnership is to strengthen our CTV offering for all of our customers, with specialist partners available in all the geographical areas in which we operate.
CTV was a key topic at Cannes Lions. Why is there so much interest in it, and how do you see it developing?
M.A: We say it every year, but consumer habits evolve from year to year, and that’s the main reason for this craze. At Hawk / Azerion, our ambition has always been to support the transition of traditional media to digital (audio, DOOH and more recently TV) thanks to these new uses, and this constantly guides our roadmap. More announcements are expected in the second half of the year!
The latest advances in CTV are the new technical solutions (measurement, targeting, etc.) which now make it easier to measure certain indicators and create synergies with other levers. CTV was often singled out for criticism on these last points, and its capabilities are now evolving! Another important factor is the series of market announcements at the start of the year, notably the launch of streaming platforms by broadcasters in France (TF1+, M6+, etc.) and the availability of Netflix and Disney+ inventories on the market, with the deployment of sales forces. All this augurs very well for the CTV market this year.
With Hawk / Azerion’s omnichannel positioning, how does CTV fit into multi-channel activations?
M.A: CTV has often been confined to ‘Total Video’ activations, which, as the name suggests, integrated video inventory in all its forms, and in which CTV was activated as a complement to meet an incremental target coverage objective.
With the strong growth in its use and its various contents (BVOD, AVOD, FAST, etc.), it can now be activated on its own, offering very precise targeting granularity for a mobile audience that chooses its content and the time of consumption.
We are also seeing the emergence of omnichannel plans which, by combining CTV and DOOH for example, offer unrivalled power. Firstly, because these two media are easily activated programmatically and the same video spot can be used for both, but above all because the combination of the two channels makes it possible to follow mobile users in their daily lives (in both the public and private spheres) with very precise targeting solutions.
