How Olympic viewers streamed the opening ceremony

eMarketer forecasts that retail media and connected TV (CTV) will be among the fastest-growing digital ad channels this year. Jed Dederick, senior vice president of global client and agency development at demand-side platform The Trade Desk, joins eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Nicole Perrin to discuss what the firm has learned over the course of the pandemic, what buyers want from CTV and retail media, and why resolving the identity crisis is so important.

Roku soars at the upfronts: Advertisers’ upfront spending commitments with the platform doubled from last year, as interest in CTV continues to rise.

Attack of the clones: Now that most major social platforms have a TikTok-like feature, each is exploring different ways to use short-form video to further their longer-term goals.

For the first time, we have broken out the portion of US upfront digital video ad spending that goes to connected TV (CTV). This year, advertisers will increase their upfront CTV video ad spending by almost 50% year over year to $4.51 billion.

US programmatic digital display ad spending continued growing at double-digit rates during the pandemic, and we expect it to reach a milestone next year when more than 9 in 10 digital display ad dollars are transacted using some form of automation.

The medium screen: New data on ad impressions shows that more YouTube viewing is happening on TVs, suggesting the platform will soon become an increasingly popular place to reallocate TV ad dollars.

“Roku Recommends” rolls out: The new show from Roku’s branded content studio surfaces top streaming content and gives advertisers a chance to reach viewers who might otherwise skip straight to ad-free services.

This report explores our Q1 2021 estimates of time spent with media in the US and analyzes which behaviors will stick in 2021.

Before the pandemic, linear addressable TV ad spending was soaring in the US, with annual growth rates of 50.7% in 2018 and 36.5% in 2019. But that spending increased by just 7.3% in 2020, amid advertising budget cuts in the TV industry.

NewFronts recap: Exclusive content on ad-supported platforms, shoppable shows, and creator-driven video content on social media were three major trends we saw at the NewFronts this past week.

Connected TV (CTV) advertising was a beneficiary of pandemic trends and remains one of digital advertising’s fastest-growing channels. Last year, linear TV decreased in importance to advertisers, as cord-cutting accelerated and more programmatic CTV inventory became available than ever before.

What to look out for at the NewFronts: CTV and social video will shine at this week's digital upfront presentations, as both formats have grown rapidly over the past year.

On today's episode, we discuss how airlines, hotels, and vacation rental homes are recovering, and the ways in which travel might be changed forever. We then talk about the shift of ad dollars and viewers from connected TV to linear, TV makers that are staking their future growth on streaming ads, and how the vMVPD (skinny bundle) market is shaking out. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer associate forecasting analyst Zach Goldner, director of forecasting Oscar Orozco, and senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Eric Haggstrom.

US advertisers increased their investments on digital media by almost 15% last year despite a pandemic and recession, looking for flexibility and accountability.

With the over-the-top (OTT) portion of the upfronts continuing to expand, marketers are increasingly realizing the benefits of using a unified platform to activate TV.

The pandemic led to many upward revisions of our UK digital user forecasts. Some changes (podcast listeners) will be permanent, while others will be temporary (digital gamers). Our social network user numbers, meanwhile, didn’t change much at all.

Within digital media channels, probably the longest-standing gap in measurement information lies with the walled gardens—a group that includes Google, Facebook, a host of other walled social platforms, and Amazon. Some in the industry are also talking more of walled gardens—or attempts to build them—in the connected TV (CTV) or over-the-top (OTT) space.

TV ads are still playing to win

Advertiser demand for video impressions has always outstripped supply, but supply has gotten a big boost as consumers started adopting streaming video viewing in larger numbers—especially on CTV devices—and more of those impressions have been made available programmatically.