With total streaming usage taking 36% of overall TV share, you can be sure to find your audience on connected TV (CTV). We’re committed to helping you deliver high quality ad experiences to all streamers by bringing the best of digital ad technology — like delivering the right message to the right audience — to the TV screen. That’s why earlier this year, we introduced Google Audiences to CTV campaigns in Display & Video 360.

Successful businesses lean into existing customer relationships and the information they willingly share to drive performance. This information, known as first-party data, can be the basis for privacy-preserving, future-proofed ways to connect with customers. Today we’re announcing new features to let you reach your first-party audience on CTV devices and automatically find more users who look like your core audience.

Engage with people you know as they watch CTV in the U.S.

First, we’re making it possible for you to engage with your first-party audiences on connected TV devices. Now, when you select a first-party audience list for your Display and Video 360 campaign, the list will automatically be eligible to reach your most engaged customers as they stream connected TV content. This is an easy and effective way to ensure you reach people who already have a connection with your brand, on the device that they are using at the moment.

Let’s say you’re a cosmetic brand preparing for the holiday season and want to build on the direct relationship you have with customers who have downloaded your app. With Display & Video 360, you can now reach this first-party audience as they’re streaming their favorite shows on Disney, Tubi, or other premium publishers.

It’s easy to benefit from this new capability. All you have to do is select and add your first-party audience to your insertion order or line-item, in the same way you would have done for web and mobile devices. Display & Video 360 will automatically start reaching people who have an existing relationship with your brand when they are watching on CTV. This feature is available now to all advertisers in the United States, you can learn more about how it works by visiting our help center.

Reach more streamers similar to your first-party audience around the world

Once you have engaged with your first-party audience, reaching additional people who have similar behaviors or characteristics to your core audiences helps you boost campaign performance.

We are also launching audience expansion for CTV. Audience expansion makes it easy to reach more people that matter to your business and achieve your marketing goals. By utilizing contextual and geo signals, Display and Video 360’s algorithm will create a model to find CTV streamers who are similar to your core audience.

Let’s go back to the example of the beauty brand trying to reach relevant seasonal shoppers. You could now apply audience expansion to your first-party audience and show CTV ads to streamers who are similar to those who have downloaded your app.

You’ll be able to activate audience expansion across all regions globally in Display and Video 360 early next year via controls available in Display & Video 360’s TV insertion order.

These new features are just some of the ways we’re helping businesses connect with their most engaged audience while respecting people’s privacy. As we invent fundamentally new audience solutions, we’ll ensure they seamlessly work on CTV and allow you to make the most of the streaming boom.

As viewers continue to shift from traditional TV to connected TV (CTV), marketers are looking for effective ways to connect with streamers and measure the reach of their campaign across a variety of CTV apps. So we’re introducing new CTV solutions in Display & Video 360 to give you the option to pick the inventory and measurement solutions that work best for you.

First we’re adding audience guarantees based on Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) to Display & Video 360 and expanding advanced Programmatic Guaranteed features to more exchanges. Programmatic Guaranteed lets you access top CTV ad placements, combining the best of the direct deal buying experience with the automation and personalization of programmatic. Leading brands like Uber already use this buying technique to secure coveted CTV inventory around high-visibility events while still enjoying the efficiency of programmatic advertising.

Second, we’re making it simpler to buy YouTube CTV and other CTV apps in a consolidated workflow. This will give you a chance to improve your media performance by managing your campaign goals seamlessly across any CTV inventory.

Audience guarantees backed by Nielsen

CTV and video buyers often use Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings as the system of record to understand how many unique viewers they reached within their core audiences and prove campaign impact across digital media platforms. That’s why we’re launching Nielsen audience guarantees across streaming TV and video in Display & Video 360. This will make it easier to plan, buy and measure an entire connected TV upfront in Display & Video 360 in a way that’s comparable to linear TV. Being able to reach your key audiences has been central to effective traditional TV advertising — the same goes for CTV.

When setting up your guaranteed deal, you can now choose a specific age and gender demographic, like adults ages 18 to 49, and pay only for the ad impressions that reach your target audience as measured by Nielsen DAR. This feature works for all types of video campaigns — including for connected TV ads — and comes at no additional cost for advertisers.

For now, audience guarantees are available for Programmatic Guaranteed ads running with a set of publishers on Google Ad Manager in the U.S. We look forward to onboarding more publishers and exchanges.

Advanced Programmatic Guaranteed features available for more exchanges

Speaking of expansion, we’re making Google audiences for Programmatic Guaranteed available across a variety of exchanges including Google Ad Manager but also Xandr and Magnite and looking to add more. We've already expanded capabilities for you to reach Google audiences on CTV campaigns when bidding on open auction inventory. Google audiences can help drive a higher return on investment by reaching the groups of consumers who are most likely to respond to your message based on Google’s understanding of intent. Now, you can also use Google affinity, in-market and demo segments while buying Programmatic Guaranteed deals across a variety of participating publishers, giving you even more flexibility in your audience strategies for CTV.

For these exchanges, we’re also improving how ad frequency management works for Programmatic Guaranteed deals, helping to enhance the viewing experience for your audiences. Once your campaign frequency goal is reached for certain users, whether via open auction, Programmatic Guaranteed, or a combination of the two, Display & Video 360 now stops showing ads to these users while still prioritizing and delivering the agreed number of impressions from your guaranteed deals.

Consolidated CTV workflow across YouTube and other CTV apps

For many marketers, simplifying campaign execution for a variety of CTV apps is fundamental to effectively reaching streamers. And Display & Video 360’s capacity to plan, manage ad frequency and measure performance across YouTube and other CTV inventory sources saves them time and money. To help CTV buyers deliver more coordinated ad campaigns, YouTube ads can now be purchased within Display & Video 360’s insertion order dedicated to connected TV ad buying. This simplified workflow features parameters designed specifically for CTV campaigns to help minimize technical blockers that typically limit reach on CTV devices. Because it puts YouTube side-by-side with other top CTV inventory, it also makes it easier to optimize for common goals or control ad frequency across your entire CTV media mix.

Test this integrated workflow and advanced Programmatic Guaranteed capabilities today and combine them with new CTV frequency management solutions in Display & Video 360 to get the most efficient reach out of your CTV deals.

Today at Google Marketing Live, we’re unveiling new products and features to help you build resilience for your business, drive results and prepare for the future of marketing.

As streaming continues to rise, that future includes more connected TV (CTV) advertising. That's why we’re unlocking even more CTV inventory in Display & Video 360 and extending Google audiences to CTV devices — helping you reach the right viewers as they watch top streaming content.

Connect with the right CTV audience

We’re committed to helping you deliver high quality ad experiences to all streamers by bringing the best of digital ad technology to the TV screen. One of the most effective digital strategies is creating relevant connections with your core audience. So we're introducing Google audiences for CTV inventory in Display & Video 360, which will work across Hulu, Peacock, YouTube and most other ad-supported CTV apps.

In a few months, you’ll be able to power your CTV campaigns with the same affinity, in-market and demographic audiences you’ve been using for your digital ads for years. Demographics and in-market segments will be available on CTV devices by the end of this quarter. Some affinity audiences are already available and more are coming later this summer.

GoDaddy has been using Google affinity audiences to reach the right people with their digital ads. Now, they can extend that strategy and reach audiences like “Business Professionals” or “Avid Investors” who are watching shows on Discovery’s HGTV Network or YouTube.

Reckitt has also found success using Google audiences on connected TV. Reckitt wanted Airborne, their immune support brand, to remain top of mind in the U.S. So they turned to Google’s custom audience segments to reach streamers interested in boosting their immune systems. Display & Video 360 analyzed the keywords Reckitt selected and automatically created tailored audiences that maximized the brand’s reach. This new audience strategy, combined with other digitally inspired approaches, resulted in over 18% more CTV reach for their Airborne campaign.

Access the biggest names in ad-supported streaming

Whether you’re looking for a good movie, the latest music video or a peaceful guided meditation — YouTube is the main stream. According to Nielsen, YouTube reached over 135 million people on connected TVs in the U.S. in December of last year.[d90432]For brands like Uber Eats, YouTube is fundamental to reaching younger demographics, who are lighter TV viewers. And Display & Video 360’s capacity to plan, manage ad frequency and measure performance across YouTube and other CTV buys saves these brands time and money.

A majority of ad-supported CTV services — including broadcasters and cable network apps — also offer their inventory through Display & Video 360. According to comScore, Display & Video 360 now reaches 93% of ad-supported connected TV households in the U.S. and provides access to nine of the top ten most-watched ad-supported CTV apps in the U.S.[89917e]

We’re also continuing to unlock top CTV inventory around the world. Peacock, NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service, is the newest addition to available CTV publishers in the U.S. And you can now reach people watching Channel 4's programming in the UK.

Finally, we’re providing more innovative formats for brands to reach viewers the moment they turn on their TVs. Media and entertainment marketers in the U.S. have found success with the Google TV Masthead, which displays right on the home screen of Google TV devices. Today, in a new beta, we’re expanding the Google TV Masthead to allow more industry types to sponsor entertainment content. This cinematic teaser format can be tested using a Programmatic Guaranteed deal in Display & Video 360.

Check out the video below to learn more about new CTV solutions in Display & Video 360 and how to grow your business for the long run using enterprise ad tools.

Connected TV (CTV) and audio streams flow into people’s screens with hours of entertainment. So successful brands like Adidas and Nestlé turn to programmatic technology as a way to connect with their viewing and listening audiences while simplifying the execution of CTV and audio ad strategies.

Last week, we introduced new Display & Video 360 tools to help you forecast the reach of your audio and CTV campaigns on an ongoing basis.

Today, we’re spotlighting three additional features that will help you easily capture the attention of CTV and audio streamers and understand what encourages them to become customers.

Pick the right context for your CTV ads

Reaching viewers based on their interests and passions remains one of the most promising opportunities of CTV advertising. That's why we invest in features like similar audiences for CTV devices that help you find new connected TV viewers who share similar attributes with the audiences you already know.

But we’ve heard many of you want to combine these new tactics with best-in-class techniques inspired by traditional TV advertising that give you confidence that your ads are displayed in a safe and relevant context.

To help you do just that, we’re soon integrating new CTV contextual signals in Display & Video 360. This will allow you to pick inventory by genre, length or livestream content.

Let’s say you want to associate your ad message to some of the highly anticipated sports events of the summer, like the Olympics or the U.S. Open. Using Display & Video 360, you’ll easily select CTV live inventory that falls under the “Sports” genre. Then you’ll also be able to verify that your ads served against content that is suitable for your brand.

Measure the sales impact of your CTV ads

As pandemic restrictions ease in some parts of the world, ad spending is rebounding. But advertisers’ preference still goes to ads that can prove they’re effective at moving products off the shelves.

This fall, we’re introducing sales lift measurement for CTV ads using Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) in the U.S. Harnessing sales data across NCS’s extensive retailer network, this feature will give you a chance to quantify how your CTV ad impressions led to offline sales. The report features useful metrics such as percentage sales lift, total incremental sales and return on ad spend that can inform future campaign optimization. This data will be available right in the Display & Video 360 interface, meaning that no pixel implementation or log file data crunching will be required.

And because the Display & Video 360 integration with NCS already covers all other digital environments, publishers and formats, you can now understand the incremental lift attributed to campaigns spanning across CTV apps, display, audio and more.

Create professional dynamic audio ads

On top of the big screen, people will also turn on their smart speakers and headphones this summer to enjoy live sports and music festivals, or to listen to a podcast while relaxing in a deck chair. Creating great audio ads can be a chicken-and-egg problem. How can you justify a big incremental creative investment if you haven’t yet proven you can run fantastic digital audio campaigns?

That’s where Display & Video 360 can help. With Audio Mixer, you could already assemble a multi-track audio ad using simple drag-and-drop editing features. Building on Audio Mixer, we’re adding new dynamic production capabilities so that you can build tailored audio ads, quickly and efficiently, at scale. This new dynamic production tool allows you to use various segmentation rules, like location, schedule or audience, to create customized, relevant ads, all from a single audio creative.

For example, you can create a back-to-school audio campaign that has customized offers for different markets. Once you record the audio asset, you can use the dynamic audio tool to create additional custom assets with local in-store promotions based on where the ads will run.

Both Audio Mixer and the dynamic production tool will also be available in the recently announced Ads Creative Studio.

As people shift to on-demand ways of consuming TV and audio content, advertisers need on-demand ways of buying ads on these channels. Stay flexible and relevant by simplifying the execution and measurement of your CTV and audio campaigns with Display & Video 360’s new tools.

Connected TV (CTV) and audio streams flow into people’s screens with hours of entertainment. So successful brands like Adidas and Nestlé turn to programmatic technology as a way to connect with their viewing and listening audiences while simplifying the execution of CTV and audio ad strategies.

Last week, we introduced new Display & Video 360 tools to help you forecast the reach of your audio and CTV campaigns on an ongoing basis.

Today, we’re spotlighting three additional features that will help you easily capture the attention of CTV and audio streamers and understand what encourages them to become customers.

Pick the right context for your CTV ads

Reaching viewers based on their interests and passions remains one of the most promising opportunities of CTV advertising. That's why we invest in features like similar audiences for CTV devices that help you find new connected TV viewers who share similar attributes with the audiences you already know.

But we’ve heard many of you want to combine these new tactics with best-in-class techniques inspired by traditional TV advertising that give you confidence that your ads are displayed in a safe and relevant context.

To help you do just that, we’re soon integrating new CTV contextual signals in Display & Video 360. This will allow you to pick inventory by genre, length or livestream content.

Let’s say you want to associate your ad message to some of the highly anticipated sports events of the summer, like the Olympics or the U.S. Open. Using Display & Video 360, you’ll easily select CTV live inventory that falls under the “Sports” genre. Then you’ll also be able to verify that your ads served against content that is suitable for your brand.

Measure the sales impact of your CTV ads

As pandemic restrictions ease in some parts of the world, ad spending is rebounding. But advertisers’ preference still goes to ads that can prove they’re effective at moving products off the shelves.

This fall, we’re introducing sales lift measurement for CTV ads using Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) in the U.S. Harnessing sales data across NCS’s extensive retailer network, this feature will give you a chance to quantify how your CTV ad impressions led to offline sales. The report features useful metrics such as percentage sales lift, total incremental sales and return on ad spend that can inform future campaign optimization. This data will be available right in the Display & Video 360 interface, meaning that no pixel implementation or log file data crunching will be required.

And because the Display & Video 360 integration with NCS already covers all other digital environments, publishers and formats, you can now understand the incremental lift attributed to campaigns spanning across CTV apps, display, audio and more.

Create professional dynamic audio ads

On top of the big screen, people will also turn on their smart speakers and headphones this summer to enjoy live sports and music festivals, or to listen to a podcast while relaxing in a deck chair. Creating great audio ads can be a chicken-and-egg problem. How can you justify a big incremental creative investment if you haven’t yet proven you can run fantastic digital audio campaigns?

That’s where Display & Video 360 can help. With Audio Mixer, you could already assemble a multi-track audio ad using simple drag-and-drop editing features. Building on Audio Mixer, we’re adding new dynamic production capabilities so that you can build tailored audio ads, quickly and efficiently, at scale. This new dynamic production tool allows you to use various segmentation rules, like location, schedule or audience, to create customized, relevant ads, all from a single audio creative.

For example, you can create a back-to-school audio campaign that has customized offers for different markets. Once you record the audio asset, you can use the dynamic audio tool to create additional custom assets with local in-store promotions based on where the ads will run.

Both Audio Mixer and the dynamic production tool will also be available in the recently announced Ads Creative Studio.

As people shift to on-demand ways of consuming TV and audio content, advertisers need on-demand ways of buying ads on these channels. Stay flexible and relevant by simplifying the execution and measurement of your CTV and audio campaigns with Display & Video 360’s new tools.

Connected TV combines the reach and familiarity of traditional TV with the relevance and measurability of digital. For marketers to get the best of both worlds, we’re investing in connected TV advertising solutions designed to reach households at scale with messages that are relevant to users and respectful of their privacy. 

The reach of TV 

Brands have historically turned to traditional TV to connect at an emotional level with a wide range of people as they watch premium content. But as the media landscape becomes increasingly fragmented, advertisers have been left searching for new ways to engage with viewers at scale and build their brands. Good news - with more and more premium TV content available via streaming and accessible with programmatic technology, achieving reach through connected TV in a high-quality, brand safe environment has never been easier.

To help marketers quantify this opportunity, we retained Comscore to evaluate the reach of Display & Video 360’s connected TV advertising solutions in the US. Comscore’s analysis found that with Display & Video 360 marketers can now reach 76 percent of all connected TV households in the US and 89 percent of ad-supported connected TV households.¹ This accounts for more than half of all US Wi-Fi households and this number is expected to increase as connected TV penetration grows. In addition to YouTube, Display & Video 360 provides access to 9 of the top 10 most watched ad supported connected TV apps from cable and broadcast channels in the US.

Just as connected TVs are becoming mainstream devices in US homes, buying connected TV ads programmatically is also becoming a mainstream way to engage with all sorts of audience groups ranging from cable subscribers to cord-cutters, and from Gen X to more senior viewers. To test this assumption, we looked at the reach of Display & Video 360 across different household types. As it turns out, while Display & Video 360 connected TV ads remain a must-have if you’re after cord-nevers and younger viewers, they are now relevant to your strategy no matter the age and TV subscription status of your core audience.

The relevance and measurability of digital 

What makes connected TV advertising especially powerful is its ability to apply best practices from the digital world. For example, frequency management helps you spend money efficiently and avoid ad fatigue with users.

Last year, we announced that Display & Video 360 was supporting the IAB Tech Lab guidelines and using the Identifier for Advertising (IFA) to effectively manage ad frequency for connected TV. IFA is a standardized identifier that can be disabled or reset by the user. Since then, the industry has widely adopted IFA. In fact, last year alone, Display & Video 360 saw an 88 percent increase in connected TV IFA adoption by publishers on our top five video exchange partners.² Today, to further extend your frequency management capabilities, we’re working with inventory providers to support IFAs at the exchange and publisher levels. For example, we recently integrated with Telaria’s video management platform, enabling you to control frequency in a user-first way on publishers such as Hulu, Pluto TV or Lifetime.

To help you deliver a more pleasant and personalized viewing experience on connected TV, we have also integrated with audience and measurement partners investing in the IFA standard. Display & Video 360 now supports Comscore’s IFA-based audience segments across connected TV devices.

If you want to explore connected TV ads as a way to recreate your TV reach in 2020, Display & Video 360 will help you connect with a large number of streaming households. And to harness the digital capabilities of connected TV advertising, make sure you use IFA to manage how often viewers should see your spot and what is the most appropriate ad message.

_{2. Internal data, IFA coverage for top exchanges, US, Jan 2020}