Cannes Lions: Navigating The CTV Revolution With AI And Video-Level Contextual Data, Part 1
As consumers shift to Connected TV (CTV) and FAST, advertisers face several challenges. Signal loss makes it harder for advertisers to reach the right people, supply chain fragmentation makes it harder to buy at scale, and increasing consumer choice in streaming makes it harder to capture viewer attention. At this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival, IRIS.TV brought together leaders in the ad tech industry to discuss the challenges, opportunities, and solutions in CTV.
How AI-powered Contextual is Driving Superior Business Outcomes in CTV
At RTL Beach, IRIS.TV co-founder and CEO Field Garthwaite moderated a panel that delved into the impact of AI and contextual data on Connected TV (CTV) amidst challenges like cookie deprecation and privacy regulations. Leaders from PMG, Horizon Media, Magnite, GumGum, and LG Ad Solutions discussed how AI-driven data signals enhance ad targeting, ensuring relevance and emotional resonance and improving consumer experiences and outcomes for brands without compromising privacy.
Sam Bloom, Head of Partnerships at PMG, highlighted a recent case study with PMG and Carl’s Jr. that showed video-level contextual advertising led to a “massive sales lift” for the quick-service restaurant chain.
Watch the full panel discussion with
Jean-Marc Papin, SVP Media Technology and Sustainability, Horizon Media
Phil Schaeder, CEO, GumGum
Mike Laband, SVP Platform Revenue, Magnite
Ed Wale, VP International, LG Ad Solutions
How Does AI and Contextual Work in CTV?
While contextual targeting is not new, the advertising industry has had difficulty scaling this capability in CTV. Webpages and YouTube have publicly available URLs that serve as persistent content IDs for AI to access the information needed to create targetable contextual segments. In an already fragmented streaming supply chain, the lack of a persistent content ID for video has made it impossible to scale targeting across supply sources.
Enter IRIS.TV, a content data platform that has created the infrastructure, content identifier, and data marketplace to enable contextual targeting to scale in CTV.
The company has built an ecosystem of IRIS-enabled™ publishers, data partners, and ad platforms dedicated to helping advertisers use AI-powered contextual intelligence to target viewers with precision at scale.
How it Works
Streaming services, CTV apps, and FAST channels share video-level data with IRIS.TV, which assigns each video a unique content ID called an IRIS_ID.
IRIS.TV shares this data with its marketplace of contextual data providers, which use AI to analyze each video frame-by-frame, create contextual, emotional, and brand-suitability segments, and assign them to the video’s IRIS_ID.
An advertiser can activate this data programmatically through their buying platform to target viewers watching videos with an IRIS_ID.
IRIS.TV’s contextual data marketplace allows advertisers to use their preferred IRIS-enabled contextual solution or target a private marketplace deal that utilizes multiple data partners. As a result, advertisers can reach viewers when they watch specific CTV content regardless of which channel, app, or device the program appears on.
In an interview with TVREV, PMG Head of Connected TV Strategy, Mike Treon said, “The IRIS_ID sets the stage for a unified view of content combined with technology to scale activation and is proving to be a valuable tool for how we standardize content targeting across supply sources at scale. What sets it apart from other content IDs and registries is its interoperability with data solutions and ad platforms making it easier for buyers to invest in streaming TV.”
“With CTV, you may have several people that live in the home. One person might be a 55-year-old male and the other might be that 20-year-old,” said CKE Restaurant CMO Jennifer Tate. “What’s interesting about this approach with IRIS.TV is the ability to make sure we reach not just the right households, but the right individuals within the household.”
Doug Paladino, PMG’s Programmatic Director added, “IRIS.TV is a solve for fragmentation in CTV as users are consuming content across hundreds of apps. If we want to target “Anime” content, it’s unrealistic to go to every single app and have them each curate anime content for us. IRIS.TV gives us a centralized solution across all apps that they are integrated with. It’s a good way to scale our targeting contextually.”
IRIS.TV CMO Rohan Castelino sat down with TVREV’s Rio Damata at Cannes Lions to further explain how IRIS.TV enables AI to Make CTV Advertising More Engaging.
IRIS.TV’s contextual data marketplace includes a growing list of AI-powered solutions for contextual, emotion, and brand suitability, including Captify, 4D, GumGum, Illuma, IAS, KERV.ai, Pixability, Reticle, Sightly, Silverpush, and Sounder. Advertisers can select from prebuilt marketplace deals from the company’s deal library or request to build a custom deal.