Top CTV Trends to Look Out For in 2022

4 Min Read

2021 was a great year for Connected TV, with more people than ever cutting the cord and viewership skyrocketing across streaming services. And even though people are returning to a pre-pandemic level of socializing in live settings, the TV habits they formed are still sticking around. A recent Roku/Harris poll found that U.S. consumers are now watching 78 more minutes on streaming services than they’re watching cable or broadcast—and more people (213.7 million monthly in 2021) are streaming content than ever before.

As a result, advertisers remain bullish on the platform—U.S. CTV upfront spending is projected to reach $6 billion in 2022, with overall U.S. CTV advertising projected to hit $19.1 billion. According to eMarketer data, CTV investments in the U.S. are estimated to reach $13.41 billion by the end of 2021 and exceed $26 billion by 2025.

So if your brand isn’t advertising on CTV, it’s clear it needs to be—and if you already are, you probably want to apply more focus on it in 2022. With such a rapidly-changing and evolving advertising channel, it can be hard to make predictions—but here are the trends that several industry publications are predicting you look out for in the coming year.

Premium Inventory Will Reign Supreme

After a year of rising CTV fraud that has cost brands millions of dollars, it’s more crucial than ever for advertisers to know what they’re buying and where their ads are running. With the rise in streaming TV options, there has been a massive explosion in fragmentation and more buying options—and it’s up to advertisers to understand the supply paths and differences between options to ensure their campaigns are accurate, effective, and fraud-free.

AdAge predicts an even greater emphasis on CTV premium inventory in 2022, similar to the private marketplace that MNTN uses for Performance TV. “With open exchanges, there is little control over where ads may run, and these offerings remain fraught with persistent brand safety, transparency, and algorithmic control concerns,” AdAge writes. “Working with a premium aggregator that has curated direct connections to brand-safe premium inventory is the optimal path for advertisers to achieve reach and scale.”

Digital Budgets Will be Reallocated to CTV

As evidenced in a recent eMarketer report, agencies and brands reported moving 41% of their dollars from social media to CTV—second only to linear TV (58%). Advertising Week predicts this trend to continue, with concerning trends in digital performance media opening CTV to a new group of advertisers.

“As digital performance likely craters due to the disappearance of cookies and gatekeepers exercise more control over their ecosystem, digital marketers will seek a new channel for their spend. The growth in spend in 2022 will be in large due to a shift from digital to CTV,” the Advertising Week piece predicts.

Analytics Will Matter More Than Ever

The last year hasn’t been kind to industry stalwarts Nielsen, who are currently amid a reorganization after coming under fire for inaccurate reporting and struggles to keep up with the changing landscape of CTV. As organizations like NBCUniversal break up with Nielsen to pursue new methods of TV measurement, it’s clear that in 2022 the old way of measurement will no longer cut it in a post-CTV world.

AdAge predicts that in 2022, the rise of alternative impression-based currencies will continue to gain traction with broadcasters. “It’s time for the old guard to get disrupted and replaced. It’s time for GRP (gross ratings point) to die. This won’t happen overnight but look for GRP to at least fall deathly ill in 2022,” they write. AdAge also predicts that we’ll see new innovations in attribution capabilities that allow marketers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns in real-time, similar to the technology that can currently be found on premium CTV platforms like MNTN Performance TV.

Predictions for 2022 and Beyond

While the future in this space is hard to predict for even the biggest CTV expert, many experts seem to be envisioning a giant leap forward on current trends. This, coupled with unforeseen advancements that shake up and disrupt the industry as a whole, make for a very bright—and very lucrative—2022 for CTV advertisers.