A new survey of advertisers and agencies has found strong interest in connected TV advertising and intention to increase spending in 2021. The survey, conducted by Tremor Video, Unruly and MTM Global found that 90% of respondents intend to increase their CTV advertising budgets in 2021, with an average increase of 53%. Digging deeper, 11% of advertisers and 17% of agencies said they plan to increase CTV budgets by more than 100%. Another 25% of advertisers and 23% of agencies plan to increase CTV budgets by up to 100%.

The survey was conducted in December, 2020 among 200 advertiser, agency, DSP or trading desk executives in U.S. and U.K.

CTV has overlapping appeal to advertisers and agencies, though each views certain benefits as more important; 46% of agencies cited flexibility and efficiency of activation, followed by targeting with 23%. But for advertisers, targeting led, cited by 38%, followed by ability to meet campaign goals (35%) and strong ROI (32%).

Overall, CTV advertising has a very high satisfaction among both advertisers and agencies. 77% of agency respondents were very satisfied  that CTV campaigns meet their objectives, with 15% quite satisfied. 67% of advertiser respondents were very satisfied  that CTV campaigns meet their objectives, with 27% quite satisfied.

Importantly, 72% of respondents said CTV advertising helps reach target audiences more effectively than linear TV. Among those planning to use targeting in their CTV campaigns, 63% plan to target specific audiences and 51% to target broad audiences, far higher than contextual targeting like shows, content or genres. These points echo Tubi’s recent research and others, that have found CTV’s key benefit is reaching audiences that no longer watch linear TV or subscribe to pay-TV service.

Underscoring how established CTV advertising has become, 90% of agencies and 75% of advertisers strongly or slightly agree that CTV is now a key part of their video strategy. Advertisers see the biggest CTV challenges as cost (43%), creating CTV assets (36%) and finding target audiences (32%), which agencies see the biggest challenges as brand safety (30%), cost (27%) and finding enough inventory (27%).

The full report is available as a complimentary download here.

For a deeper dive, sign up for VideoNuze’s next Connected TV Advertising Summit (virtual) on June 9th and 10th. Registration is free and you can win and Roku TV and smart soundbar.