How to Setup CTV with Deals

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How to Setup CTV with Deals

  1. Request Access to Deals and Create or Select a Deal List:
    • The first step in setting up a successful CTV campaign is to select the PMPs or ‘Deals’ that the Line will target. Read more on Deal Inventory here: Open Exchange vs. Deal Inventory
    • For CTV Campaign and Lines, select Deals with the Inventory Type ‘CTV’ or ‘OTT/CTV’. As a best practice we recommend selecting and targeting every Deal that fits your campaign’s needs. There is no limit to the number of Deals that can be associated to the Campaign and Line and due to the premium nature of this inventory the auctions can be very competitive. Selecting many Deals will increase the ability of the Campaign and Line to scale. Additionally, for content that most closely mimics a linear TV experience, we recommend focusing on Deals with the formats ‘Live’ and ‘Long Form’ as this will display your ad either during live shows or full episodes. You can also select from pre-set ‘CTV’, ‘Long Form CTV’ and ‘CTV – Full Episode’ Deals lists or create your own custom Deal List that can easily be added to multiple Campaigns and Lines. In the ‘Inventory’ tab, request access to the Deals you would like to use. Deal access will be approved in 1-2 business days and from there the Deals can be associated with a Campaign or Line Item for targeting.
  2. Upload Creative:
    • If you do not yet have an Advertiser created for this Campaign, first create the Advertiser. Then open the Advertiser and upload one or more Creatives that meet the OTT/CTV Specs, see here: Pontiac CTV & OTT Specs
    • The Creative will need to pass the Creative Audit which may take up to 24 hours.
  3. Set-up a Campaign and/or Line Item:
    • Under the Advertiser, create a Line Item following these recommendations:
    • Inventory Type: CTV
    • Platform KPIs: Reach or VCR
    • Frequency Caps: Because device IDs and user IDs are not always available, frequency-capped CTV video campaigns can be more challenging to scale than desktop and mobile campaigns. For this reason, we recommend setting caps to 0.
    • Bid Strategy: The PMPs are real-time bidding environments with a specified price floor as defined by the publisher. This is the minimum CPM bid required to enter the auction. These auctions can be very competitive and typically, PMPs will clear somewhere between 40-80% higher than the Deal Price Floor. Closing CPMs are on average in the $30-60 range, with the most premium inventory running between $60-100 CPMs. Closing CPMs will vary greatly according to the caliber of publishers and inventory selected, where the PMP falls in the publisher waterfall, the level of competition, the format (Live, Short Form etc), the time of year and more. In general, we recommend using the price floors for guidance and adding an additional 40-50% to start the bidding. If you are not achieving the desired scale, continue to increase bids.
    • Allow for Cookieless Users: Enable this feature, Cookies are not typically available across CTV devices, and requiring them may prevent lines from serving.
    • Foot Traffic Attribution: This is available for CTV at a $4 CPM, add this additional cost to your bid CPM.
    • Exchanges: Remove ALL Exchanges.
    • Deals: Select the CTV Deals that you would like to purchase inventory through, or in the ‘Deal List’ tab, add Pontiac Curated Deal Lists or your own Custom Deal List to associated all Deals within that list.
    • Geo Targeting: Zip Code, DMA, State, or Country
    • Device Types: Leave the Device Types set to ‘TVs’, ‘Game Consoles’ and ‘Set Top Boxes’.
    • Operating Systems: Leave all operating systems selected
    • Video Playback: Select from ‘PreRoll’, ‘MidRoll’, and ‘PostRoll’, recommended to include all three. Do NOT select ‘Outstream’.
    • Video Size: Do not select a size.
    • Viewability Threshold: NOT AVAILABLE
    • Ads.txt: NOT AVAILABLE
    • Creative: Associate a Creative that meets the OTT/CTV Specs.
    • Audience Targeting: It is only recommended to use audiences from the providers TruAudience (Tru Optik), Lotame and Comscore. These can be found by filtering by ‘Provider’ in the Audience tab. Associate the selected audience to the Advertiser, then to the Line Item under ‘Associate Segments’. Keep in mind that these audiences are intended for CTV, but they may still limit scale.
    • Conversion Pixels: The standard ‘Conversion Pixel’ cannot be used. To track online conversions driven by a CTV Line, you can use an IP Conversion pixel. Read more here: IP Conversion Pixels