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They have been media buyers for years demands greater transparency when they buy connected TV inventory. But some networks just don’t seem to be getting the hang of it.
CTV’s transparency has since taken an even bigger hit TV packages got cold again.
Brands want to buy ads in a publisher’s streaming apps in one place. But some programmers are said to be selling mystery deal IDs that make it nearly impossible for buyers to tell if they’re buying ads on, say, Paramount+ or Pluto TV because they’re packaged together.
Some buyers have been increasingly vocal about their frustrations, and fear that the lack of transparency could affect CTV’s growth trajectory.
Several of these frustrated buyers have spoken to AdExchanger about the lack of transparency they are experiencing. The four buyers and one advertiser, all of whom buy programmatic from Paramount and NBCUniversal, spoke anonymously about their concerns to protect their relationships with those publishers. Advertising executives from Tinuiti and MiQ and a Gartner analyst spoke with us more generally about the ongoing conversation about CTV’s transparency.
Media buyers told AdExchange that both Paramount and NBCU offer standard deal IDs that don’t disclose where impressions are going across different apps owned by the same publisher. For example, programmatic buyers say they don’t know how many impressions they’re getting on Paramount+ versus Pluto TV, the network’s free service, until campaigns run.
This lack of transparency “smacks the way we are [should] it’s about attracting programmatic buyers to CTV,” said the head of one independent agency. Digital native buyers must count on every dollar they spend, especially because of the high costs involved premium video.
It’s not the first time buyers have expressed frustration with Paramount over a lack of transparency in the past year. She was convicted in July of allegedly rigging ad auctions to sell views on Pluto at higher prices. (Read more about duplicate bids here.)
In some cases, the inventory that the buyer considered premium (or not) plays a role in how transparent the publisher chooses to be.
Buying in bulk
Bundling is a popular strategy for several reasons. It allows buyers to bid on all of a publisher’s inventory in one place without letting them pick. In turn, publishers can offer more efficient pricing to buyers while maximizing their own revenue.
For these reasons, bundling in general is growing as a trend. But that tactic translates into buying streaming packages that don’t give buyers much choice, said an ad-buying executive at a major media agency.
Three of the ad buyers who spoke with AdExchanger said that Paramount and NBCU pool their inventory in ID deals significantly more than their competitors. Too much bundling limits transparency, and when media planners can’t allocate impressions to specific platforms, they risk launching recurring ads.
The same media executive told AdExchanger that buyers have almost no say in how dollars flow through Paramount’s properties. Meanwhile, some buyers said NBCU is taking a similar approach. Its streaming inventory includes free ad supported TV channels and other NBCU-owned content across distribution channels (such as Roku or LG) in addition to Peacock.
“In general, our store IDs are at an aggregate level,” an NBCU spokesperson told AdExchanger. “We encourage our programming partners to look at the entire NBCUniversal portfolio as the goal is to maximize the reach of their investment. As already said, partners can work with us [for] highly curated and customized offerings.”
NBCU has a separate premium package on its account that provides all expenses to Peacock. Paramount also offers advertisers the option of a more expensive package that allocates almost 70% of the Paramount+ campaign budget. However, to run only on Paramount+, the brand would have to buy a title sponsor.
A Paramount spokesman said the network provides buyers with a percentage breakdown of where it expects views to land in its streaming portfolio, which also includes MTV and CBS.
But without a way to make decisions at the buying stage beyond Package A or Package B, it’s much harder for marketers to make informed decisions about their CTV investments.
A problem behind the scenes
From a media buying perspective, the case for greater transparency at CTV seems clear.
The problem is that publishers generally aren’t motivated enough to become more transparent, said Eric Schmitt, an analyst and research director at Gartner. One reason is that BTV’s offering is known for being both rare and premium, he said, as well as if people buy it anyway.
Privacy is also an issue to some extent. Many publishers say their hands are tied privacy regulations which limit their ability to insert user data into the bidstream. For example, Hulu and HBO were sued for allegedly sharing viewership data with Facebook in 2015 and 2023, respectively. But those concerns are about how publishers handle user-level data — and don’t explain why some pubs don’t seem to be telling brands which they use the app.
Pubs are also concerned that buyers will choose their inventory. When advertisers have full control over what apps or shows they run, they can choose the most popular media and leave the rest on the table. This concern is especially prevalent with “premium” stocks.
Premium usually refers to a professionally produced long video that is placed behind a paywall. Buyers generally consider paid streaming apps (such as Paramount+, Peacock and Netflix) more premium than free distribution services (such as Pluto TV and Tubi).
Two of the buyers who spoke to AdExchanger said they believe the bundling helps Paramount distribute Pluto’s ad dollars by tying it to the network’s most premium service: Paramount+. It would make sense to apply the same logic to NBCU, which bundles Peacock with the content it distributes through FAST channels. There is no concrete evidence that these publishers are intentionally obfuscating views to influence ad serving, but the lack of transparency is good for revenue.
Last but not least, buyers may not have power in numbers when it comes to pressuring publishers to change. Some buyers are comforted by the limited transparency they get in post-campaign reports.
For example, Paramount breaks down channel delivery by percentage, and NBCU tells buyers the top 100 TV shows they’ve launched. [level of information] is sufficient for most of the advertisers we work with.”
But other buyers are only getting more and more frustrated.
“[One] the client was caught off guard at Paramount [during the] because of this issue in advance,” said an executive at a major media agency, AdExchanger. The lack of transparency on these streaming platforms has “affected business,” they said.
Channel change
Which isn’t to say that Paramount and NBCU haven’t made some effort to respond to buyers’ demands for more transparency. For example, beginning in the fall, NBCU began sharing more detailed genre and rating information in requests for proposals, a brand executive said. NBCU also reports delivery within its top 100 shows for direct and programmatic offerings.
More genre information is great, but it’s still not the best thing publishers can do, said a third agency media buyer.
A lack of transparency could deter new advertisers from trying CTV for the first time, Gartner’s Schmitt said, or lead them to favor other fast-growing channels that come with more granular messaging, such as retail media and social video.
Without more significant improvements in transparency, CTV “will not play the long tail of ad buyers,” Schmitt said. He added that the result could be “a relatively smaller universe of advertisers spending a lot of money [on streaming media].”
In other words, CTV ad growth could hypothetically stagnate.
To prevent that, said a third ad buying executive, agencies must wage “a fight that must be fought [CTV] more transparent.”
Transparency and more
There are several ways buyers can squeeze more transparency out of media partners for their streaming campaigns.
Where possible, buyers should seek direct relationships with media sellers, said Lara Koenig, vice president of global strategy and partnerships at programmatic buying agency MiQ. Publishers are often willing to share a little more information in direct deals than in bidstream, where they are concerned about cherry-picking and potential privacy issues.
Some TV buyers, for example, are starting to use on-demand platforms as a control center manage direct purchases rather than relying on DSPs for planning and purchasing and implementation.
In addition to the purchase method, agencies should contact media partners directly and ask them for specific information about budget allocation and impression delivery. Depending on the issuer, direct contact could reveal some log-level data and other detailed information that issuers typically don’t include in the offer stream, Koenig said.
Another option is to purchase streaming media through programming distributors such as Roku or Spectrum. Because distributors generally don’t own most of the content on their platforms, they have less incentive to obfuscate competitive information like a show’s title.
In addition, buyers find direct offers more advantageous than buying through a distributor or some kind of middleman, so content aggregators offer more information in the offer stream like competitive advantage get buyers.
But tactical solutions won’t placate buyers forever—though it may take some time before their demands for transparency in their streaming media purchases are heard. It will take even more market pressure from advertisers to force the change, Schmitt said.
Expect transparency to remain a hot issue throughout 2025.