Originally featured on Advertising Week
Entrenched habits are hard to break, and a lot of media buyers are in the habit of buying digital media using a site list. There have historically been good reasons to consider site lists on the internet. A brand has a site list of vetted, approved media partners to make sure they aren’t buying fraud. Media buyers often play a game with site lists – trying to get the list as long as possible to maximize reach without hurting quality.
We all saw what happened in 2023 and 2024 when brands loosened their use of site lists and focused instead on audience, allowing “made for advertising” content to sneak into their media buy.
MFA was no good, but it doesn’t mean that buying with site lists is the only way to buy safe impressions. It’s also not transferable to other channels, especially CTV.
Consider the Content
CTV certainly has its own fraudulent content to contend with, and brands do need to know which providers are quality and which to avoid. However, relying on lists of streaming providers to buy safe CTV inventory or any CTV inventory for that matter, doesn’t make sense. CTV providers are not the equivalent of publisher URLs on the web.
I’ve been in several conversations with media buyers recently asking for a list of CTV providers, not just for brand safety reasons, but for media planning purposes. It seems that digital media’s reliance on site lists has trained media buyers to focus on a somewhat superfluous element of CTV media buying – CTV companies. “Sites” online are not the same as CTV companies. The same content on CTV can be bought through AVOD streamers like Hulu, FAST providers like Pluto, or direct through companies like Samsung, More than half of CTV advertising spend is through only ten companies. If I want to watch Breaking Bad, I can watch it on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Fandango and many more. An advertiser looking to place their ad within a Breaking Bad episode should only care about Breaking Bad, not which platform it’s being watched on.
In terms of the long tail, CTV site lists cause other issues. Some CTV providers offer a wide variety of content. Consider Tubi. It offers all sorts of popular series like “Naruto” and “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” Deciding if Tubi should be on or off a site list and considering the job done makes no sense. On the flip side, some FAST apps might sound like they do the same thing, but offer completely different levels of content quality. Consider two similarly named cooking apps; one cooking app might be amateur content while the other offers beloved old PBS shows. Again, understanding the content is much more important than caring about the CTV company or app that’s streaming it.
Breaking Content Open
Another reason a focus on content makes more sense is that media buyers can get more granular with their targeting. Of course there will always be premium placements on top shows and live events because of the audience, but most CTV inventory benefits from considering context as well as audience. Streaming allows advertisers to not only select specific shows or episodes, but place an ad strategically next to content that’s suited to their ad message – like a cruise line showing an ad right after a scene where a family plans a vacation. AI is enabling this kind of contextual targeting on CTV to such a level that advertisers can be much more precise with their placements.
To go full circle, the same innovations are starting to emerge on digital as well – making site lists less relevant online. Advertisers frustrated with keyword based contextual targeting are turning to AI to get a much more effective and nuanced approach. This has been especially helpful for news sites which are often left off of a site list because of a subsection of their content that covers war, politics and other unsavory topics. With contextual targeting, advertisers are more confident buying impressions against specific articles on a news site while avoiding anything sensitive.
The tools of the past served a purpose, but advertising is quickly growing out of them. New channels deserve new tools and mature channels need updated approaches.
