AVOD player Future Today has teamed up with measurement vendor iSpot to help advertisers understand campaign performance for its ad-supported CTV apps. And the partners have already seen positive initial results, disclosing boosts to incremental reach for certain brand categories.
Specifically, Future Today – which counts brands such as Fawesome, Happy Kids, and others, along with its flagship namesake app – is utilizing iSpot’s Streaming Measurement product, with a focus on measuring campaigns’ incremental reach on CTV beyond linear. According to iSpot, its tool is all about helping advertisers “fine-tune ad delivery” by helping them understand streaming audience reach, on-target delivery, deduplication against linear and verified ad delivery.
“Born in the cord-never space, Future Today has always been an early leader in the ad-supported and Connected TV ecosystem,” said Vikrant Mathur, co-founder of Future Today, in a statement. “With more content being consumed on streaming platforms, we knew we were bringing in a new audience that had never experienced cable or linear television, and it was crucial for us to partner with an innovator like iSpot.tv, to help advertisers reach, measure and engage with audiences at scale in these environments.”
Gaining visibility and being able to deliver transparent data around key streaming metrics is key for ad-supported services in general, and particularly an independent streamer like Future Today, which needs to demonstrate its value to brands to capture some of the ad investment flowing to streaming.
Per IAB’s latest forecast, U.S. CTV ad spending is projected to grow 12% year over year to reach $22.7 billion in 2024.
The partnership is already up and running and Future Today touted early results that “clearly demonstrate the substantial success brands have achieved” via incremental impressions and reach beyond traditional linear TV across the company’s apps. It called out small and mid-sized brands as garnering the largest boosts. For example, iSpot measurement found smaller brands achieved 89% incremental reach and impressions beyond linear campaigns, while medium-sized brands had 67% and 62% incremental impressions and reach, respectively.
In the announcement, Jennifer D’Alessandro, head of ad sales and marketing at Future Today, noted the integration with iSpot delivers viewership insights, including co-viewing and incremental reach across its flagship and hundreds of partner apps “for brands to feel confident in knowing the campaigns are successful.” Particularly for “mid-to-small sized brands who need to maximize their budgets and generate high ROAS.”
As for brand categories across the campaigns that aired, the partners boasted significant lifts beyond linear campaigns for toy, auto, and travel brands. Toy and auto brands had 89% lifts in incremental reach and 73% in impressions, while travel brands achieved 85% incremental impressions and reach (88%) via Future Today apps. And for “a nationally recognized QSR brand, known for its substantial TV ad spend,” Future Today generated more than 40% incremental reach and impressions beyond linear.
“Flexibility and agility are top of mind for brands when they launch media campaigns,” said Dan Lowenberg, VP of Media Partnerships at iSpot.tv, in a statement. “With iSpot’s Streaming Measurement, advertisers can tweak creative, reallocate budgets and re-strategize mid-flight based on real performance data. This agility lets brands maximize the impact of every ad dollar and capitalize on the clear opportunity that exists within the streaming environment.”
And as it looks to serve up metrics and insights to advertisers, Future Today has also been expanding content on its ad-supported apps, such as recent licensing deals with Sony Pictures Entertainment and others for 350 titles that bring more films to its Fawesome AVOD app.