TK InMobi Workshop

Hi everyone! It is great to be here with you all today. Quick background on me - I have spent about 18 years bouncing around almost every corner of AdTech, media, and marketing

Over in adtech, I was at Google, launching ad servers and working on AdX for video with YouTube and broadcasters across EMEA - like the BBC, RTE, and RTL - plus streaming platforms in APAC like Rakuten Viki

And AppNexus / Microsoft who were the GTM adtech partner for Netflix Advertising at launch

I also spent some time on the sell-side. Ran global programmatic and audience media business for Hearst across EMEA and APAC

And more recently, I have been helping multi-brand retailers and marketplaces like carwow, and FARFETCH set up their commerce media businesses

And either through them or directly - working with some of the major TV spenders across luxury fashion and automotive on their media strategies

So today, I hope to share a bit of what I have seen from both sides of the fence, and how all these worlds are colliding right now in CTV

So, let us start with a foundational question: what is actually driving buyers to move so fast into CTV right now?

It really comes down to two forces working together - macro market pressures and micro shifts inside client media plans

On the macro front, every CMO is feeling the heat - volatile economic conditions, changing consumer habits, and AI. Everyone is under intense pressure to do more with less and prove real ROI

On a micro level, this is completely changing how TV is viewed. TV was historically a purely upper-funnel playground. You bought a spot for broad awareness, not for immediate conversions. But today, macro pressures combined with tech advancements - like shoppable TV, live programmatic, and better measurement - have blurred the line between brand and performance. You have probably heard people throw around the term "brandformance". It is a bit of a silly word, but the reality is real: media plans now have to deliver on both fronts, and brands are looking at CTV to make TV perform

So the question becomes: how is our industry actually answering this demand?

There are many tactical plays, but today we have picked three major CTV trends that are changing how we target, activate, and measure audiences across screens

First up: Contextual Intelligence

Normally, contextual targeting just means showing a food ad during a cooking show. That is table stakes now

Today we can go much deeper with hardware-level tech like ACR - Automatic Content Recognition. This is hardware built into Smart TVs that relies on visual or acoustic fingerprinting to instantly recognise exactly what is on the screen

Some big players are pushing even further:

• You have networks like Fox using AI to scan live broadcasts in real-time to analyse the mood and vibe of a scene so brands can place ads during emotional high points
• Disney and Netflix are doing dynamic creative matching based on scene context, and Amazon is tying it to the purchase loop. Effectively DCO for CTV

But here is the thing: these Smart TV networks are essentially guessing user mood based on on-screen video. Meanwhile, you guys do not need to guess. You already capture real-time intent, interest, and shopping signals directly on the mobile screen through your owned and operated properties like GLCE and the exchange

Measurement in CTV is still one of the trickiest puzzles in our industry

A lot of players are still relying on residential IP addresses, which change constantly, rotate, and only tell you about a household, not who is actually inside. On top of that, with Server-Side Ad Insertion - SSAI - ad beacons fire from a server instead of the device, which opens up real risks for invalid traffic

That is why key industry players are rallying around solutions like Unified ID 2.0. The Trade Desk pushed UID2 hard, and major TV manufacturers like LG Ads and Samsung Ads have jumped on board to connect logged-in user data directly to programmatic buying

But going back to Performance TV, brands do not just want clean ad or tech metrics - they want to know if an ad actually sold a pair of sneakers or a box of cereal, whether that was online or in a physical store

That is why retail media networks are stepping in

Players like Walmart Connect and Kroger are tying up with Disney+ and Roku, and Amazon is doing similar deals with Netflix and Roku, matching actual sales and loyalty data directly with TV ad views

Let us talk about the home screen, which has become the new "homepage takeover" for the living room. It is the first thing every viewer sees, and OEMs like Samsung, Roku, and LG Ads are moving fast to own this space

Why are buyers so bought in? Because it is a full-funnel solution. You get the massive awareness of a billboard with the targeting data and interactive elements of a digital ad

Look at the numbers from LG Ads: Home screen placements yield 3.9x higher brand awareness and a massive 15x lift in purchase intent when paired with interactive calls-to-action

Smart TV OEMs love them because they capture attention before a user buries themselves in an app or content experience. GLCE, I understand, through Ambient Screens offers similar or the same high-impact, interactive format on CTV. So huge opportunity for you guys

To tie this all together: CTV is moving fast, but it is running into the exact same structural issues mobile solved years ago - fragmentation, attention shifts, and measurement gaps

When you talk to your clients, the key message is that IMBI and GLCE are uniquely positioned to bridge all three of these trends:

• Targeting: you have high-intent shopper, contextual, and ambient signals across devices
• Activation: you can deliver a unified, sequential CTV-to-mobile solution with an always-on screen presence
• Measurement: you can deliver true closed-loop digital attribution from the initial screen exposure to the final mobile conversion