Sightly CEO Adam Katz sat down with TVREV to discuss how his company’s unique approach to video-level contextual targeting is helping brands and political campaigns more effectively engage CTV viewers.

ALAN WOLK (AW): How would you explain what Sightly does and what unique technology do you leverage when buying CTV?

ADAM KATZ (AK): Brand Mentality is an AI native application that enables our clients to align their marketing with the most relevant cultural moments and trends through custom insights that are actionable across YouTube, TikTok, CTV, and creative development.

When added onto Brand Safety and Suitability, Brand Mentality creates the ultimate Brand “trifecta” by proactively establishing brand values upfront during the media buying process. This allows marketers to navigate hyper-nuanced cultural moments with clarity and speed. 

Sightly has been managing paid media for global brands and agencies since 2010. In that time, we’ve experienced first-hand how difficult it is for marketers to align their brands with real-time trends. 

Our background in contextual targeting and utilizing 1P data to inform paid media strategies provided the perfect launching pad to build our own real-time intelligence platform to help clients authentically advertise around cultural trends.

AW: You’re a member of the YouTube Measurement Program program and have extensive experience in the YouTube space — especially when it comes to contextual targeting. How does contextual targeting differ when applied to CTV compared to YouTube and other traditional digital media?

AK: Our Brand Mentality profile, which allows brands to codify their brand values, content preferences, risk tolerance, and more, serves as a data layer that has fueled custom YouTube campaigns for years. Because YouTube encompasses vast amounts of User Generated Content, navigating YouTube buys requires complex categorization to ensure brands are comfortable advertising there. Similar to how we created more nuanced levers for YouTube buying, we saw an opportunity to apply a more granular contextual approach to CTV, a platform that had previously been categorized generically at the publisher or genre level for advertising purposes. We were able to apply our large, nuanced taxonomy to CTV video-level data seamlessly for brands to leverage this same technology for their CTV buys.

In YouTube, there is a URL that is publicly accessible and allows us to analyze the content and create segments. This is not the case in open web video and CTV. Sightly has a unique partnership with IRIS.TV which has integrations with leading streaming platforms, apps, and FAST channels. They ingest and normalize entire video libraries and assign each video an IRIS_ID which in effect is the equivalent of the page URL. With access to hundreds of millions of videos, our proprietary Brand Mentality technology can analyze the content, create segments, and assign nuanced contextual data to the video’s IRIS_ID. Advertisers can activate our data to ensure the most suitable fit for their brand, with flexible partnership options that span both managed service and self service offerings.

AW: With the U.S. presidential race in full force, how do you think brands and political campaigns should approach their CTV strategy during an election year?

AK: Politics today is extremely polarizing, particularly during an election year, and brands must be even more attentive than ever to the content they’re surrounding. Political content is everywhere, and brands need a proactive approach for deciphering what they want to lean into, or avoid. When it comes to CTV however, brands cannot simply identify whether they’re around political content just by targeting or blocking news publishers.

For example, late night talk shows often have one-off political segments that typical Brand Safety or Suitability standards would not detect. With Brand Mentality, we’re able to identify those minute content shifts within a specific program to help brands target or block with much more granularity and flexibility.

We ensure the brand’s preferences are captured by asking in our profile whether an advertiser wants to target or block scenarios like “Consumers taking action based on political choices”, “Conversations around elections”, “Conversations around public health”, and much more, to form a playbook that serves as a connection point for contextual alignment based on the actual content of an episode, not just the program’s genre. This offers brands the ability to target politically active and socially conscious viewers regardless of what streaming app or channel they are watching. We ensure their message is delivered in a context that aligns with their brand values and political views while also defining their tolerance for political topics.

With respect to the campaigns themselves, like the last few elections, a few states will be the difference in determining the next president. In addition to targeting their bases, the parties are going after younger, unaffiliated, and single issue voters to drive turnout. These groups watch CTV and index high with free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST). Consumer research has shown that these viewers watch 4X more ads and demonstrate 42% higher brand favorability when they are aligned to the mentality of the content. With our IRIS-enabled private marketplace deals, campaigns can ensure they are reaching voters at the right moment. 

AW: What are some other  benefits that agencies and brands can expect by leveraging Sightly’s IRIS-enabled PMP capabilities for their digital video and CTV ad buys?

AK: Gone are the days of excluding entire publishers from your buys due to a few unsuitable shows. Sightly's IRIS-enabled PMPs change the game, allowing you to target or exclude specific content with unprecedented granularity. Sightly’s access to video-level data allows for more nuanced audience targeting compared to typical genre-level or publisher-level buys. This means your campaigns can now avoid the pitfalls of broad targeting, enhancing ad spend efficiency and maximizing the impact of every advertising dollar.

Our PMPs have set thresholds for ad placements based on factors like political bias, reliability of content, and sensitivity (e.g. avoiding violent or sexual content). This helps ensure brand-suitable placements aligned with the campaign's values. These deals can be easily activated across multiple demand-side platforms (DSPs) that campaigns may already use, streamlining ad operations. 

AW: How easy was it to integrate Sightly’s IRIS-enabled PMPs into existing advertising strategies?

AK: Integrating Sightly's IRIS-enabled PMPs into existing CTV campaign strategies is straightforward. The PMPs are designed to be turnkey solutions that can be easily activated across demand-side platforms (DSPs) used by political campaigns. The PMPs can be set up as self-service ad deals that campaigns can directly access and purchase through supply-side platforms (SSPs). Alternatively, Sightly can work directly with campaigns in a managed service capacity to create custom PMP packages aligned with their specific strategies.

Visit Sightly to learn more about Brand Mentality and click here to browse their CTV deal library. 

To learn more about contextual advertising in CTV, download the TVREV Report: Revolutionizing Relevance: How AI Is Changing The Game For Contextual Targeting in CTV 

Be sure to check out out TVREV’s report on Political Advertising on CTV, coming later this month