Masters of CTV: Maribel Vivancos

Where do you work and what do you do?  

I work at Finecast, a unit that specialises in Digital Television (Advanced TV) at GroupM, Spain. I lead this unit within the group, directing the service provided to customers and coordinating with the team of professionals that make it up. In addition, in my day to day role, I’m in charge of improving our services, since the digital TV market is more new and is therefore constantly evolving and changing. 

What role does CTV advertising play in your role? 

As Finecast is a unit specialised in digital TV, CTV is at the heart of our activity. We strategize, plan and buy campaigns in the Digital TV environment. CTV, in short, is at the heart of everything we do and innovate in the market.   

What success have you had with CTV advertising? 

Finecast is a recently created unit at GroupM Spain. In fact, we have just completed our first year, and in May we already exceeded the total amount of business we managed last year. But our greatest success is being able to help our clients introduce CTV into their campaigns, with the security of being advised by an expert and ensuring a correct transition and combination of this with linear/traditional TV. The high adoption of Digital TV by our clients in Spain is helping us to better shape our product and enrich it with new features and partners, allowing us to be at the forefront of the Spanish market. 

How have you seen client interest in CTV advertising change? 

I have seen a very significant change in the last 2 years. The continuous and significant drop in the audience of traditional TV in the last 3 years, plus the digitalisation of consumption that we experienced during the pandemic, has led to greater consumption in the CTV environment and greater awareness by advertisers of the potential audience and coverage of this environment, which is key to complement and improve the current results of their campaigns. Today it is already a priority channel to be considered in a very high percentage of TV campaigns. 

What are your predictions for the future of the CTV advertising industry? 

It is difficult to make predictions in a market that’s in development, but if I have to make a forecast, I think we will continue to see a greater fragmentation of the audience. This is thanks to the arrival of new platforms and the proliferation of FAST channels. I’m also convinced that we will see further development in measurement (viewability, verification and more performance-related metrics), as well as in combined metrics between digital and linear TV (cross media measurements that allow us to assess the combined impact). Finally, there will be more use of data and segmentation, as well as greater interactivity options within CTV.