Jenny Wall: Mid-Funnel in CTV Will Become More Important Than Programmatic

"A brand is not a logo, not a color and not a slogan. It's a feeling. Creatives and marketers still understand that you need to talk to living people," Wall emphasized. She sees AI's role as providing options for decisions and increasing efficiency for the brand, the consumer and the advertiser.

Contextual Targeting: Still in Its Infancy

Assessing the trend of using AI to analyze scenes and buy advertising by context (for example, an ad for kitchen appliances after a kitchen scene), Wall said the technology will become workable but is currently "in its infancy." "If a person isn't looking for kitchen appliances at that moment, then for me it's wasted money. There's so much data now that you need to be careful in analyzing it and not make hasty decisions," she noted.

Measurement and Pricing

In Wall's view, the main problem for TV and CTV remains the same — measuring results. "Every advertiser wants to know: did my placements drive sales? Attribution methods, like mixed media models, work after the fact. You're not optimizing in real time, you're looking backward. CTV has to prove that its presence along the customer journey delivers lift, not just programmatic," she said.

She named pricing models as the second problem. CPMs in some digital channels are very low, while Netflix and Amazon charge CPMs of $30–50. "For me, this isn't digital. This is television, and classifying CTV as a digital channel has actually undervalued it," Wall believes.

Performance CTV: One Hundred Percent

Asked whether the bet on performance advertising in TV is just hype, Wall answered unambiguously: "One hundred percent no." With clean data rooms, an ID graph can be built linking media to outcomes — this, she said, is the biggest change of the past three years.

At the same time, she noted that media companies still divide budgets into brand and performance: previously all the money went to brand advertising, now the spotlight is on performance, where direct sales are visible. In most cases, CTV remains in the middle of the funnel, but it has data that allows matching identities to outcomes.

The Future of CTV

Wall sees the biggest opportunity in applying AI to work directly with brands, media buyers and creative makers. "Everything has moved to CTV. The only thing keeping broadcast television afloat is sports, and that's changing fast: Amazon got Thursday Night Football, Netflix got the NFL Christmas game. If we can set CPMs correctly and configure targeting, the middle of the funnel will become just as important as programmatic, or even more important," she concluded.