Connected television industry shifts focus from impressions to audience attention

The connected television (CTV) industry is undergoing a strategic shift toward more sophisticated measurement models that prioritize audience engagement and attention over traditional impression counts.

In Mexico, industry experts note that CTV is maturing from a tactical coverage tool into a full-funnel marketing engine. Rather than focusing solely on view-through rates and impressions, advertisers are increasingly seeking to build communities and utilize attribution measurement to align with specific business objectives across different stages of the sales funnel.

Globally, the industry is addressing flaws in delivery metrics where advertisers pay for impressions that lack actual viewership. Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook highlighted that serving ads in empty rooms should be viewed as an invoice rather than a successful impression. New technologies, including camera-based panel data and content classification, allow for attention-adjusted CPMs. This enables programmatic buying to account for real-time factors such as room presence, co-viewing, and the specific context of the content being watched.