How Context, Commerce And Creative Deliver New Opportunities For Advertisers

May 23rd, 2025

As seen on TVNewsCheck

Kargo’s Eric Hoffert: A new era of CTV advertising is dawning, moving away from generic reach and toward campaigns that are smart, personalized and performance driven.

CTV is emerging as a unique hybrid of TV and digital advertising, providing opportunities for more captivating “lean-back” and “lean-in” experiences than ever seen before. CTV brings together the value of big screen advertising with the technical agility of digital.

At the heart of the CTV evolution are the “three C’s” of CTV advertising: context, commerce and creative. These pillars are quickly becoming the foundation of how savvy advertisers are winning share of mind, cart and heart. 

Each element plays a distinct yet interwoven role in the TV transformation.

Context Is King — Again

In the digital world, we’ve long known that context matters. But until recently, CTV lacked the intelligence to match ads with specific content moments. That’s changing fast. Scene-level contextual analysis allows advertisers to understand what’s happening in the content—down to the emotions, objects and even dialogue—so they can align their message with moments that matter.

Imagine showing a food ad just after a cooking scene unfolds or a travel brand message as characters plan a trip. These are not hypothetical opportunities; they’re happening today and delivering powerful results. As show metadata becomes more readily available (assuming media companies start to share it more readily), advertisers will have even more to work with. 

Commerce Takes Over TV

One of the most exciting developments in CTV is the rapid maturity of shoppable advertising. Commerce-focused formats are no longer limited to QR codes or simple calls to action. The new wave of dynamic product ads enables brands to serve thousands of personalized commerce creatives tailored to user behavior, location and even live inventory levels.

For brands, this means they can turn a branding campaign into a transaction driver without losing the storytelling power of TV. Whether showcasing new product flavors or geo-targeted store offers, these ads are designed to move viewers from “just watching” to “just bought.”

Today, QR codes are the norm, but many retailers are already experimenting with interactivity where viewers can click and shop right on their TV. In its Upfronts presentation, LG noted that it is focused on making CTV a “full-funnel commerce experience” and many other media companies mirrored their sentiment. 

With New CTV Creative, Advertising Becomes Content

As streaming takes center stage, advertising requires innovation beyond the 15-second commercial and beyond the IAB standard banner.

For decades, the divide between content and advertising has been fixed — ads ran between programming as pods, rarely reflecting what was actually happening on screen, and this was generic enough to appeal to a mass audience. Today, CTV advertising is breaking that mold. With advancements that incorporate AI and scene-level data, brands can now seamlessly integrate creative directly into, or wrapped around, the viewing environment; the former is native/endemic to the content, and the latter builds upon squeezebacks, rendering in the screen area outside of the video. In both cases, the creative experience is aligned into the timeline of the stream, blending ads and content in new and powerful ways, typically in moments that matter.

Brands now have access to platforms that can pull in nearly any conceivable content, be it social assets like Reels, audio only or pre-existing images and website text in order to quickly build new high-definition CTV ads. This approach is rapidly democratizing access for what used to be the province of high-end production studios, broadening usage to a larger number of small- and medium-size businesses, while time to market and cost are less of a factor for large brands.

Compare that process to legacy TV commercial methods that could take months and cost millions to make a single spot, and the dramatic shift is clear. The future of creative is almost limitless and has the potential to do what brands are achieving on social: acting like content.

While we’re not yet in the world of “anything goes” creative, innovative formats blended directly into streams, generated with myriad variations based on multiple attributes and AI designer hybrid spots are already helping advertisers achieve meaningful attention. These aren’t passive 30-second ads. They’re dynamic, creative integrations that capitalize on a big-screen canvas.

Embracing The New World Of CTV Advertising

The convergence of context, commerce and creative signals a new era for CTV advertising — one that promises to outperform legacy TV metrics and redefine what success looks like on the big screen. We are moving away from generic reach and toward campaigns based on the three C’s that are smart, personalized and performance driven.

This evolution is powered by technology — machine learning, AI and streaming video analysis — but at its core, it’s a return to fundamentals. Great content. The right message. A reason to take action. That’s the promise of CTV done right.

The three Cs are not just buzzwords: they’re a blueprint for the future of television advertising. For advertisers looking to maximize ROI, and for publishers aiming to unlock new monetization models, embracing these principles isn’t optional — it’s essential.