Key Contextual Data Points for Targeted and Brand-Safe CTV Advertising
Matching ads to programming context and audience interests is theoretically what CTV and OTT can do better than traditional linear television, but it requires gathering data and leveraging it effectively to make sound contextual calls. Philo Head of Advertising Partnerships Aulden Kaye Yi and Roku Head of Supply Side Ad Platform Charlie Goodman discuss what works on their platforms and how their teams approach contextual advertising in this conversation with SVTA Subject Matter Expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect 2026.
Philo Makes the Most of Its Small Size
Upadhyaya praises Philo for what it’s been able to build despite limited staff and capabilities. “I’d love [for] you to talk about how you pulled together the data and the tools that you’ve got to use to determine context around all of your audience compared to an NBC or a Roku, [when you have] so few resources,” he tells Yi.
Yi acknowledges Philo’s small size: about 160 people, with 11 people on the ad side. Despite being a “leaner organisation,” she says, Philo brings in premium content in the form of programming from household names such as A&E, AMC, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Hallmark, and Weigel Broadcasting Co. The business on the ad side has historically been run “largely programmatically,” she notes, with “the ads coming in from a bunch of different sources. And in terms of being able to deliver on context in traditional linear TV, obviously advertisers are used to buying spots in a specific show. Within a virtual MVPD where we’ve still got that live linear stream, … it’s all happening in a digitally delivered way and we’re able to dynamically insert ads.”
Finding the Right Tones
Philo focuses on “the concept of addressability, reaching the audience and being able to pass through those signals and enable that. On the contextual side, it’s been sort of broader: genre, rating, enabling advertisers to land in content that is appropriate and aligned with their messaging,” Yi says. There’s a lack of standardisation in the industry, so her team works closely with partners that are enabling “better standardisation on the contextual signals that we already were passing, those sort of broad genre ratings across not only us, but other publishers, but then also getting much more nuanced and granular in terms of what you’re able to do.”
She provides the example of the movie Marley & Me, which has both happy and sad moments. “If you are a pet food brand, maybe you want to be closer to the moments that are happy than the moments that are sad. [T]here are a couple of companies that we are starting to test with where it enables an advertiser to get to not only that broad sort of, ‘I want to be in a comedy, that’s the right place for my brand,’ but actually ‘I want to get closer to these moments that are aligned with my brand.’ And it’s not about being in a specific show, it’s about being in sort of a specific tone across many pieces of content that we offer on the platform.”
Roku Prioritises Brand Resonance and Brand Safety
Upadhyaya turns to Goodman. “And Charlie, with Roku, you’re combining all this data from a plethora of content providers, as well as running your own live streams and linear streams as well,” he notes. “And with Aulden [Kaye Yi], she has the ability … to understand and know what content is coming up ahead of time and look at the metadata and the context from that. How do you guys manage, and what are some of the critical contextual data points that allow you to really hone in on getting the right ad for people?”
Goodman confirms, “Yeah. Similar to Aulden, we have video on demand, we have live streams, you have FAST channels, etc.” Roku has been working to develop its Roku Exchange homegrown ad platform, he notes. Also, “similar to Aulden, we’re heavy in programmatic. We do believe in addressability, but what really our path is, is optimising the things on outcome and relevancy and, really, brand resonance.”
From a user features perspective, he explains, “we’ve also been investing in advertiser features because the context of the ad matters just as much, either for brand safety or just for alignment.” Roku’s advertisers tend to be interested in context to drive lower-funnel outcomes, he adds.
Finding ‘the Winning Moment’
Goodman has been excited about optimising brand resonance. “So bringing in together things like those contextual signals, Aulden said it really well, which is, what is the sentiment? I love the happy and sad moments that she brought up, but at the same time, for us, it’s like, What is a winning moment?” Roku has generative AI tools for understanding that. “[O]ur big focus this year beyond just optimising the outcome is also incorporating things like a measurement and feedback loop. And so that’s what’s driving a lot of our investment,” he shares. Winning moments are subjective, “so making sure that you’re investing in a measurement and feedback loop in order to reinforce that recommendation, test and control, and experimentation is so vital because it’s really easy just to make a guess. It’s a totally different thing to make sure that you’re optimising across a couple of different goals.”
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CTV contextual advertising, like many things in life, is all about making good decisions, and making informed decisions based on a wealth of data means leveraging the right tools—often AI-driven—to gather and distill and interpret that data. Sometimes developing sound contextual media plans involves working with in-house tech and other times it means working with third-party tools, as Team Whistle (a DAZN company) president Joe Caporoso and Intersection CEO Chris Grosso explain in this discussion with SVTA subject matter expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.
10 Mar 2026