Samsung Ads’ Bérangère Degni-Rezé Talks CTV Advertising Trends

Samsung Ads’ Bérangère Degni-Rezé joined the CTV Festival today to discuss how the company is scaling its relationship with advertising partners as Samsung TV Plus builds its usage base across Europe.

Degni-Rezé, head of TV Plus at Samsung Ads, took part in a conversation with World Screen’s Mansha Daswani that you can view in its entirety here, addressing the CTV advertising opportunity in Europe and the various ways clients can work with the platform.

Samsung TV Plus arrived in Europe with a U.K. launch in 2021 and continues to see viewership gains of between 20 and 30 percent year on year, Degni-Rezé said. It now has a 19-country footprint across EMEA, with over 30 million households engaging with the service on a regular basis. “So, for brands to engage with a new and growing audience, it’s an amazing opportunity.”

The evolution in CTV advertising has been transformative over the last four years, she noted. “We’ve seen buyers diving into that new format—the big screen—with both TV and digital hats on. Initially, we saw more digital buyers and then the big TV brands started wanting to tap into those new audiences. Today, we still see some amazing brands coming on the service, large and mid-size, wanting to learn more about the service and engaging with the audience.”

In the CTV advertising space, having a premium, brand-safe environment is paramount, Degni-Rezé continued. “It is such a fragmented landscape. For us at Samsung, users are always at the forefront. When we talk about premium, we’re here to ensure that we provide the best possible environment and content selection to our users, which results in a brand-safe environment for our advertisers. It’s that virtuous circle when it comes to ensuring a variety of content, both from those big international studios as well as the local brands that are very important when we consider Europe. We are across 19 countries with very different cultures, so for us it’s very important when we talk about premium to ensure that the content offering is catering to an audience and resulting in a context for brands that they feel comfortable with—that it’s like-for-like TV. They even have more control because they have transparency in which content they can advertise next to and control the contextual space for themselves. Premium is very important when a brand is choosing to go into the CTV space.”

Degni-Rezé then discussed the advantages that CTV advertising can provide over a traditional linear television buy, especially when it comes to accessing multiple demos.

“We’ve seen that shift happening in the past five to six years of general viewership moving into CTV. We have new audiences, which are usually slightly younger, but we also have families and more mature audiences wanting to discover new content. That new viewership is growing very fast. That’s very much why brands want to tap into the CTV opportunity. While linear remains a must-buy, CTV is there to complete the full picture of the big screen.”

Sports on streaming is a key growth area, Degni-Rezé continued, especially around niche sports that have found tremendous fan bases on digital platforms. “You have new sports that benefit from CTV with more engagement and more visibility.”

In a fragmented landscape, Degni-Rezé believes that the platforms with built-in, immediate access to the home will thrive. “Making sure you stay top of mind when you switch on your TV, that your app remains top of mind, is a big investment. It requires you to work on content and marketing to be that app that viewers will want to engage with daily or weekly.”

Degni-Rezé then highlighted the various ways advertisers can work with Samsung Ads, from the home-screen “impactful, premium opportunity” to traditional spots on a FAST channel, all leveraging the company’s data analytics. New innovations for this year include making the traditional ad break more engaging.

“We create a mini-game during the ad break. We offer brands the opportunity to be part of that trivia by sponsoring and being a part of an interactive, fun experience. Our goal is to try to leverage the ad break to make it more engaging, cater to what our audiences’ interests are and the context and make them a lot more relevant.”

Goals for the months ahead include driving the user base and improving the customer experience, enhancing the content lineup and making ad breaks more compelling for users. “The main difference between the U.S. and Europe is the maturity of the market. While we see in the U.S. that advertisers have dedicated budgets for CTV, in Europe, we are not there yet. We talk to linear and digital buyers about how we can, with measurement, tools, targeting and innovative ad formats, cater to those brands and make those experiences as seamless as possible.”