A tiny firm cannot typically afford a television commercial, let alone a Super Bowl ad that costs $7 million for 30 seconds. But Ryan Reynolds intends to change that. Reynolds’ adtech company, MNTN, the self-described “Google Ad Words for TV,” does.
MNTN aired the same commercial for Noteworthy, a community stationery store in Missoula, Mont., on both the local Super Bowl broadcast and its own platform, where it appeared on a variety of streamers including Peacock and Sling TV. MNTN CEO Mark Douglas told Fortune that the platform differs from a local television ad buy in that it includes reams of data.
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Advertisers simply gain a better grasp of how effective their ad expenditure was through MNTN or another platform. Noteworthy’s Super Bowl ad, narrated by Missoula native David Lynch, the film director known for art house masterpieces like Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, reached 259,956 households and was viewed 404,650 times, resulting in 221 total visits to its website. The ad that aired on linear TV had approximately 30,000 views, but the rest of the ad’s impact was unknown. According to MNTN, the ad buys for MNTN and the local Missoula broadcast cost $10,000 each.
MNTN, which hired Reynolds as chief creative officer in 2021 after acquiring his digital marketing agency, Maximum Effort, views itself as creating a new market for corporations that did not previously advertise on television. Douglas told Fortune that “MNTN brings in advertisers who have never advertised on TV before, which increases the size of the ad market” for streamers.
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In recent years, the connected-television advertising business has grown significantly. As the streaming battles intensified and numerous media firms experimented with the best subscription options, ad-supported versions became the preferred way to provide consumers a lower pricing point. Some streaming services, like as Hulu and Peacock, have always carried advertisements. Others, such as Netflix and Disney+, the two largest streaming services in the world with 260 million and 150 million members, recently added an ad-supported version after previously not having one. Most recently, Amazon Prime Video changed its default streaming plan from ad-free to ad-supported. There are also many online versions of cable packages, such as Sling TV and YouTube TV, which broadcast live programs. Tubi, Pluto TV, and the Roku Channel are among the several free ad-supported streamers (known as FAST) that round out the category.
According to Douglas, this growth means more places for MNTN clients to broadcast their commercials. “Amazon and others coming into the market just creates even more supply for those advertisers to access,” he said.
According to Intelligence Insider, the congested scene will result in a $25 billion ad market on linked television by 2023. Douglas anticipates the figure to rise to almost $30 billion by 2030.
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While this is a large sum, it represents only a small portion of the $364 billion advertising market in the United States. However, linked television does indicate a shift in how advertisers think about television advertising. With linked television and services like MNTN, TV advertising are no longer just about reaching a large audience, though they still do so during events like the Super Bowl.
The ability to offer advertisers of all sizes with highly targeted commercials aligns connected television with the digital ad industry, where consumers may be targeted based on demographics and browsing history. MNTN does something similar with streaming platforms. According to MNTN statistics, Noteworthy’s custom audience was made up of persons who had recently purchased a holiday greeting card, homeware products, or had an interest in “American-made products.” Meanwhile, the business remarked that the target audience for a traditional television commercial was “anyone not in the bathroom during the commercial break.”
Small businesses are underserved in the streaming TV ad market, owing to a lack of awareness of their potential as television marketers, as well as the fact that traditional TV commercials did not meet their demands.
These kinds of companies “haven’t advertised on TV before because they didn’t have the capability to do precise targeting of who they want to reach and precise measurement of what was the revenue generated by running those ad campaigns,” Douglas said.
Streaming providers such as Hulu and MNTN are following in the footsteps of digital advertising behemoths Meta and Google by focusing resources on small businesses. According to Douglas, 95% of MNTN’s sales force focuses on small enterprises.
MNTN describes itself as a measurement tool for businesses that wish to advertise on the material that streamers create. “That’s their value,” Douglas explains. “Which residences should we place the advertisement in? And what happens once the ad is played? That is the value MNTN offers. It is not something that television networks do or wish to do. That’s what Google, Meta, and MNTN do.
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