Agencies Scramble Over OTT

Investment teams try to get up to speed while they educate clients.

- Kelsey Sutton

Gibbs Haljun estimates it’s only been about two years since connected television and over-the-top streaming devices reached a scale big enough to attract serious attention from marketers. That rapid growth has left agencies scrambling to capitalize on the estimated seven in 10 U.S. internet users who will use OTT services this year, or the nearly 60 percent who will use connected TVs.

Haljun, managing director of media investment at Mindshare North America, said the agency expects video investment teams to handle over-the-top streaming devices, skinny television bundles and connected TV devices, but that sometimes the traditional television teams, digital teams or addressable teams are tapped to work on OTT, too. “We have lots of people that touch OTT,” Haljun said. “But how we activate against it depends on what the skill set is, and what the client KPIs are.”