Andreas Meffert: How Advertisers Penetrate the CTV Black Box

In a commentary for MEEDIA, Andreas Meffert, Market Commercial Leader at Nielsen, argues that the growing Connected TV (CTV) market presents a transparency challenge for advertisers. While they can measure their own campaign performance, they lack visibility into competitors' CTV investments. Meffert highlights Nielsen data from August 2026 showing varying CTV ad spend shares by category in Germany: deodorant brands at 26.3%, confectionery at 17.9%, and intimate hygiene at 18.8%. He advocates for cross-screen planning and "white-space analysis" to identify under-utilized platforms before they become saturated. Meffert emphasizes the growing importance of "Share of Investment" over traditional "Share of Voice" for competitive benchmarking. He concludes that without competitor insights, CTV remains a black box, hindering strategic budget allocation and creative differentiation.