Behavioral Data Holds Key to Unlocking CTV’s True Potential, EDO’s Weiss Says

Why It Matters

If CTV can reliably tie ads to measurable engagement and sales through deterministic and interoperable data, advertisers—especially performance-driven and SMB brands—could scale TV spend with confidence, reshaping media buying and measurement across the industry.

Summary

EDO CEO Charlie Weiss argues that behavioral intent data—especially real-world search and website visitation—can turn noisy signals into near-real-time predictors of CTV ad effectiveness, linking engagement to future sales and market-share shifts. He says “precision at scale” for SMBs requires breadth and depth of cross-platform data to compare CTV, linear TV and social performance and confidently allocate limited budgets. Weiss highlights interoperability and measurement as ongoing challenges, urging tighter integrations between DSPs, audience partners and measurement platforms to connect audiences with outcomes. He sees the next unlock as feeding deterministic, first-party campaign results into algorithmic optimization and targeting logged-in users to drive deterministic outcomes at the impression level.

Original Description

LAS VEGAS – The quest for meaningful audience metrics in the CTV space continues to challenge advertisers and media companies alike. Could behavioral intent data hold the answer to proving advertising effectiveness?

By analyzing real-world search behavior and website visits following ad exposure, companies can create actionable signals from the noise of digital interactions to predict sales outcomes.

"We believe that the best signal of this is taking real world search behavior and real world website visitation data and determining whether or not an ad drove additional behavioral intent," said Charlie Weiss, head of business development and strategy at EDO, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

Bridging the measurement gap

Weiss argues that television advertising needs to evolve toward the deterministic measurement approaches that have made walled gardens like social media platforms so attractive to advertisers.

"If you look at what a lot of the social platforms and walled gardens do in terms of turning their deterministic data to a deterministic purchase, to a deterministic outcome, I think the same thing needs to come to television for it to truly scale," Weiss explained.

This is also important for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) where precision in advertising often matters more than pure scale. According to eMarketer, the U.S. CTV ad market is projected to grow by 14.5% in 2026, reaching nearly $38 billion, pointing at increasing importance of effective measurement solutions.

Engagement as predictor of sales

For brands questioning whether their CTV investments drive meaningful business results, Weiss points to engagement metrics as the most reliable predictor of success.

"We obviously focus on engagement as the highest predictive signal of an ad driving a result. And all of our data is predictive of an end outcome, but it's really ‘did this advertisement drive sales at the end of the day?’," he said.

This approach applies across different industry verticals with varying sales cycles. "Whether you're a pharmaceutical marketer or an auto marketer, anyone in between, we think that's essential to be able to say that ‘this ad drove engagement and I know that by driving engagement over my competitive set, in the end, I'm going to be driving market share shifts and more sales of my product’."

Industry collaboration gaining momentum

The fragmentation of measurement approaches across demand-side platforms (DSPs), data partners, and measurement providers remains a significant challenge, but Weiss sees progress through strategic partnerships.

"If you look at our integration with the Trade Desk, there really needs to be more of that so a brand can activate through a demand side platform and then utilize that demand side platform for measurement," Weiss noted.

EDO has also partnered with Nielsen to connect audience data with outcomes measurement. "Nielsen being a premier company in audience and ours being a premier company in outcomes," he explained.

EDO recently launched its "Always-On" solution, an automated outcomes measurement platform for convergent TV, with NBCUniversal and Paramount Global as inaugural media partners, further demonstrating the industry's movement toward standardized measurement solutions.