Nonprofits often can't afford ad space on streaming platforms.
DENVER—Ads shown while you're streaming shows or movies are disruptive enough. But there's something uniquely eerie about what you see when a connected TV (CTV) platform fails to sell ad inventory. You may get a black screen accompanied by ethereal music or a confusing thumping beat, alongside a graphic that says something like, "We'll be right back."
Not only are streamers being forced to enduremore ad time than ever,but that time doesn't even always benefit streaming platforms or advertisers. For the past six months, AdGood has been working to turn that blank, wasted ad space into messaging for good by helping nonprofits buy ad space for cheap.
During the StreamTV Show in Denver this week, Ars spoke with Kris Johns, CEO and founder ofAdGood, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that sells unused, CTV ad space to other nonprofits. AdGood sells unfilled, sometimes donated, ad space at discounted rates, whichit sayscan be as low as about $5 to $6 CPMs (cost per mille, or the amount an advertiser pays for every 1,000 impressions an ad earns). Johns said that CTV CPMs can vary depending on the scenario, with costs ranging from $12 to $15 and higher. Some CTV ad firmspegthe average CTV CPM at$35 to $65.
According to Johns, AdGood currently has “about 60-plus” nonprofit customers across the US that span different sizes and verticals. Its customer base covers various areas, including animals, education, health care, and homelessness. Johns said AdGood would like to be in all vertical sectors eventually.
AdGood is able to sell nonprofits CTV ad space for cheap through partnerships, including ones with LG Ad Solutions and, announced this week, Stingray and Plex.
"Partnering with AdGood allows us to extend the impact of our media platform to nonprofits doing critical work around the world,” Shawn Eldridge, VP of business development and Content at Plex, said in a statement.
AdGood’s offerings also include a managed service for ad campaign management for nonprofits. AdGood doesn’t yet offer pixels, but Johns said developments like that are “in the works.”
Johns explained that while many nonprofits use services like Meta and Google AdWords for tracking ads, they’re “hitting plateaus” with their typical methods. He said there is nonprofit interest in reaching younger audiences, who often use CTV devices:
A lot of them have been looking for ways to get [into CTV ads], but, unfortunately, with minimum spend amounts, they're just not able to access it.
AdGood also sells a self-serve generative AI ad manager, which it offers via a partnership withStreamr.AI. The tool is designed to simplify the process of creating 30-second video ads that are “completely editable via a chat prompt,” according to Johns.
“It automatically generates all their targeting. They can update their targeting for whatever they want, and then they can swipe a credit card and essentially run that campaign. It goes into our approval queue, which typically takes 24 hours for us to approve because it needs to be deemed TV-quality," he explained.
The executive said AdGood charges nonprofits a $7 CPM and a $250 flat fee for the service. He added:
Think about a small nonprofit in a local community, for instance, my son's special needs baseball team. I can get together with five other parents, easily pull together a campaign, and run it in our local town. We get seven kids to show up, and it changes their lives. We’re talking about $250 having a massive impact in a local market.
Looking ahead, Johns said he’d like to see AdGood’s platform and team grow to be able to give every customer “a certain allocation of inventory, whether it's 50,000 impressions a month or 100,000 a month.”
For some, streaming ads are rarely a good thing. But when those ads can help important causesandreplace odd blank ad spaces that make us question our own existence, it brings new meaning to the idea of a "good" commercial.
