Dentsu's James Wilby: premium video and CTV underused for short-term sales
Premium video and CTV get evaluated almost entirely on their power to build brands, according to James Wilby, Head of AV Trading at Dentsu, in a VideoWeek Buy-Side View interview published September 2, 2026. Wilby says that framing misses a real opportunity: with the right metrics and cost structures, premium video can drive short-term sales as effectively as social and online video. He traces the problem to what he calls co-exclusivity, where the same content sells through multiple routes with separate pricing, technology layers and fees, making it hard for advertisers to see where their budget is working. Dentsu's Total AV team handles CTV alongside linear, BVOD and streaming, and the agency has built YouTube Fit for TV, a curated marketplace developed with broadcast and premium video partners.
Campaigns planned purely around reach and brand metrics risk leaving performance value on the table when premium video and CTV go unmeasured against sales outcomes. Buyers who default to the cheapest programmatic or social inventory give up the quality and brand-safety benefits premium environments offer, and those who treat CTV as a brand-only channel miss its ability to move short-term sales. Getting this right takes cost structures and metrics built for outcome measurement, set against comparisons across environments that carry different value. That is the case Dentsu is making to clients as it works with media partners on pricing and delivery models designed to make each buy work harder.