The Chef’s Mindset in CTV Advertising. If you wouldn’t eat the dish without knowing what’s in it, why would your clients?

I didn’t start cooking because I dreamed of being a chef.I started because I wanted to know exactly what I was putting into my body.

Every ingredient.Every spice.Every source.

CTV today demands that same mindset.

Instead, the marketplace is crowded with “chefs” who’ve never stepped foot in the kitchen.

The Pressure Cooker: Why Real Expertise Is Disappearing

This isn’t about laziness, it’s structural. Large media companies are sprinting toward digital, putting enormous pressure on sales teams to hit aggressive quotas. The result is a sell-or-survive culture, where:

Speed beats understanding, Deals close before the tech stack is truly understood

Promises get loose Reach, scale, attribution, foot fall, match rates... are oversold and not well understood.

Consulting disappears When you sell what you don’t understand, you’re not an advisor you’re a reseller hoping nothing breaks. And something always breaks.

The Cost of Surface-Level Knowledge

In CTV, credibility is the currency. The moment a client realizes your pitch doesn’t line up with reality, or you can’t explain where their ads actually ran…that relationship is effectively over.

Sophisticated clients don’t give second chances. They don’t need to.

Learning the Ingredients (This Is the Job)

If you want to move past buzzwords, you have to get curious and uncomfortable.

Know Your Inventory

“It’s TV” is not an answer. You need to understand how inventory is sourced and bought:

Open Exchange- Scale comes with responsibility (brand safety, fraud, controls)

Private Marketplaces- (PMPs) – Curated access, better balance of quality and reach

Publisher Direct - The farm-to-table model: transparency, certainty, accountability

Know the Networks

Stop selling vague “sports” or “lifestyle” buckets. If you can’t name the top five apps or networks where a client’s ads ran yesterday, you don’t know what you sold.

Build the Clock

“Just tell me the time, don’t tell me how the clock works” used to fly. Not anymore.

CTV is fragmented, technical, and dynamic. When performance spikesor stallsyour value is your ability to explain why. Superficial knowledge isn’t a shortcut anymore. It’s a liability.

Bottom Line

Great CTV outcomes don’t come from prettier decks or bigger logos.They come from people who understand the ingredients, respect the process, and can explain the outcome without hiding behind jargon.

If you wouldn’t eat the dish without knowing what’s in it, why would your clients?