Analysts covering CTV and streaming adtech – eMarketer, Forrester, Omdia, and the research arms that track this category – build their reports from whoever returns the briefing request with a clear story and real data. Most CTV companies treat analyst relations as an afterthought handled by whoever's free that week. The ones that treat it as a discipline get cited in the reports enterprise buyers actually read before they sign.
Why CTV Companies Miss the Reports That Matter
Nobody owns the analyst relationship until an inquiry lands and panics the team
Most CTV and streaming companies at $5M-$100M ARR have a PR or comms function handling press, but analyst relations falls into a gap between marketing and product. An eMarketer researcher emails asking for data on your ad load or measurement methodology, and the request sits for four days while three people forward it to each other. By the time someone answers, the researcher has already built the section using a competitor's numbers. This isn't a communications failure – it's a missing owner.
Vendor landscape reports default you into the wrong category when you skip the briefing
CTV vendor landscape and market-map reports get built section by section from company submissions and briefings. If you don't respond to the questionnaire or show up to the briefing call, the analyst places you where they think you belong based on your last funding announcement or a stale website – often the wrong category entirely, next to competitors who don't actually compete with you. Once a company gets miscategorized in a major report, that placement gets copied into every derivative report and buyer shortlist for the next 12 months.
Standards-body participation gets treated as an engineering chore instead of a credibility signal
IAB Tech Lab working groups, DEAL, and OpenAP are where CTV measurement and identity standards actually get written, and participation is one of the few credibility signals in this category that can't be bought with ad spend. Most CTV companies send an engineer to the working group calls to keep compliance boxes checked, but nobody connects that participation to the company's external positioning. Competitors who show up as named contributors to a published framework get quoted in trade press and cited in analyst reports as category leaders. Companies that participate silently get none of that visibility for the same work.
Sales teams have no analyst citation to hand a skeptical enterprise buyer mid-cycle
Enterprise media buyers evaluating CTV platforms ask who covers you – which research firms have written about your measurement approach, which landscape reports you appear in, whether you've been vetted by anyone outside your own sales deck. When the answer is nothing, the deal slows down while the buyer does that diligence themselves, usually by asking a competitor's rep what they think of you. A single relevant analyst citation, even a short one, closes that gap in a way no amount of internal sales collateral can.
How We Build Analyst Relations for CTV Companies
We start with an audit of where you already show up and where you're missing. That means pulling every CTV and streaming adtech landscape report published in the last 18 months by the firms that matter for your buyers – eMarketer, Forrester, Omdia, and category-specific researchers – and checking whether you're in them, how you're categorized, and who is cited instead of you.
From the audit, we build the briefing calendar. This is the operational core of analyst relations – a running schedule of which analysts cover CTV and streaming adtech, what they're currently researching, when their next report cycle opens for vendor submissions, and who at your company owns the relationship. We prep the briefing materials specific to what each analyst is researching, not a generic company deck reused across every call.
Inquiry response is the second operational piece. When an analyst emails with a data request or a quick question ahead of a report deadline, the clock is usually 48 to 72 hours before they move on without you.
Standards-body participation gets connected to external positioning instead of staying invisible. If your team is already in IAB Tech Lab working groups, we identify what's publishable – contributed frameworks, working group leadership, public comment periods – and get it into your briefing materials and press outreach. If you're not participating yet and the working group is relevant to your product, we make the case for joining and help select which one is worth the engineering time.
The last piece is translating whatever gets published back into your sales process. An analyst citation or landscape report placement is worth very little sitting in a bookmark folder. We build the sales enablement material that puts the citation in front of buyers at the exact point in the cycle where they're asking who covers you – usually the technical evaluation stage, not the first call.
What we deliver
- Analyst landscape audit – where you appear, where you're miscategorized, and where you're absent across the reports your buyers actually read
- Briefing calendar and prep materials – report cycle tracking and analyst-specific briefing decks, not a recycled company overview
- Inquiry response protocol – a defined owner and turnaround process so analyst data requests don't die in someone's inbox
- Standards-body positioning plan – identifying what IAB Tech Lab, DEAL, or OpenAP participation is publishable and getting it into external materials
- Sales enablement package – analyst citations and report placements converted into collateral your reps can use mid-cycle
Vendor landscape reports look like objective research. They aren't – they're built from who returned the briefing request with a clear story and who didn't. Analyst relations for CTV isn't PR. It's making sure your category-defining moment doesn't happen to a competitor because you missed the submission window.
Our Methodology
Winston Francois analyst relations engagements for CTV companies run a 90-day build followed by an ongoing retainer, because analyst relations only works as a sustained process – a single briefing push before a funding round gets you one mention, not a category position. The first 30 days are the audit: mapping every relevant landscape report, forecast, and standards-body working group against where you currently stand, and identifying the two or three research relationships that matter most for your specific buyer.
Days 30 to 60 build the operating system – the briefing calendar, the inquiry response protocol, and the prep materials tailored to each analyst's current research focus. We run the first round of briefings during this window so the process gets tested against a live report cycle instead of staying theoretical.
Days 60 to 90 connect the analyst work back to revenue. We build the sales enablement package translating whatever citations or placements you've earned into material your reps can actually use, and we set the ongoing cadence – quarterly briefing refreshes, inquiry monitoring, and standards-body tracking – that keeps the relationship alive after the initial sprint ends. CTV research cycles move fast enough that a briefing relationship left dormant for two quarters is effectively starting over.
How We Work
The first 30 days are diagnostic and involve your product, marketing, and whoever currently owns any analyst contact, even informally. We need an honest picture of what's been tried before – most CTV companies have had at least one ad hoc analyst call that went nowhere, and understanding why matters more than starting from a blank page.
We embed with your marketing or comms function rather than operating as an outside agency sending occasional updates. Briefing prep requires real product and measurement detail, which means working sessions with whoever owns your CTV measurement methodology or supply strategy, not just a marketing brief handed over secondhand.
Cadence after the initial 90 days runs quarterly, aligned to when the major CTV landscape and forecast reports typically open for vendor input. Standards-body tracking runs continuously since working group output publishes on its own schedule, not a quarterly one.
Most engagements run 6 to 12 months because analyst relationships compound – the second and third briefing with a given researcher land differently once they already know your name and your last data submission held up.
If your ctv / connected tv company needs analyst relations leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does an analyst relations engagement cost for a CTV company?
The initial 90-day build – audit, briefing calendar, inquiry protocol, and first briefing round – typically runs $18,000 to $35,000 depending on how many analyst relationships and standards-body threads need to be stood up from scratch. Ongoing quarterly retainers for ongoing briefing management and inquiry response run $6,000 to $12,000 per quarter.
How long before we show up in an analyst report?
That depends entirely on the report cycle of the specific analyst or research firm, which we map during the audit phase. Some CTV landscape reports refresh annually with a submission window that opens months in advance, while inquiry-driven mentions in shorter research notes can happen within a single quarter.
Do we need an existing relationship with an analyst firm before starting this?
No. Most CTV companies we work with have zero standing analyst relationships when we start, which is the normal starting point, not a problem to fix first.
What makes Winston Francois different from a PR agency handling analyst outreach as an add-on?
Most PR agencies treat analyst relations as a line item bolted onto press outreach, run by someone whose main job is media placements. We treat it as its own operating process with a dedicated calendar, inquiry protocol, and standards-body tracking, because analyst research works on a different timeline and different criteria than press coverage.
How do you measure whether analyst relations work is actually paying off?
We track inclusion and categorization in the specific landscape reports identified during the audit, response time and outcome on inbound analyst inquiries, and whether standards-body participation is generating any external citation. The real test is whether sales reports back that a buyer referenced an analyst citation mid-cycle, which is why the sales enablement handoff is part of the engagement, not an afterthought.
Is standards-body participation like IAB Tech Lab worth the engineering time for a smaller CTV company?
It depends on whether the specific working group is relevant to what you're actually building – joining a group unrelated to your product for the sake of a logo on your website isn't worth anyone's time. For CTV companies with a real measurement, identity, or supply-chain position, participation is one of the few credibility signals that gets noticed by analysts and enterprise buyers without requiring ad spend, which is why we help you pick the one or two groups that are actually worth the seat.
