Inside the firm turning eerie blank streaming ads into useful nonprofit messages

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 endure more 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 of AdGood, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that sells unused, CTV ad space to other nonprofits. AdGood sells unfilled, sometimes donated, ad space at discounted rates, which it says can 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 firms peg the 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.

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