The accompanying video explores the rise of CTV and whether it’s growing at the expense of traditional linear television. It’s the ninth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Below is a sampling of Part 9.

CTV is a catch-all phrase that encompasses built-in Smart TV interfaces, stand-alone streaming devices (e.g., Roku and Chromecast), connected video game systems and Blu-ray players. 

Forty percent of adults in U.S. TV households are now watching video on a TV set via a connected device daily, compared to only 1% in 2010. Meanwhile, eMarketer estimates that advertising spend for CTV will top $10 billion in 2021, while traditional TV is expected to decline by anywhere from $10 billion to $12 billion during the first half of 2020 due to COVID. 

Time spent on traditional TV is clearly shifting to CTV (and this trend has probably accelerated during the pandemic), but what does it mean for advertising? Will every dollar lost in traditional TV ad spend be gained by CTV as the eMarketer data suggests? 

It’s not a simple answer, and that’s because a TV dollar isn’t the same as a CTV dollar. CTV distributors’ unwillingness to overload their viewers with commercials is one reason for that. 

Several distributors with the largest audiences have gone to market with guarantees of keeping ad loads down. For example, Roku platform GM Scott Rosenberg told AdExchanger that ad load is kept to eight minutes per streaming hour—less than half that of linear television—in the service of a better user experience. 

When comparing apples to apples, there are probably fewer :30 ad units for sale in an hour of ad-supported streaming content than in an hour of linear TV as a result. 

Because of its powerful targeting capabilities, I believe CTV is most valuable as a reach extension for linear TV in the short run—for national brands and local advertisers that buy cable and local broadcast alike. This is especially true in the COVID era, when advertisers will need to target messages based on how effectively a region has contained the spread of coronavirus and how “open” or “closed” it is as a result.

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is the final installment of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series. You can find all previous episodes below or here on Beet.TV.

The accompanying video explores how “panic porn” came to dominate the TV airwaves and why viewers are burned out, as well as how brands will need to reinvent themselves to show they’re purpose-driven. It’s the eighth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Below is a sampling of Part 8.

Research published in August 2019 by students from Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and the Indian Institute of Technology found that TV news networks consistently publish negative headlines, while print and radio skew positive or neutral. Not surprisingly, the more negative the headline, the more likely it is to be shared on social. 

“Panic porn” works; it gets attention, evokes reactions, and ultimately results in more revenue for TV news programmers. But viewers eventually grow fatigued of hearing that the sky is falling, and we’re seeing that play out now. 

The time has come for us to take responsibility as an industry for the role we play in perpetuating fear, hate and division in our nation. There will short-term negative consequences, but the long-term costs will be much greater if we don’t leverage our power to help bridge the division in our country. We must use the power and platforms we have, and our media dollars in particular, to embrace hope and love. 

Advertisers are going to have to re-introduce their brands in a new context, which Colleen DeCourcy, co-president and chief creative officer of Wieden+Kennedy, explained in a recent Fast Company interview: 

“What I think the optimistic part of [the COVID-19 era] is, the longer it goes on, the more people’s minds are going to be wiped of brand preference in many instances. That specific brand of toothpaste is going to matter to me less than just toothpaste. I think when people start to step outside again, brands will be re-proving themselves, re-introducing themselves, restating why they should be a preference.”

Brands will also have to find their purpose and convey it in a way that is real and relatable. Recent research from Porter Novelli showed that 77% of Americans believe companies must prove they’re making decisions in the national interest. The data was released before nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism began, which I suspect would have driven this percentage even further upward. 

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is part of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 8:
Why the Media Industry Must Shake its Addiction to ‘Panic Porn’
June 3, 2020

Session 9:
Is CTV Siphoning Off Dollars from Linear? It’s Complicated
June 10, 2020

The best practices underpinning portfolio optimization for media and financial services are fundamentally similar, and finance principles can be instructive for TV networks and distributors.

Investors don’t make the most money or manage risk by focusing on only one asset class, to the exclusion of all others. Instead, they try to maximize the entire portfolio—finding the right asset class mix and allocation to deliver the highest risk-adjusted return. Similarly, every media seller’s obsession is (or should be) with packaging and pricing inventory in a way that maximizes their yield, or the total revenue available from their entire pool of inventory.  

Many seller organizations are currently siloed, with teams solely dedicated to linear, digital or specific ad products, which can be highly counterproductive. For a seller organization’s portfolio optimization strategy to succeed, teams and individuals need to be incentivized to work toward the same revenue goals that have been set at the organizational level. 

Sellers also need to introduce quantitative metrics that their entire organization, from account executives and ad traffickers to senior leadership, can tap into quickly to understand the progress being made toward portfolio optimization. I would recommend introducing a KPI like inventory efficiency to measure the efficiency of every dollar spent by your top 20 advertisers. The ultimate goal is for teams and individuals to focus less on the revenue secured and more on revenue that’s been left on the table.

To learn more about the principles that TV sellers need to live by to make their portfolio optimization strategies a success, click here.

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is part of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

The accompanying video unpacks why buyers are hungry for addressable, why supply is so constrained and the potential risks for sellers of over-indexing on this one type of inventory. It’s the sixth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Below is a sampling of Part 6:

Slowly but surely, the TV industry is making headway toward more audience-based ad selling and buying. Operators are priming the pump to enable more advertising inventory to be addressable and for more households to receive such ads. Programming networks have had success in recent years in enabling and selling dynamic advertising on free video-on-demand (VOD). And addressable advertising at a national scale—to be offered by broadcasters and cable networks, not only distributors—is once again on the agenda.

And yet addressable TV inventory is still highly constrained. At present, demand far outpaces supply of inventory and content suitable to reach hyper-specific audiences. The reason for that largely comes down to infrastructure. 

There are approximately 64 million U.S. households that have the hardware (i.e., a modern set-top box) to receive addressable ads. Those ads are delivered by cable and satellite operators, such as Comcast and Cox Communications, which have the data and technology to enable household-level targeting. (They can also let advertisers blind-match their first-party data against their own PII data to reach existing customers and prospects.) But those distributors only have two minutes of ad time per hour per channel available for any form of advertising—linear or addressable—and each operator can reach only their subscribers. 

The bottom line is that the audience available to advertisers using this fragmented “local” addressable is rather limited and generally not interesting to national brands, such as Coke and Pepsi, which view TV as a vehicle for mass reach to consumers who reside everywhere. 

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is part of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Tune in here Wednesdays at 1pm ET

The accompanying video unpacks how sellers of linear TV advertising should adapt their inventory management, pricing and data practices in response to the COVID-19 crisis. It’s the fifth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Below is a sampling of Part 5:

Here are three universal truths of linear TV advertising sales:

1. One of the largest causes of revenue leakage is price variability.

2. Sellers have tended to be overly reliant on live sports and other high-value programming, resulting in high operational costs and inefficient inventory utilization.

3. Data isn’t readily accessible to make real-time pricing, revenue and inventory management decisions.

Our industry, like most, is in the middle of a crisis, and the response thus far has been steeped in traditional thinking. We’ve seen linear TV sellers discount spot prices to drive volume and introduce shiny new objects (i.e., new ad products) to attract incremental revenue. This is in lieu of doing the more difficult but profitable work of implementing data-driven pricing and inventory management practices.

For starters, if you haven’t redone your rate card across your organization’s portfolio of linear, spot-sold inventory during the lockdown period, you’re leaving money on the table. And now that live sports and other high-value programming are gone for an extended period, sellers need to redefine premium inventory.

To minimize revenue leakage due to pricing variability, sellers also need to implement pricing controls to ensure that inventory is sold for its correct value. This is especially important now that the value of some inventory has sharply increased due to constrained supply and less competition for viewers.

To learn more about how pricing controls can prevent revenue leakage in the era of COVID-19, click here.

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.

This video is part of #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Welcome to #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Using Furious’s comprehensive and interactive dictionary, TV101, as our guide, these sessions will unpack the terminology of advanced TV, serving as an introduction for some and a refresher for others.

So, whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 4: Why the TV Advertising Industry Will Embrace Consolidated Measurement

The associated video provides an overview of traditional TV systems and workflows, job functions in TV buying and selling, and ruminations on the future of TV advertising. It’s the fourth in a series of educational videos Furious has produced in collaboration with Beet.TV. Here’s a sampling of Part 4:

Here are three seismic changes that are on the horizon for the TV advertising business:

1. Adoption of a standard for consolidated measurement. As digital metrics have pervaded—and complicated—the TV landscape, calls for simplification have grown more acute. Over time, we should expect to see a more whole-hearted embrace of the CPM, gradually phasing out the GRP, CPV, CPP and a host of others. It simply doesn’t make sense to sell using other currencies and then back into a CPM for reporting purposes, which is happening today.

2. Rise of performance-based buying metrics. Brands and agencies are eager for TV-buying metrics that are closer to what they’ve come to expect from digital, but this is still a future prospect for TV and online video. Specifically, cost-per-visit is highly aspirational. It would entail people seeing a commercial on their smart TVs, which are associated with their phones via the device graph; then, the phones would be “seen” inside a Target or Walmart using Beacon technology or via Wireless/Bluetooth IP signals to close the loop and link ad views to store visits.

3. Unlocking the potential of unduplicated reach. The ability to parse the noise of multiple ad exposures across devices to gauge a campaign’s true reach would be incredibly powerful. It’s still aspirational; privacy considerations make it extremely difficult to enable. But it’s effectively the holy grail of targeting.

Welcome to #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Using Furious’s comprehensive and interactive dictionary, TV101, as our guide, these sessions will unpack the terminology of advanced TV, serving as an introduction for some and a refresher for others.

So, whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 3: Why True Cross-Platform Measurement Is Still Elusive

A decade ago, the Gross Rating Point (GRP) was still the unchallenged king of TV-buying metrics, but advertisers are no longer satisfied with metrics that only tell a story about reach. They want to buy TV the way they buy digital and measure ROI in terms of sales and conversions, but that’s still largely aspirational.

Another challenge publishers and advertisers are still trying to crack is figuring out how many individuals are really exposed to content — or ads — in the context of viewing behavior that’s spread over multiple devices per household.

New technologies have given rise to increasingly sophisticated targeting using demographic and psychographic attributes. But most TV is still measured using probabilistic modeling, a methodology for mapping devices to audience segments that relies on consumer panels assembled by Nielsen, Comscore and other data providers. It can tell advertisers that the audience viewing their ad is probably heavily comprised of working mothers in their forties in the Midwest or men in their twenties in large cities, for example.

Statistical modeling and predictive algorithms, which are populated via device fingerprinting, IP matching, location data and other information, can now be used to narrow down an audience.

Meanwhile, in the domain of online video, a lack of standards for delivery and measurement has created confusion in the marketplace and imposed challenges on advertisers, which may have the effect of curtailing spend. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has made an effort to impose standards, but they’re still a work in progress.

Welcome to #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Using Furious’s comprehensive and interactive dictionary, TV101, as our guide, these sessions will unpack the terminology of advanced TV, serving as an introduction for some and a refresher for others.

So, whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

Session 2: How New Audience Behaviors, Data and Technology are Changing TV & Video Advertising

Ten years ago, If you wanted to get TV programming onto your screen, your options were pretty limited. You would call your local cable or satellite provider to install a set-top box and figure out how large of a bundle you were willing to pay for. Now the options have proliferated, and 71% of internet users use an OTT service at least once a month, according to VAB. This change in how audiences watch TV has changed how programmers and distributors of TV monetize it. Digital advertising technology is being used more and more in the business of TV, to enable greater targeting and to enable the creation of marketplaces to aggregate inventory and maximize reach for advertisers.

In the past decade, what it means to “watch TV” has been totally redefined. The paradigm of sitting down to watch a show at the time it airs is fading fast — with the exception of sports and other tentpole events, like the “Game of Thrones” finale. Now we watch TV whenever we want to across our connected devices, provided we have a good internet connection. This viewing is enabled through a variety of ad and non-ad supported commercial models, creating a challenge for traditional programmers and broadcasters.

This shift of viewing to digital platforms has resulted in significant growth in online video advertising and resulted in a whole new suite of video ad products to the market, while the lion’s share of linear TV continues to be packaged and
sold in the traditional way—upfront and scatter buys of :30 second spots. This contrast, and the erosion of traditional TV audiences (COVID crisis excluded) means that TV sellers are constantly looking for ways to borrow from digital to create new and innovative products for advertisers with greater ROI and resonance to audiences. Ad format or the time of a video ad unit and ad load are two levers with which sellers have been experimenting to compete with pure play digital distributors and programmers.

Weekly Schedule:*

Session 1:
“TV: Broadcast and Cable”: An overview and history
April 8, 2020

Session 2:
Commercial Models for TV & Video; Ad Load; Rise of Digital Video; Video Advertising Products; Data Driven TV Products
April 15, 2020

Session 3:
Ad Targeting; Ad Tech Stack; Currencies of Measurement & Sale; Digital Standards
April 22, 2020

Session 4:
Traditional TV Systems & Workflows; Jobs, Roles & Functions in TV Buying & Selling; Future of TV Advertising
April 29. 2020

Session 5:
Economics of TV: the role inventory management pricing play in portfolio optimization for sellers
May 6, 2020

(*subject to change)

Welcome to #BeetU – our weekly educational series for advertising and media during the COVID-19 crisis, hosted by Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp, longtime Beet contributor and the Dean of #BeetU.

Using Furious’s comprehensive and interactive dictionary, TV101, as our guide, these sessions will unpack the terminology of advanced TV, serving as an introduction for some and a refresher for others.

So, whether a newcomer or a titan, we invite you to join us for this educational series during this reset – live-streamed Wednesdays at 1p ET on Andy’s LinkedIn and Ashley’s Twitter feed.

In times of uncertainty, a leader’s most important job is to provide stability, guidance, generosity, patience and hope. We will need to make hard decisions over the coming weeks and months, and it’s important that we’re not fearful in our approach. I recommend leading with your vulnerability and giving your clients, colleagues and teams a safe space to do the same.

For more on how you can be a lighthouse in the darkness during these trying times, you can read my blog post, Being A Lighthouse in the Darkness. 

And check out Session 1 of my educational series on BeetLIVE for more thoughts on leadership and strengthening your work relationships during the current crisis.

– Ashley Swartz
CEO & Founder, Furious Corp.