But now the set of capabilities and consequences produced by that data is changing shape.

What will the future look like? That is what “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” our recent Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio, set out to uncover.

In these highlights, hear the takes of nine advertising executives on the issue.

1. Mobile brings a TV boost

Joao Machado, marketing SVP at Sabio, a company which powers connected TV ads using mobile data, says the combination is a win.

“The mobile device is the perfect mirror of a person’s affinities, their likes, where they are in their life stages,” Machado says. He wants to “couple it with the promise of what CTV digital television offers”.

Reborn, QR Codes Are The Glue Between Mobile & TV: Sabio’s Machado

2. TV is getting richer

When it comes to new-wave TV, AJ Kinter, head of advanced video strategy at Publicis Media Exchange (PMX), says the opportunities are burgeoning.

Kinter draws a distinction between “programmatic CTV” and “direct CTV”. “Since the CPMs have started to become much closer to programmatic CTV, you now have a linear, addressable TV and programmatic CTV kind of range in the same type of CPM,” he says.

Data Tell Story of Changing Viewership Habits: PMX’s AJ Kintner

3. Fusing media and mobile

Device data needs to inform media buys. That is why Aziz Rahim, Sabio CEO, says his company also started an app analytics division.

“Sabio is focusing on the media aspect of the industry, providing a deeper, unique targeting, reach and capabilities, and then along with creative capabilities,” he says. “The App Science side is to provide agnostic analytics and insights on CTV and OTT, along with mobile campaigns.”

After IDFA, Mobile Is Identity Gold For CTV: Sabio & App Science’s Rahim

4. Double-down on de-duplication

Ad buyers need to avoid exposing consumers to the same ad across multiple devices, says Dave Kersey, executive media director at GSD&M.

“Duplication is certainly a challenge in the industry,” Kersey says. “(We need to be) understanding the entire consumer journey across all video platforms.”

Mobile Data Help to Avoid Ad Duplication: GSD&M’s Dave Kersey

5. Data helps post-pandemic ad recovery

At MBuy, a unit of Mediaocean, media strategy and operations SVP Michael Parent is using data to welcome back travel brands that want to resume spending.

“We’re taking the data that we’re getting — everything from geography to programming to dayparts to the response that we’re getting,” Parent says.

CTV Data Provide More Insights for Ad Targeting: MBuy’s Michael Parent

6. Real-time duplication monitoring

At Sabio’s App Science, EVP Helen Lum says ad duplication is starting to worry more ad buyers.

“I think a good way to solve for that is actually to track and reduce that duplication and monitor that reach and frequency across partners and publishers, so that advertisers can reinvest those wasted dollars in real-time for their buys,” Lum says.

CTV Offers Faster Data Insights Than Linear TV: App Science’s Helen Lum

7. Mobile is the key to e-commerce

Mobile is evolving toward becoming an e-commerce driver for TV ads, says Jeff Liang, head of digital product at WPP’s MediaCom.

“We’ll eventually get to a point where we’ll be able to allow for comparison shopping on CTV and give consumers the ability to transact within that single remote device rather than driving people to their mobile phones,” Liang predicts.

Mobile Data Enable Audience Targeting on CTV: MediaCom’s Jeff Liang

8. Understand TV & mobile together

It’s no longer an “either-or”. Kelly Metz, managing director of linear activation at Omnicom Media Group, says ad planners must understand how consumers use mobile and TV in tandem.

“The way we choose to manage that or support that from a planning perspective is by emphasizing holistic campaign planning and holistic campaign measurement,” she says.

Mobile, TV Data Provide Holistic Audience Insights: Omnicom Media Group’s Kelly Metz

9. TV can target the right patient

The ability to target TV ads can revolutionise healthcare advertising, according to Starcom’s EVP Melissa Gordon-Ring.

“We can double-down on things like connected television or addressable television, and have a higher likelihood of reaching our patient in their household, versus hoping that this is the right target audience for us to be purchasing against,” she says.

Mobile Data Support Personalized Healthcare Marketing: Starcom’s Melissa Gordon-Ring

Started in Japan in the mid-nineties, QR code were initially popular with the countries NTT DoCoMo mobile carrier. They never quite took off until they were baked into the cameras of iOS and Android.

Recently, however, practices like contactless ordering from restaurant menus have seen QR codes become even more popular, and a clutch of companies has been trying to embed them in TV shows, too.

For Joao Machado, marketing SVP at a company which powers connected TV ads using mobile data, humble QR codes could be the next big thing again.

Making TV shoppable

“People have realised the value of QR codes, again,” Machado says in this video interview with Beet.TV . “As an industry, we kicked them around the curve because there were bad experiences in the distant past. But it’s always been a good piece of technology, it’s always a bit useful, and it’s a good thing for context change.”

Sabio has long been helping advertisers use consumers’ mobile data to better target CTV ads. Now it is also using mobile QR codes to bring those ads to life, through things like interactive buying experiences.

QR codes displayed in CTV ad creative are the key to unlocking such experiences for advertiser brands.

“We are trying to move all of our CTV campaigns into something more transactional,” Machado says, “by incorporating a QR code into the TV.

“A QR code for a big box retailer allows a consumer to go, scan the QR code, immediately put those products into a shopping cart, pay them, and have them deliver, and then to have it left at doorstep,” Machado adds.

The mobile mirror

Machado’s Six-year-old Sabio is an ad-tech platform offering a connected TV (CTV) platform that is powered by mobile phone data.

It claims to leverage app-level data from over 300 million mobile devices, which can then be fed into CTV buying systems. Sabio has its own DSP, SSP and DMP.

CTV is a medium traditionally hampered by classical digital methods of identifying viewers – so mobile could be a useful signal.

“The mobile device is the perfect mirror of a person’s affinities, their likes, where they are in their life stages,” Machado says.

He says he can use signals from mobile apps including location history, plus added data like shopper behavior, to build ad-targeting profiles executable through CTV.

Mobile’s identity challenge

That’s the theory. But mobile, too, is now facing big challenges in the gathering of consumer personal data used to build those profiles.

Apple’s decision to make more location and behavior tracking by apps opt-in by default for consumers is a seismic shift that will limit the ability of many to make useful material out of mobile app activity.

But Machado says Sabio has two rosier outlooks:

1. Whilst 50% to 60% of iOS users have opted out of such tracking, according to Machado, only 30% of iOS users are on the latest, most privacy-supporting version of iOS.

2. Sabio has adopted Unified ID 2.0, kickstarted by The Trade Desk, into its household identity graph, in an effort to rely less on consumer-provided identity signals.

“With CTV, real-time reporting is very important, especially now. Many companies only provide post-campaign reports. You really don’t get your insights until after the campaign has completed,” Helen Lum, executive vice president of App Science, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “If you have real-time reporting, you can actually make those optimizations live and identify where you can spend your money more efficiently and on top of that, still apply those learnings to future campaigns.”

App Science is a CTV insights business that last year was spun out of media technology company Sabio. With its launch, App Science introduced its Insights Report dashboard for brands and agencies to audit, plan and measure campaigns with data from its device graph of 300 million mobile devices and 110 million CTV households.

“We are an agnostic analytics and data partner, where we are able to provide real-time reporting to our clients with our dashboard,” Lum said.

The company provides advertisers with a pixel, or a snippet of code used for tracking, that can be applied across media buys to measure campaigns. The information can help to compare viewership among different platforms and avoid targeting the same audiences repeatedly.

“We’ve been hearing a lot from our clients how duplication has becoming more of an issue,” Lum said. “A good way to solve for that is to track and reduce that duplication, and monitor that reach and frequency across partners and publishers so that advertisers can reinvest those wasted dollars in real time for their buys.”

Linear TV viewership is declining as audiences spend more time consuming media on connected devices like smart TVs and mobile phones. Those devices provide a way to pinpoint viewers in a household.

“Having the ability to really connect the mobile to CTV like we do at App Science, we allow advertisers to have deeper insights into the audiences such as the top apps on their phone, even locations that they’ve been to so they have a more holistic view of that household with CTV than with linear,” Lum said.

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.

“CTV providers starting to differentiate themselves on how they’re able to develop their targeting, and the reporting aspect of it,” Michael Parent, senior vice president of media strategy and operations at MBuy, a unit of Mediaocean, said in this interview with Beet.TV.

While CTV platforms several years ago provided limited information about campaigns, they now share more data as the marketplace has grown more crowded.

“The thing we’re looking for about harmonizing data signals is what we can report on,” Parent said. “Rather than just buying the content, what are we going to get on the back end? What can we learn to help us make better decisions?”

MBuy’s clientele includes businesses in the travel industry that are seeking to boost revenue as consumers demonstrate a greater willingness to travel as vaccinations help to curb the pandemic. Targeting those consumers through CTV platforms is dependent on data signals.

“We’re taking the data that we’re getting — everything from geography to programming to dayparts to the response that we’re getting,” Parent said. “The back end of a CTV buy now is just as important as for a display buy or with the other digital assets that we’re using.”

MBuy, whose services are aimed at smaller advertisers, works with ad-tech company Sabio to hone campaign targeting on connected devices including mobile phones and smart TVs.

“With Sabio, we started out really focusing on their mobile product. We found that it was one of the best ones for us to use,” Parent said. “We were able to measure it, and they were able to work with many different types of creative units. They have since expanded their offerings.”

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.

“Consumers are watching TVs and engaging with their mobile phones simultaneously as they’re engaging with our ad experiences,” Kelly Metz, managing director of linear activation at Omnicom Media Group, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “The way we choose to manage that or support that from a planning perspective is by emphasizing holistic campaign planning and holistic campaign measurement.”

With many consumers watching TV while looking at their smartphones at the same time, advertisers have more sources of data to help understand how their ads are seen.

“All of that factors into mobile data, TV data coming together to derive insights and make those better planning decisions and measurement decisions,” Metz said. “The use case for mobile data is to have more effective plans. We need to understand mobile ad exposure in the home to truly understand influence of the advertising campaign and the influence of the different screens.”

Advertisers have reason to be optimistic about the pace of innovation, though Metz cautions that the amount of data generated by consumers can create conflicting signals.

“There’s a certain realization that signals will never be in perfect harmony. Anyone who’s ever dealt with data, and we know big data really well, frequently you get conflicting signals,” she said. “It’s about really embracing the fact that signals will contradict. Signals will be bad, and you have to have the right data infrastructure and approach and the flexibility to be able to address that.”

The pandemic led to a dramatic shift in viewing habits, with many people sampling the programming on streaming platforms as they spent more time stuck at home. The cord-cutting trend accelerated as more households connected their TVs directly to the internet.

“We were prepared for these changes. We just expected them to happen at a slower rate,” Metz said. “The key is to focus on that cross-screen consumer engagement, and to enable planning insights across screens.”

While audience data are vital to media planning, marketers also need to be mindful that they’re using the information in a way that’s considerate of consumers.

“You’ve got to start with the right data. You’ve got to clean that data, and you’ve got to make sure that you’re 100% compliant with everything the consumer would want you to do, to be respectful of that data use,” Metz said.

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.

“Duplication is certainly a challenge in the industry,” Dave Kersey, senior vice president and executive media director at ad agency GSD&M, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “The way we approach it is really looking at how we set up campaigns at the outset — so, really understanding the entire consumer journey across all video platforms, but even beyond video platforms so we can build the right technology in at the forefront.”

Automated content recognition (ACR), a technology to track what viewers watch on smart TVs, is providing more data to help marketers with frequency capping of ads among linear and digital video channels. Mobile data also provide insights into viewing behaviors.

“Mobile data is critical with the change in consumer behavior over the last 12 to 13 months,” Kersey said. “We know a lot of consumption has migrated to the mobile platform. We can use some of those signals and some of the information to inform how we show up in other places. It doesn’t necessarily need to be other video places. It could be other contextually aligned outlets.”

By making the consumer experience a central part of campaign planning, brands can implement technologies that support the customer journey from seeing an ad to performing an action, such as making a purchase.

“We need to work closely with our creative partners…because if we’re building out a consumer journey, we need to make sure that our messaging and the story we’re trying to convey shows up in the right places at the right time,” Kersey said. “Considering who that consumption behavior has changed, we have that opportunity to match the story with where people are in that journey.”

That process requires brands and their agencies to monitor consumer exposure to campaigns across multiple platforms.

“If you’re telling me a story about why I should care or engage in your brand, you continue that story with other proof points or rationalization, I’m more likely to stay connected to the brand,” Kersey said. “That’s how we’re starting to evolve our thinking, and how we’re talking to our clients to evolve their thinking in terms of telling that brand story.”

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.

“We essentially leverage platform-specific technology providers using deterministic data because they do have access to connected TV data,” Jeff Liang, head of digital product at WPP’s MediaCom, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “Many times, they match that against and identity graph with multiple device IDs, which allows us to control the exposure of those ads to different digital devices.”

With millions of consumers using their smartphones while watching TV, or “second-screening,” marketers have another way to interact with viewers. In some cases, advertisers are showing QR codes in commercials for viewers to scan with a smartphone and visit a shopping site.

“E-commerce is really an important activity that more and more technology providers are starting to build,” Liang said. “The shopping mindset for CTV viewers will start to change. Right now, most CTV viewers aren’t necessarily ready to pull out their credit card while they’re sitting on the couch watching CTV programming.”

However, CTV platforms do provide ways to personalize the viewing experience. For example, sports fans can look up stats about players and teams while watching a game.

“That personalization of the CTV experience will continue in e-commerce as well,” Liang said. “We’ll eventually get to a point where we’ll be able to allow for comparison shopping on CTV and give consumers the ability to transact within that single remote device rather than driving people to their mobile phones.”

Source: Marketing Charts, Integral Ad Science

The rise in media consumption among multiple devices challenges marketers to capture viewer attention, possibly by integrating their brand messaging within the content of shows. Meanwhile, improved ad targeting increases the likelihood of reaching target audiences through CTV.

“There’s been a lot of connection between all the different data sets that would allow us to target on connected TV better,” Liang said. “That includes rolling mobile data into identity graphs that really tells us a lot of information about a specific user. Mobile is probably one of the best signal-collection devices that we have today.”

The variety of data about geolocation, app usage, personal interests and health activity helps to develop a more complete picture of consumers, even as technology companies give people more control over their personal data. Apple, as one example, last month updated the software that runs devices including the iPhone to ask customers for permission to share an identifier for advertisers (IDFA) with apps and websites. Apple installs the identifiers on every one of its products.

“With all the challenges that we have today with IDFA being removed, which is causing a lot of headaches, I don’t necessarily think that this process of aggregating data and gaining a better understanding of who that user is will go away,” Liang said. “As time goes on, we’ll have the ability to take offline data, take other disparate sources of data, connect them together and build a better experience across all the advertising formats that are emerging now.”

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.

“Customer data is incredibly valuable,” Melissa Gordon-Ring, executive vice president and managing director of Publicis Groupe’s Starcom unit, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “Publicis continues to make significant investments in access to data because we know it’s the future. When people raise their hand and give you their information, they’re almost signing a contract with you.”

First-party data have become more vital to advertisers as they prepare for the continued loss of audience tracking technologies like third-party cookies in web browsers and identifiers on some connected devices. In the healthcare industry, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) sets rules on how some healthcare data can be shared.

“We utilize that to have as much of a direct dialog as possible when he have access to that data,” Gordon-Ring said. “Obviously, there are certain restrictions in the healthcare space, but across the board, in essence, it also allows for a better advertising and content and communications strategy. If you know a little bit more about the person you’re speaking to, you can ideally have a more relevant dialog.”

Data Insights

Engagement metrics also provide key insights into how consumers behave, including their visits to websites, interactions and keyword searches. The data also help to understand people’s medical conditions and whether they’re seeking treatment from healthcare providers.

“We want all of the data — the more, the better. Unless you can really action on it, it’s just a number,” she said. “For us, it’s also about understanding how long many of these people have been suffering from a certain disease.”

The private nature of people’s health also requires a delicate touch.

“Always be sensitive. Be sensitive that you may be communicating to someone who is not open to sharing information about themselves or something they may be dealing with, in regards to their health,” Gordon-Ring said. “We want to talk to our consumers as real people, and not just a patient.”

Telemedicine, CTV and Addressable Advertising

The pandemic led many healthcare providers to adopt the latest communications technologies to stay in touch with patients who were prevented from seeking medical attention except in the case of emergencies. Gordon-Ring sees more opportunities in video calls between patients and providers.

“The entire evolution of the telemedicine space as a function of Covid restrictions and people not being able to go into the doctor’s office,” she said. “We’ve seen a huge behavioral shift in terms of comfort in having a video dialog with a physician or nurse.”

As more people hook up their TVs to the internet and addressable advertising becomes more feasible, even among national broadcasters, healthcare marketers will have more ways to gain insights into consumer behaviors.

“My hope is that we can learn as much information through addressable that helps us better identify households with a greater prominence of a certain disease state, as well as help them manage their treatment through an ongoing dialog,” Gordon-Ring said.

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.

“TV has completely changed. We’ve been trapped in our houses and watching a lot more of it, but at the same time, a lot of the platforms started to come out to give Netflix competition,” AJ Kintner, executive vice president of advanced video strategy at Publicis Media Exchange (PMX), said in this interview with Beet.TV. “Our viewerships of what traditionally was linear are completely different.”

Recognizing the need to support data-driven marketing, Publicis two years acquired Epsilon from Alliance Data Systems. Epsilon has a vast trove of consumer data from loyalty programs and email marketing campaigns. The data help to informing media-buying decisions amid the growth in connected TV.

Second-screening activity also is common among consumers who watch TV while using their mobile devices surf the web, chat with friends or check in on social media.

“We usually have our mobile device in one hand, and the channel changer in the other,” Kintner said. “They do complement each other, and there are companies like Samsung who actually have the ability to own the TV and own the device in your hand.”

Automated content recognition (ACR) systems that monitor what households are actually watching provide some of the most revealing data, Kintner said. The can show how advertisers are misallocating significant parts of their media budgets to linear TV, only to learn that much of their target audience consists of cord cutters. Meanwhile, marketers are working to develop greater insights about CTV viewing habits.

“Brands are trying to understand it just as quickly as the networks are creating it. All of the networks have created their own streaming services,” Kintner said. “Clients want to understand it, they want to buy more of it. They just need to make sure they’re buying it the proper way.”

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.

But what if other clues about smartphone usage could continue giving advertisers valuable signals about users’ identity?

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Aziz Rahim, CEO of ad-tech software provider Sabio and App Science, says alternatives could continue to be valuable.

Leaning on installs

He is advocating, instead, monitoring which apps a user has installed, in order to elucidate signals to be used as targeting characteristics.

“The type of apps a person has has on their phones and is likely to have on their phones … gives you a really deep understanding of not only where someone is, mindset-wise, today, but where they’re “heading,” says Rahim.

Let’s say someone is loading honeymoon apps or apps that, you know, are involved with a wedding. Those apps then allow us to see kind of intent of where that person is going mindset-wise.

“That then connects the dots with someone who’s potentially looking for a new house or a new apartment that then connects the dots to someone who is eventually looking for honeymoon locations, as well as other change events in their lives.

“Achieving this in a privacy-compliant way is critical because we’re not interested in obviously understanding someone on a PII basis. We’re interested in understanding someone from any holistic basis of what they’re likely to do next, to provide them deeper, more accurate and relevant advertising, both on mobile and CTV.”

Mobile to TV

Six-year-old Sabio is an ad-tech platform offering a connected TV (CTV) platform that is powered by mobile phone data.

It claims to leverage app-level data from over 300 million mobile devices, which can then be fed into CTV buying systems. Sabio has its own DSP, SSP and DMP.

CTV is a medium traditionally hampered by classical digital methods of identifying viewers.

And mobile, like all of digital, is also now a channel that is suffering from an identity crisis, as identifiers like Apple’s IDFA dry up in usefulness.

Learning to target

But Rahim is adamant that latent opportunities remain – and that mobile is also a transformational indicator with which to buy CTV ads.

He says location data from mobile phones can also tell advertisers plenty about who a consumer really is.

Sabio uses automated segmentation and predictive learning to identify and reach customers.

The capability is accessed through a “programmatic portal” platform.

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.