Now that the world is exploding in to on-demand TV, premium video and a host of other channels, ad-buying currencies are up in the air again.

Lorne Brown wants to pin them down.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, the CEO of ad-tech firm Operative says broadcast TV and video owners, whilst they may now be pursuing different rating and currency mechanisms, should nevertheless align standards to make buying ads easier.

“In the U.S., we started an initiative called the council,” Brown says. “We’re bringing the top 10 networks – NBC, CBS, Disney – to talk about the things that they need to enter into different markets.

“For those buyers who might want to buy TV or they might want to buy maybe premium video, but they want to do it with their currency, with their transaction method, and they way that they’re used to, and they don’t want to be exposed or have TV exposing their complexity to them.

“So what we’re trying to do is align the TV companies with a lot of standards around technology and APIs to allow them to transact in different ways. So that’s one of the things that we’re working on.”

In the last couple of years, the industry has seen the rise of initiatives like OpenAP which creates consistency in how on-demand TV publishers describe their audience segments – one way advertisers can more easily buy audience-based campaigns across a range of services.

Brown says things are getting complex. As media owners’ portfolios fragment along with consolidation and mega-mergers, they need to simplify their systems and align product strategies, to harmonize the media buying experience.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

That is why the new owner of Cablevision has launched what it’s calling a “one-stop shop”.

Altice USA’s a4, a division which helps brands and agencies advertise to citizens across screens, launched Athena, a system for agencies and brands to build audience-based media plans targeted at the household level.

“(They can) create audiences quickly within minutes by using either viewership data or third party data,” Altice’s president, A4, media and data solutions, Paul Haddad in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“They can use geolocation data, or they could use their own CRM to do an onboarding within an hour and create their own lists.”

For the last couple of years, ad technology companies have been racing to present options through which ad buyers can holistically plan and deliver campaigns that run across device types but which, nevertheless, target individual consumers or their households.

In the latest trend, platforms are switching on technology that helps brands use the data they have gathered on their own consumers or prospects, seemingly swinging the industry emphasis away from super-targeting otherwise-unknown prospects.

In a4’s Athena, ad inventory could be linear, optimized linear, VOD or other kinds.

“If it is inventory that requires cable networks, or broadcasters, or MVPD inventory, we issue the orders to our partners and they fulfill these campaigns for us. And then we report all the impressions back,” Haddad adds.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

That is the view of one exec who spent two decades in ad agencies and who now helps run programmatic TV operations at one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Adobe director of programmatic TV Todd Gordon talks about how even more traditional TV can help satisfy ad buyers with a thirst to do more.

“Clients know a lot more about who their customers are,” Gordon says. “They have much more granular sources of data.

“If you want to apply that data at scale into TV, traditional panel based measurement breaks down. When you want to know how a very precise audience is behaving, you need more granular viewing data.”

But Gordon says that data has come on-stream. Adobe has this year announced a API partnership with NBC Universal to aggregate inventory in its own demand platform.

“You can actually log into our platform right now, see what NBCU has available for sale across all their linear networks,” he says. “You can optimize in platform, pass the order in platform. NBC on their side can approve or reject that order in platform.

“It’s actually getting a lot more automated, and a lot more programmatic.”

All of which can make for faster delivery and performance metrics tracking,” Gordon adds.

He also says that, despite ongoing chatter about distintermediation of ad agencies, as more brands use tech to take on more duties for themselves, TV is still largely transacted through agencies.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

TV isn’t without its challenges, of course. But, in this video interview with Beet.TV, Finecast chief product officer Rich Astley, whose company helps brands buy ads for targeted audiences through connected TV platforms, paints a more nuanced view of the shifting dynamics.

“The challenge with linear TV is obvious the ratings are going down in most TV markets,’ he says. “But revenue is kind of holding up.

“That means that inflation has been a challenge in most TV markets and big TV advertisers are looking at where they can spend in audio-visual advertising.

“So, naturally, that starts to lend itself to other platforms, potentially other formats that are TV-like still and offer that trusted, quality environment, but allow us to extend our reach into other areas of television.”

Astley’s Finecast is a new unit established by GroupM to smoothe the path to buying addressable campaigns by aggregating inventory.

The company aims to “help advertisers address hard-to-reach TV viewers through a single access point with standardised measurement”. It has launched first in the UK but has previously said it wants to roll out to global markets.

It also plans to deliver a self-serve tool to both agencies and brands.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

In another such initiative, French TV channel operator M6 is teaming with rival TF1 and public broadcaster France Télévisions to mix audience data and sell ads across their combined portfolio.

The initiative is due to launch in Q1 2019, according to Stephane Coruble, the MD of AdConnect, an ad sales unit across RTL group properties, which include M6.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, he says the aim is “to simplify the access to programmatic buying and online video”.

“It also uses first party data, and combining basically the first party data from our clients and mixing them, mixing the segments together with our first party data, and being able to reach the right consumers on our combined portfolio,” Coruble adds.

Adconnect unit is an ad sales arm for RTL-owned broadcasters and shows made by its Fremantle Media subsidiary (American Idol, Got Talent, X Factor) around the world, but also those owned by other operators.

RTL Adconnect uses  a video marketplace platform to access premium inventory across linear TV and VOD, built on SpotX and Smartclip, both of which RTL acquired in recent years in addition to VideoAmp and Clypd.

The idea is to give video and TV companies a leg-up in ad sales against the might of tech platforms, appealing to international companies with a clear pitch in a fragmented market: “Buy Europe”.

The UK’s main free-to-air commercial broadcaster ITV recently signed a deal with Adconnect in which the latter will represent ITV outside of the UK on ad sales.

That is in addition to existing deals to represent RAI in Italy and Medialaan in North Belgium.

“In Germany, for instance, we are putting together … subscribers’ ID,” Coruble continues.

“You will see more and more alliances happening on the markets, on the different local markets, because I think that we need to be stronger together in order to compete or cooperate sometimes with the big international platforms.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

Yes, for addressable TV as for plenty else besides, in Europe, things can get fragmented.

The new unit established by GroupM to smoothe the path to buying addressable campaigns by aggregating inventory has picked the UK to start. But that doesn’t mean Finecast doesn’t have bigger ambitions.

Asked what it would take for the technology to hit scale across Europe, GroupM CEO, EMEA, Dominic Grainger says in this video interview with Beet.TV: “I think it requires a really appetite from the different broadcasters to invest behind it. And to see the future.

“The challenge is that there’s many different markets and many different players, and a lot of those players don’t particularly want to work together in this space necessarily. So there may be different solutions even within one market.”

The agency’s business unit aims to “help advertisers address hard-to-reach TV viewers through a single access point with standardised measurement”.

The company, which says it is more a tech company than an agency, has previously said it wants to roll out to global markets.

It also plans to deliver a self-serve tool to both agencies and brands.

“Something like addressable can be a step change and I think that can really give so many more, not just targeting opportunities and creation of different audiences, but actually creative solutions for our advertisers as well,” Grainger adds.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

Six years after launch and having just been acquired by Comcast, Sky suggests this new method of selling TV ads is now commonplace across the company.

It was back in 2013 that the UK satellite and telco company launched AdSmart, its method of more finely targeting and custom-delivering different ad spots through its connected satellite set-top boxes.

In that time, Sky has served billions of impressions this way using 1,200 customer categories (many of them for newcomers to TV advertising), launched a cross-platform ad sequencing platform called Sky AdVance and an analytics offering, too.

But, for Jamie West, the executive who has steered much of the progress, those individual products no longer matter much.

“Those capabilities will not disappear and go away but, actually, our conversation now with advertisers will be about business outcomes, their marketing challenge,” Sky advanced advertising group director Jamie West in this video interview with Ashley Swartz for Beet.TV.

“And how can we help them solve the issues that are important to them. Because they quite frankly don’t care about my products, they care about what’s important to them.”

In other words, Sky’s addressable TV ad journey seems to have reached a point of maturity.

West says data capability has now been threaded throughout his organization, while many clients now want an account lead, often embedded in their company, to use as a point person for the new technique.

All of this happens a couple of months after the eventual sale of Sky to NBCUniversal owner Comcast finally closed, one piece in an evolving jigsaw of media and telecoms consolidation.

It’s clear which of the companies operates in the biggest market – but Sky’s addressable TV heritage would seem to be something NBCU can learn from the European company.

“I think the most exciting thing about the acquisition is that our strategic goals are a hundred percent aligned,” West says. “Whether it be talking to (NBCU advertising chairman) Linda Yaccarino or Dave Clark at Comcast advertising services.

“The ambition is shared not now just across two entities – Comcast and NBCU – but across three. 2019 and beyond, I think is one of the most exciting years that you’ll see at Sky.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

RTÉ Player launched in April 2009, offering hundreds of hours of TV shows available to catch up with through online and some TV platforms. It has since expanded to offer a service outside Ireland, too.

Now more could be coming.

“We’re holding quite well online on our player, and what we want to give them now is a better experience both in terms of the actual stability of product and also in terms of what the content offering is,” says RTÉ head of sales strategy and commercial compliance Connor Mullen in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“We are going to be going into more genre-based content offers and box sets. That allows us to give particular sponsorship opportunities.”

Adding “box sets” (in other words, full-season shows available to binge-watch, as opposed to simply giving a short VOD viewing window of a week or two) is something RTÉ has in common with its counterpart BBC in the UK.

The BBC just announced a raft of “box sets” it will place on its cross-platform iPlayer this Christmas, having previously found increased consumption with the strategy, designed as a foil against Netflix’s unlimited binge-ability.

At the same time, RTÉ announced a similar move along with its RTÉ Player upgrade this week.

All this is coming your way tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/YSYFZejbGB

— RTÉ Player (@RTEplayer) December 2, 2018

Unlike the BBC, however, Ireland’s RTÉ sells ads against its content. And Mullen, who is looking for opportunities to satisfy brands he says are growing tired with big technology platforms, wants to carve out areas of his Player that could serve marketers.

It allows us to create content for them as well so, in terms of rolling out brand and content offerings that we’ve done the last 12, 18 months, we will also have the opportunity to provide pop-up channels.”

“We’re coming into Christmas season,” Mullen says. “We could be getting into a Christmas foods pop-up channel at this moment in time. And that gives opportunities to both brands and advertisers in terms of saying, ‘I want to own a particular content genre’.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

And that is crossing off its ecommerce platform and on to online TV, too.

In a recent terms of service update for Fire TV ad sales, Amazon says

“Fire TV Ad-Enabled Apps must provide 30% of total advertising impressions in the app to Amazon, which 30% will be representative of all of the app’s advertising impressions and not exclude or limit Amazon’s access to times, programs or categories. Apps will not receive payment for the 30% of impressions provided to Amazon.”

That sets reports flying, like this from AdAge: “Until last month, Amazon let the publishers sell their own ads and take all the money.”

In this video interview with Beet.TV, the boss of one ad agency’s connected TV play gives his view on how Amazon’s position is shaping up.

“You can say, ‘Well what’s different about that? Apple is charging 30 percent if you have an app there they will take 30 percent or 40 percent cut of that app’,” says Finecast CEO Jakob Nielsen.

“Well the difference is, Amazon is not saying that. They’re not saying they’ll take a cut of their revenue – they’re saying they want to sell the inventory. So for Amazon to do that, they’re building a big infrastructure, sales force of going directly after TV money. So they’re definitely going to be a gigantic player in there.”

Last year, GroupM launched Finecast, spanning multiple TV channels, pay-TV platforms, set-top boxes, video-on-demand services, over-the-top providers and game consoles.

Finecast offers advertisers access to 180 different targeting segments, from socio-economic to life stage, purchase and financial data. It is integrated with GroupM’s [m]Platform along with such major industry data platforms as Acxiom, Experian, MasterCard and Kantar to power audience discovery and targeting.

Finecast recently told Beet.TV the unit has effectively been soft-launched and plans to deliver a self-serve tool to both agencies and brands later.

In the big picture, Nielsen doesn’t think connected TV will be left all to Amazon.

“I think all the current broadcasters can be big players, but they have to invest,” he says. “They have to invest in technology, they have to bring data into it.

And I think they’re all doing that, depending on what market you’re in. But I think the future of TV is enormously exciting, and that’s why we’re here.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

For Amobee, the demand-side platform and analytics suite operator, that position seems to be getting bigger.

After already acquiring Ringring Media, AdJitsu, Gradient X, Adconion, Kontera and Turn, the Redwood City, CA, company this summer even bought up digital TV ad company Videology.

So, having itself been bought by SingTel in 2012, what is Amobee’s big plan?

“Our vision is to be an advertising platform for the converged world and we want to do that globally,” says Amobee COO Domenic Venuto in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“Our goal is to be an omnichannel DSP, and we’ve done that with social and display, and mobile, and now with Videology, we’re adding television and advanced television to that mix, which is super exciting on the buy side.

“And in fact, Videology comes with a supply side capabilities as well. So, we think that there’s great synergies in bringing the two together and creating a market place, and connecting both sides of the equation.”

Amobee snapped up big-hitting video ad tech company Videology for $100 million in July after the firm hit trouble, having filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

It was another sign of consolidation in the advertising technology space.

For Venuto, it adds up to offering “optimization, portfolio management capabilities for greater yield and returns”.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

Next up, ad-buying agencies and other users deserve to jettison some of that manual work, says an exec from one company trying to make it happen.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jamie Power, the chief operating officer at Cadent’s one2one Advertising, discusses the recently-launched Cadent Advanced TV Platform, a way for national ad buyers to purchase addressable (household-targeted) TV ads nationwide.

“Addressable TV, I’ve lived through it for the last five years and without any real technology, it’s really hard, it’s manual,” Power concedes.

“What we’ve been able to do is leverage tons of our historical data in the platform, giving predictive analytics. So people can learn from our mistakes and be able to deliver optimal, addressable TV campaigns.”

Cadent Advanced TV Platform is being beta tested by three agencies. Rather than complete ad buys using back-and-forth emails, they fill in campaign parameters and budgets, before the platform is optimized based on goals.

“If it’s a CPG brand, and they want to get new customers, versus get their existing customers to purchase more, there would be a variance in the frequency, and we’ll take that into consideration when we’re planning,” Power says.

She says addressable TV is in its early days, with insufficient numbers of people with expertise.

She says technology that allows agency staff to retain control whilst uploading their own data sets and buying real-world addressable ad campaigns allows them to do less manually and builds overall momentum.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

Now, digital TV and identity resolution technologies are building a bridge, however.

In its latest report entitled Assigning TV Credit: A Practical Guide to Attribution, FreeWheel Council for Premium Video (FWC), the education body established by Comcast-owned video ad-tech company FreeWheel, shares examples and best practices for brands who want to spend in one medium to achieve results in another.

“TV has always been a brand builder,” says FWC’s James Rothwell in this video interview with Beet.TV. “It’s always been about awareness and reach. But, with the precision that you’re able to now get through advanced TV, you’re able to now push that consumer down through the consider, intent, and sales process as parts of the funnel.”

FWC’s attribution report includes parts on:

• Demystifying First/Last Touch Attribution
• Household Level Ad Exposure Impact
• The Purchase Funnel & Advanced TV’s Multifaceted Role

And it features 10 case studies, including one on a regional automotive dealer that drove incremental reach to its website through multi-screen extension via premium digital TV.

“Some of the key takeaways for us was really around showing how those different ways in which TV companies, media companies are able to now push their consumer down through the funnel through those different techniques, and through the different ways in which they can target and get to those precise audiences,” Rothwell added.

“One of the other takeaways is that TV can now operate on the same plane as digital. Digital has always had its advantage of being a closed loop channel for marketers, and TV has always suffered as a result by the fact that they couldn’t do that.”

In summation, FWC’s report includes five pieces of key best practice marketers can follow:

1. Use granular levels of data to optimize your campaign mid-flight
2. Establish an appropriate timeline to measure against the campaign objectives
3. Use a statistically-significant model to infer causality for your media plan
4. Incorporate a control group for your measurement
5. Make sure the data is representative of the target population being measured

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

What comes next? Maybe getting it in to the hands of media agencies, says the man who runs the product.

“We’re looking to bring that out into markets, so the agencies can use that themselves,” says Finecast head of product, data and analytics Clive Page in this video interview with Beet.TV.

Last year, the agency launched Finecast, spanning multiple TV channels, pay-TV platforms, set-top boxes, video-on-demand services, over-the-top providers and game consoles.

Finecast offers advertisers access to 180 different targeting segments, from socio-economic to life stage, purchase and financial data. It is integrated with GroupM’s [m]Platform along with such major industry data platforms as Acxiom, Experian, MasterCard and Kantar to power audience discovery and targeting.

But Finecast is not yet in primetime.

“Ultimately, it’s a sort of soft launch in a way,” Page adds. “We have it internally, we’re stress-testing it, if you like, it’s sort of beta tested. We’ve held its feet to the fire somewhat more recently – we’ve actually demonstrated to our clients.”

“The first step will be to the agency operatives so they will be able to use it, understand where their audience is being seen, understand where they’re getting the best reach and optimize their campaigns using our technology.

“Then ultimately, I don’t see why that shouldn’t go to clients as well to give them insight.”

Finecast has aggregated video ad inventory in programming from some of the UK’s main commercial broadcasters, like Channel 4, Channel 5, STV, Discovery and Disney, plus over most main set-top and over-the-top devices, from Sky’s satellite box to games consoles.

“We take the disparate supply sources of media that is addressable, and we  corral that all into one place and then we add layers of insight and technology to that to bring value to our proposition,” Page adds.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

Fast-forward to 2018 and it seems the pendulum is swinging a little bit away from the new dataism.

GroupM director of audiences research Simon Thomas, in this video interview with Beet.TV, says he thinks 10% of data contain’s “fool’s gold”.

“There’s been an awful lot of decisions and an awful lot of unwarranted confidence placed in some of the data that has been provided in the marketplace,” Thomas says.

“Unfortunately, there’s been some issues where it’s not robust, it’s not methodologically sound in terms of the way it’s been collected and, certainly, not been put into the analytics and insight models in the right way.”

Not that Thomas’ GroupM and its subsidiaries don’t now use copious amounts of data to do their planning, of course.

But Thomas wants data to be usable, producing knowledge and insight.

Fortunately, he sees a “second revolution” emerging in deep learning and artificial intelligence, helping agencies better understand consumer thinking and their purchase pathway.

“We need to make sure to advise clients to get the balance right between the short-term drive for performance and action and the longer term brand equity investment,” Thomas adds.

“That’s a tough one because the data will support a short-term performance allocation of money as opposed to the longer-term brand equity.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

“It’s (about) picking the right model for the right market,” says Liberty Global MD, advanced ads and data, John Paul in this video interview with Beet.TV.

• Belgium: Liberty Global’s Belgian operator Telenet has already rolled out house-hold-customised, addressable TV ads for channel operator SBS, using technology from INIVIDI.
• Chile: The group has also rolled out similar functionality through its subsidiary in Chile.
• UK: And it just announced its Virgin Media would launch addressable TV ads in the UK early in 2019, partly through a partnership with technology firm Cadent.

“The UK is a very heavily regulated and controlled ad trading environment, so the opportunities that present themselves are very specific. Sky has done a very fantastic job – in this market, we’ve partnered with Sky to deliver addressable advertising,” Paul says.

“We believe that partnering and accelerating these opportunities is critical. It’s moving so fast, so Cadent for us is a very forward-thinking, almost like a leap frog type of partner.”

Paul says the US addressable market, currently with up to 75 million homes now addressable, is moving faster than the UK’s due to regulation in the latter market.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

NBCU’s aim with CFlight was to give advertisers a sense of how their marketing campaigns are being seen, regardless of time or location.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Simulmedia CEO Dave Morgan, whose company helps brands use data and targeting to buy ads in linear TV, says: “It’s the most progressive thing we’ve seen in TV advertising measurement in ten years. since we had the C3.”

C3 was launched to include DVR viewing in TV measurement. But today’s viewing options are far wider than DVRs. And TV networks are struggling to retain advertisers because single-channel measurement shows declining linear viewership.

That is why the industry has been scrambling to piece together viewing across all devices.

“CFlight it lets you count apples as apples,” Morgan says. “(It answers questions like) ‘What is linear viewing?’, ‘What is C3 viewing?’ … whether it was delayed viewing or exact linear.

“The easier it is for more people to buy on the same thing, the more the marketplace will grow, the more it will accelerate, easier it is for spend to happen.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

Whilst many broadcasters are now keen to copy Netflix’s subscription model, what could be the impact on ad sales?

“There’s maybe less premium content available for the ad sales team to monetize,” says Comcast international GM, advanced advertising, Thomas Bremond in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“So, why don’t we look at it with data and make the right content exposition or content monetization choices in a way that maximizes profit for the organization as a whole?”

That’s what Bremond’s Comcast has been called on to do by Mediaset, Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster.

Back in July, Mediaset rebooted its former Mediaset On Demand service as Mediaset Play, adding new viewing options.

Now Comcast is announcing that is technology, together with that of its FreeWheel subsidiary, will power certain functions for the broadcaster.

Media set will use Comcast technology to manage backend distribution, transactions and subscriptions, and Comcast’s FreeWheel technology to manage advertising systems.

“They’re just in the beginning of their digital transformation story,” Bremond says.

“How do we help Mediaset make as much revenue or profit from its content that it acquires?

“In the past, we would look at it from just an advertising standpoint or we would look at it from just a subscription perspective. Guess what? We should really be putting those two together in order to maximize our yield as a company.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

Like in the UK, what is now branded “Virgin Media” is the product of a roll-up of several historical roll-ups of regional cable operators, offering telco and TV service, and is now owned by John Malone’s Liberty Global.

Three years ago, the group acquired TV3, an Irish TV channel operator. This September, it rebranded TV3’s suite of channels. And now the outfit is ensuring household-targeted ads can be sold within them – both on and off its own platform.

“We’re in the middle of what is a pretty unique case study in what happens when you bring content and connectivity together,” says Pat Kiely, the MD of the division that is now called Virgin Media Television, the former TV3.

“In Ireland, we are now the predominant cable business and the predominant three-tier television business.”

Now that the pieces are in place, Kiely wants to use them, to sell ads to buyers that air in both broadcast and narrowcast platforms.

That will happen in two ways:

1. From next year, Virgin Media cable homes will become addressable.
2. The company will also work with rival Sky to enable addressability for its Virgin Media Television channels carried over Sky.

Both moves mirror the strategies Virgin Media is following in the UK, where the company has slowly enabled addressability on its own platform and last year announced it would use Sky’s pioneering AdSmart technology to sell targeted ads through its own channels when viewed via Sky’s connected, satellite set-top box.

Kiely says: “I think that’s a real fight-back from traditional media and traditional television against the database solutions that our fine competitors have been winning the day on more recently.”

With big shows now under the belt of Virgin Media Television – like 6 Nations and Champions Cup rugby, plus Ireland’s Got Talent – that gives advertisers big audiences to get granular with.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.

Although the cable distribution method, coupled with its use of a connected TiVo set-top box, seemed to offer distinct advantages, it was not until relatively recently that Virgin Media began offering addressable ad targeting capabilities.

For that, it can partly thank Cadent. On top of announcing, this week, that Virgin Media has signed on to its new Cadent Advanced TV Platform to power addressable ads over broadcast and VOD, the advertising technology firm has been working with Virgin Media owner Liberty Global for five years.

“We basically integrate our technology into the Virgin Media infrastructure and we’re enabling them to dynamically target ads into live viewing in a set top box with just-in-time download of those creative assets to the set top box that will then be spliced into the stream,” says Cadent global sales SVP Keith Kryszczun in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“So our infrastructure’s managing how creatives are pushed out to those set top boxes, how the targeting is enabled for the ads against those set top boxes and households, and the campaign execution of that based on all the campaigns that are being managed across all the different viewerships.”

That capability would be enough for some TV services. But, whilst Virgin Media is the UK’s leading cable TV operator, its customer footprint is dwarfed by that of satellite rival Sky.

So the pair last year partnered to dovetail Virgin’s offering with Sky’s pioneering AdSmart addressable TV ad buying service, allowing advertiser to buy across both.

“This will give about 10 million homes – 30 million viewers, is what Virgin Media and Sky – are saying, for them to now addressably target, and that’s very meaningful scale,” Kryszczun adds.

Whilst the leading UK cable and satellite TV operators, which are also both telcos and TV channel owners, now offer addressable linear and VOD ad targeting, free-to-air – which is popular in Europe – is farther behind.

Digital terrestrial consortium Freeview now has its Freeview Play standard, but that is really just a means of hot-linking viewers to distinct channels’ own-brand VOD players. The YouView smart TV standard, offering Freeview plus IPTV via broadband providers, has seemed to stagnate. It all leaves the individual channel operators – like ITV and Channel 4 – ploughing on with offering their own ad targeting through their own-brand players.

That puts Cadent’s customers in the driving seat when it comes to offering cross-platform scale.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.