Interoperability Is Great Unifier

Kevin Lemberg, head of partnerships for advertising solutions at Comcast Technology Solutions

“There has to be some sort of unification and some sort of common language and goals between the partners within a solution or technology that we’re offering out to the industry,” he said. “Partnerships are going to be very important to round out the technology offering and the solutions for the industry in order for us to move forward.”

Holistic View of TV Landscape

Jen Soch, executive director of specialty channels at WPP’s GroupM

“We’re really seeing an idea where we can be with addressable and CTV part of the main video recommendation that goes into what we’re doing with a client, and look at it more holistically.” she said. “I do see a lot more interest in bringing it [addressable and CTV] very much to the forefront and being a bigger part of their overall play.”

Don’t Devalue Premium Content

Kelly Abcarian, executive vice president of measurement and impact at NBCUniversal

“Interoperability across linear and digital without losing the value of premium content along the way is going to be so critical,” she said. “If we lose and swing the pendulum too far to ‘audiences only,’ imagine content being cheapened over the coming years and basically creating a society that the value is placed on audiences alone….I look forward to working with the industry on how, as we try to equivalize and become more interoperable, we don’t lose the value of premium content.”

Addressable TV Unlocks Insights

Kristine Bayles, vice president of advanced advertising sales at AMC Networks

Addressable TV “enables us to get the insights into communication and driving deeper understanding in the industry,” she said. “We all know TV is important, but CTV and VOD is just as important…Viewership is truly fragmented now, and it’s not that less people are consuming, they’re just consuming differently. We need to understand this, and move forward with converged impressions.”

Automate Workflows for Savings

Mark Marshall, president of advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal

“Our goal on that [automated workflows] is to work with our partners on the agency side be able to get rid of about 30% of the manual work that we do,” he said. “How do we find different APIs [application programming interfaces] and different ways to interact, and take out some of the manual elements to allow us to move faster and hopefully improve margins for clients.”

Outcomes Need Collaboration

Nicole Whitesel, executive vice president of advanced TV and client success at Publicis Media

“We need systems that collaborate — tools that talk to each other, data that can break down those walls, IDs that can understand each other,” she said. “Better sharing of that data enables us to have conversations with our clients about outcomes, and outcomes that deliver change to their business, and outcomes that change the way they decide media mix.”

Self-Scheduling Becoming the Norm

Vicky Fox, chief planning officer at OMD UK

“We’ve moved from a place where people were quite wedded to a linear schedule,” she said. “Self-scheduling is going to be the norm for everybody. Anybody who switches on the TV and either looks at their connected TV menu or their EPG [electronic programming guide] can see how much has changed, because some of the linear schedules may take second place.”

Technology ‘Lifts All Ships’

Richard Nunn, vice president and general manager of advertiser solutions at Comcast Technology Solutions

“Through automation and understanding what has worked and what hasn’t in more real time across channel – that in principle, should mean a greater ROI across what is a fragmented channel base,” he said. “They’ll drive that solution a lot more efficiently because of technology.”

You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.

Editor’s Note:  Special thanks to Jon Watts who collaborated and reported for this series.

“There’s so many challenges as we look across the industry that we need to continue to collaborate and work together to solve,” Kelly Abcarian, executive vice president of measurement and impact at NBCUniversal, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “Interoperability across linear and digital without losing the value of premium content along the way is going to be so critical.”

She said measurement needs to be more flexible to anticipate evolving business models as consumer habits change. Modernizing media metrics, monetizing audiences based on other criteria aside from age and gender and moving beyond the panel-centric approach are three key priorities.

“As we think about all the ways that distribution is changing things for measurement as well as the consumer experience, the ability to bring forward better measurement is here at our doorsteps,” Abcarian said.

The goal is to make connected TV (CTV) as predictable as linear TV in delivering outcomes. Interoperability of those different channels should reflect the value of premium programming, such as NBC’s hit shows like “This Is Us,” compared with YouTube personalities who have a massive following.

“As we move ahead, the value of content that drives great content development, and enables consumers to be connected in meaningful ways to brands, is going to be critically important…as we bring linear and digital and the walled gardens together for measurement,” Abcarian said. “If we lose and swing the pendulum too far to ‘audiences only,’ imagine content being cheapened over the coming years and basically creating a society that the value is placed on audiences alone.”

NBCUniversal in 2018 joined the OpenAP consortium, which consists of media companies that seek to advance TV ad targeting.

“Partnerships like OpenAP amongst others that NBC is involved in are going to be critically important as we look to modernize the measurement yardstick in the years ahead,” she said. “At NBCU, we have multiple irons in the fire right now in which to push measurement forward at an accelerated pace.”

OpenAP in April introduced OpenID, a unique identifier that enables measurement of linear viewership and digital audiences within a common identity framework.

“My hope for the industry is that we hold ourselves all accountable at the highest levels of trust and transparency, and that we preserve the value of content so that we shape a society that we all want to be a part of,” Abcarian said. “That will have a multiplier effect both for marketers and consumers alike. When we get that right, everybody wins.”

You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.

On top of a general reduction in linear TV viewing, the chief planning officer at OMD UK says casual TV viewers are drifting away, too.

It all adds up to a picture in which brands are increasingly struggling to use TV to find their audiences. And that is why Fox re-organised her team.

Linear reach is shrinking

“If you just stuck with linear buys, the reduction in (audience) viewing is really clear over time,” Fox observes, in this video interview with Beet.TV senior advisor Jon Watts.

“Even if you strip out the COVID 2020 viewing patterns, what we’re seeing is reach build(ing) is a real challenge for linear TV.”

“I’ve run some numbers the other day – the light TV viewers in (the) linear space has halved over the last few years. It was 8% to now just over three (percent)

Light viewers leaving

Fox says the pattern was even observable at a time when it seemed like TV viewing was booming from stay-at-home orders.

“Even during COVID, light viewers were not attracted to the linear TV experience,” she adds.

“So, it really does need someone who understands both those worlds to bring them together, to know how much to spend in linear, which does do a really strong initial reach build for people who enjoy linear, and then what to do to reach all those people who may be light TV viewers.

“They may be working longer hours, they may be younger, they may be fans of lots of other different types of engagement. You need to sort of understand how those whole ecosystems come together.”

Restructure to combine

About three years ago, Fox reorganised her team at OMD UK to tag-team ad planning for linear and connected TV, which is emerging as a key way in which media agencies are trying to make up for the shortfall in linear viewing.

“The first thing we did was bring together different teams that probably hadn’t worked together before,” Fox explains.

“We created a connections planning department, which was built from people who were either very used to planning in a linear way historically, and then brought them together with digital experts, the people who are used to planning programmatically, addressably.

“When you start to blend those two languages together … you get really robust plans. You get the balance of a mass reach with some moments of really strong targeting lines that are going to be really hard working.”

The benefits of CTV

Connected TV is important for a variety of reasons.

Fox says extra data on viewers allows her to better target ads.

That is critical in a world where audience “self-scheduling is going to be the norm for everyone”, she says.

“A connected device means that we have more data on that person – not in a creepy way, (but) in a way that it makes the whole viewing experience better for them because we can serve them advertising that is much more relevant, which is great.”

You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.

The EVP of advanced TV at Publicis Media has seen an explosion in video viewing and, as a result, ad opportunities.

But, in this video interview with Beet.TV, she says that can cause as many headaches as solutions.

VOD boom

“We saw a hockey stick rise in streaming services, both AVOD and SVOD, more than we expected,” Whitesel says.

“That fragmentation has continued to disrupt … in a period that was more condensed, which has added to the challenges that we have already seen over the last four to five years within the ecosystem.

“From a video standpoint, that makes the challenges that we deal with on a day-to-day basis just more pronounced. The aggressiveness with which we need to attack it both from a client side and agency side (is) all the more important and more pronounced today than they were probably a year, 18 months ago.”

Growing consumption

EMarketer forecasts US digital video consumption among adults rising from an average 133 minutes per day in 2020 to 145 by 2022.

After Roku Channel, Tubi and Pluto TV are amongst the leading suppliers of ad-supported options.

But Publicis’ Whitesel says brands need to think calmly about where to place their money.

Keep calm

“Everyone is excited about everything, which is probably part of the problem,” she says.

“There’s only a limited amount of funds to invest. And there are unknown amount of quantity of things that we know that work.

“For many of our clients, it’s about ‘What is the opportunity cost and what can they afford to risk in test?’

“Leaning into everything everywhere can make for a lot of excitement and a lot of anticipation for results, but can also make for a lot of chaos where you don’t necessarily know what’s working and what’s not.”

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But, to get there, the industry is currently in a phase of stitching together a still-proliferating range of viewing services and buying options.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Kevin Lemberg, Head of Partnerships for Advertising Solutions at Comcast Technology Solutions, says, to improve matters, the industry needs to come together and use technology.

Partnership working

“In order to move the TV ecosystem into the new future, you’re going to have to have sort of a standard language,” Lemberg says.

“You’re going to have to have those standard and unified goals and objectives, because there’s going to be multiple different companies and technologies that exist within the ecosystem.”

Surveys and studies have found ad buyers believe exploiting the opportunity of convergence is too complicated.

That is causing TV networks to worry that, if buyers are put off, the opportunity may be squandered.

Lemberg says: “If you’re not speaking that same language, if you’re not partnering correctly and efficiently, and having the ability to interact with one another, and coordinate with one another, you’re going to have these islands out there that are going to be continuing to keep the TV ecosystem from evolving and from growing because each one will be in a silo.”

Automate the future

With over 720 staff, Comcast Technology Solutions offers a range of infrastructure suites for digital communication.

Lemberg thinks digitizing and automating workflows will play a big part in transformation.

“I think they’re important because it takes away a lot of the manual process,” he says.

“You have days upon days, approval upon approvals, spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, different teams having to talk to other areas, and you just couldn’t get campaigns live on time,” Lemberg explains. “So there was opportunity there to miss out on impressions and on audiences and on revenue.

“Now with these partnerships and these new technologies and the belief in automation, things are happening in a much more efficient way. The companies are seeing a business impact by being able to not only save money, but to generate more revenue opportunities, and just be more efficient and more intelligent in the way they’re working in reaching audiences.”

You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.

But, to make the opportunity truly soar, the new-look TV industry needs to work on harmonizing the way such ads are bought.

That is the view of Kristine Bayles, Vice President of Advanced Advertising Sales at ‎AMC Networks.

Reforming the ‘wild west’

In this video interview with Beet.TV senior adviser Jon Watts, Bayles sees the growth of addressable, which allows advertisers to target individual households, as familiar chaos.

“I was on the agency side with digital (advertising) was just starting to come up,” she recalls. “And it was truly the wild, wild west. There were no programmers that offered it the same from an operational standpoint. That was different, too. It was very confusing to buy. It was hard to understand there’s no checks and balances.

“The IAB came in, it brought everything together and really unified the industry to allow digital to scale. And I foresee the same thing happening with national addressable.”

Going addressable

Many conventional TV platforms have, in recent years, lit up addressable ad opportunities.

Alongside, apps and over-the-top (OTT) services are enabling connected TV (CTV) with digital-style TV ad opportunities.

AMC Networks launched its first national addressable campaign in late 2020. Now 30% of its linear viewership is addressable.

The prizes for advertisers include household targeting, frequency capping and digital-style measurement.

But Bayles thinks work is needed.

Standards for scale

“We need to standardise and solve for measurement,” she says. “We need to figure out how to do holistic measurement and unified measurement with this.

“If they are standards, we’ll be able to scale addressable much quicker.”

Bayles draws a parallel with financial services, where the banking sector has a range of standardized practices for engaging with its customers.

“Every industry has standards,” she argues. “These standards are really just going to enable us to work with our clients and other programmers in a much more seamlessly seamless way.”

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That is now changing, with more of them apparently seeing reason to flip their ad strategy on its head.

In this video interview with Beet.TV senior adviser Jon Watts, GroupM’s Executive Director, Specialty Channels, Jen Soch says there is more appetite to let advanced TV dominate media plans.

Foot-forward on addressable

“In the upfront, I heard an auto client speak to the fact that they really are looking at connected TV and household addressability as their main foot forward, and then they sprinkle in linear on the side,” Soch says.

“That got me giddy with excitement of what the possibilities are here. I definitely see some of our clients looking at that idea in the future. If you know your audience and if you know where you want to be, why not consider things a different way?

“Why not look at household addressability as a main foot forward? And when you combine our capabilities on what we can do on the set-top boxes and the MVPD players with what we can do in the overall connected TV landscape, I think we have a really good story as we move into 2021 and 2022.

“Now, you’ve just described a really interesting patchwork quilt of platforms and devices, each with their own slightly different capabilities and peculiarities. What are the big pain points that you and other agencies are grappling with at the moment?”

Music to advanced ears

The strategies Soch is hearing, as well as those she is contemplating for GroupM’s clients, bode well for a technology that promises capabilities like TV targeting, frequency-capping and performance attribution.

EMarketer previously estimated programmatic TV ad spending will reach $6.69 billion in the US by 2021, more than doubling from $2.77 billion.

That makes it a still-small but fast-growing part of the overall TV ad spending pie.

Sticking points

But the truth is that, for all its super-powers, buying addressable ad campaigns and truly benefitting from those capabilities, remains difficult for many buyers.

Buyer surveys and thought leadership research exercises tend to wind up reporting ad buyers as bemoaning the steps required to buy and measure across a proliferating range of services and screens.

“Measurement has always been our pain point,” GroupM’s Soch acknowledges. “We still haven’t quite gotten to that place where we can measure things as successfully as we’ve always wanted to measure them.

“We have had some success in some areas, but being able to truly layer in these individuals, be able to look at the overall reach, be able to account for frequency among these different platforms, that’s still going to be a pain point as we move into this upfront season.”

Personal feel

Soch also says historic discussion about creative versioning – the compulsion to assemble a custom ad for every viewer – hasn’t come to pass.

Instead, the agency has consolidated around a few key creative executions, and Soch says she is able to find deeper personalization in complementary podcast advertising.

She says: “We are having a lot of clients where we look at some great video plans and household addressability, and then we’re bringing in audio on the side with podcasts and other areas to supplement and even layer on an interesting platform on top of just the video for more of an addressable and personalised, customizable, creative look.”

You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.

Given the streaming reach, the focus for NBCU at its Upfront is a unified, cross-platform offering called One Platform.

The new programming slate, the core of the Upfront, has been designed for both streaming and linear platforms, Marshall notes.

A Big Upfront for Sports

For NBCU, upcoming sports programming has become a “futures” market with non-traditional sports marketers locking in spots for NBCU’s upcoming coverage of the Summer and Winter Olympics, Sunday night football, the Super Bowl, and the World Cup, he explains.

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But, if they are not careful, some TV ad sellers and buyers also end up feeling the extra complexity that goes hand-in-hand feels like Kryptonite.

A new thought leadership project, What Next for the TV Advertising Market?, from Comcast Technology Solutions, is highlighting how ad volumes are to proliferate – and sounds a warning that companies may struggle to cope.

Big spike coming

“What we’re seeing is a massive increase in ad volume growth and ad versions,” says Richard Nunn, VP and GM of advertiser suite at Comcast Technology Solutions, in this video interview with Beet.TV senior adviser Jon Watts.

“A big spike and a tipping point in ad volumes is going to hit the marketplace.

“There’s a whole bunch of stats out there that say that, over the next three to four years, we’re going to see a seven-fold increase, which is huge in terms of ad volume.

“And then, if you layer addressability on top of that – you’re going to get different versions of ads, so maybe up to a thousand versions or more of one core ad that then turns into many – then you’re just going to see a massive acceleration of ad volume.”

Over-complicated?

Nunn thinks that is going to pose a challenge for an industry already struggling to cope with the convergence of linear and connected TV ad infrastructure.

Other surveys and studies have found ad buyers believe exploiting the opportunity of convergence is too complicated.

That is causing TV networks to worry that, if buyers are put off, the opportunity may be squandered.

So we have seen several initiatives and consortia form in the last couple of years, aiming to thrash out standards and working practices.

Automate the convergence

For Nunn, the chief answer comes in the shape of software.

“You have to deal with that through technology and automation,” he says.

“It’s really critical that you can bring together all these different channels, different assets and see what the performance is doing all in one place.

“And that’s a really critical thing to ensure that we can deal with the fragmentation and proliferation of channels and devices and manage that accordingly.”

Coming together

What Next for the TV Advertising Market? took input from over 40 senior executives across the TV and video ecosystem, both in Europe and the US.

It focuses on:

1. Technical solutions, standards and working practises for the addressability market across different pools of linear and digital inventory.
2. Transforming buy-side workflows to bridge the TV and digital divide.
3. Applying data consistently.
4. Collaborating and co-investing.

Nunn says it shines a spotlight on a frustration within the industry.

“It’s a well-known fact,” he says. “There’s a lot of manual handoffs about how assets get from a creative agency, the way through to the eyeball. And that’s both on the buy and the sell side.

“A lack of a bridge between TV linear and digital and there are challenges around seamless reporting around what TV linear and digital do.

“A behaviour change that has to happen because, at the end of the day, as I mentioned, upfront, ads have got to eyeballs. It’s work in progress.”

You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.