“Emotions are running high. The good news is spend is running very high as well,” already surpassing spending in the 2016 election cycle two weeks before the mid-terms, Baer explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Association of National Advertisers’ Masters of Marketing Conference. “So it’s a very exciting space.”

Behind the dollar figures are trends showing that data “is playing a really key role in enabling the right type of targeting.” Local cable’s share of political advertising budgets is at 33%, “which is an all-time high for cable advertising. We’re also seeing that their ability to go deeper into the networks that they’re selling and the candidates are buying is greater because of this data,” Baer says.

Previously, a Republican candidate might have advertised on just one TV network but now “can advertise on four or five different networks to get greater efficiency and effectiveness in reaching their audience.” The effect on Democratic candidates is even greater, with some using more than a dozen networks “because of this rich data that’s informing the buy.”

Because of the compressed time frame of political campaigns, they have been leaders in the use of data targeting, particularly with the rise of digital media. But political spending is still focused primarily on TV.

“TV is still king in many ways,” says Baer. “In large part because political spend happens between Labor Day and November. So it’s a very condensed window of time, and in order to be effective in spending what turns out to be billions of dollars in aggregate, we need to do it in an efficient medium. And television is that medium.”

Nonetheless, digital spending by political campaigns also is up to the tune of triple digits, according to Baer, citing data from Comcast Spotlight, which marries its own data insights with voter data to help better target cable advertising at the local market level.

“So there’s a greater amount of digital inventory, and actually that’s driven a lot by set-top box VOD inventory. So what we’re seeing is the trend toward accessing cross-screen and following viewership to their other devices and modeling after their viewing habits, not just live television.”

Political advertisers also are harnessing household addressable advertising for more precise targeting of voters, according to Baer, who is President of FreeWheel Advertisers (formerly STRATA).

All in all, she believes that the two-month campaign window represents an “accelerated view” of what’s happening in television.

“While TV marketing is undergoing tremendous change overall, in the context of political everything is accelerated. One trend that we’re seeing is that data-driven television is the future. I would say one of the main takeaways from the political spending season right now is that using intelligent data capabilities married with the right television inventory is going to skyrocket effectiveness for all advertisers.”

This series “Growing Brands and Driving Results,” was produced at the ANA Masters in Marketing ’18 conference in Orlando. The series is sponsored by the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video.  Please find additional coverage here.

“It’s really important for us to ensure that the ad experience and all of the workflow that goes into making sure that ads appear in the right way is done well,” James Rothwell, VP of Agency & Brand Relations at premium video company FreeWheel, says in an interview with Beet.TV.

The Council’s position derives from content consumption patterns showing how people interact with both content and ads. Says Rothwell, “Am I a sampler of content? do I come just to watch an individual show or am I a digital enthusiast basically watching all of my content through all this digital platforms?”

The first leg of the position is preventing ad fatigue from ads that are repeated too often. “It’s a challenge,” Rothwell notes. “The good news is the research we’ve done shows that most long-form and live content, those frequency caps are being adhered to.”

Between five and 11 percent of creative are being repeated over two times, “Which we think is an appropriate frequency per stream. But we know there’s still work to be done,” says Rothwell.

The second area of Council focus is customization of the ad experience based on content consumption. For example, how “snackers” differ from binge watchers.

“There are different ad experience models that our premium publishers are testing out right now to find the right balance between content and ads and ensure that they’re retaining and growing their audiences while meeting advertisers’ goals,” Rothwell says.

Finally, the Council wants to make sure that there is maximization of the diversity and quality of advertising creative. This includes making sure campaigns have “the right amount of creatives in every single format on a cross-screen execution, according to Rothwell. “We’re going to dive a little deeper into that in the future” via custom research, he says.

We interviewed him last month at the ANA Masters of Marketing summit.

This is how Fariba Zamaniyan surveys the TV landscape while attending the annual Masters of Marketing conference of the Association of National Advertisers. A former Nielsen executive who is now SVP, Sales & Client Service for TiVo, Zamaniyan explains how many of the thousands of brand marketing people in attendance have changed their thinking.

“What might have been more of an obstacle in the past with lots of these folks in the background is much more of a reality today than it was 10 years ago,” Zamaniyan says. “The challenge is change. Whether it be infrastructural or just a mindset change.”

The influx of digital media is forcing a rethinking of how media plans are brought to market and executed against, according to Zamaniyan.

“Now the technology and the availability of consuming content outside of traditional linear TV is forcing the marketplace to rethink,” Zamaniyan says.

A longtime set-top box data provider, TiVo recently upped its game in its acquisition by Rovi, best known as the company that has provided onscreen TV guide listings and metadata that power the media-search function on many platforms, along with advertising analytics and cloud services.

TiVo’s viewership data merged with Rovi’s analytics tools will enable better targeting of media spend for marketers and improved advertising inventory yield for media sellers.

“We feel very strongly that the measurement business and building efficiencies into media planning, the ability to measure them and execute against those plans is really critical to the growth of the industry,” says Zamaniyan.

We interviewed her at the ANA Masters of Marketing annual meeting in Orlando. This video is part of a series produced at the conference. Beet’s coverage is sponsored by Cadent. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

“It translated into how we did our media planning and that we aligned ourselves with partners and publishers and media content that portrayed women accurately and that was more family friendly,” Bergsman explains in an interview with Beet.TV at the annual Masters of Marketing conference of the Association of National Advertisers.

As AgencySpy reports, Georgia-Pacific via the Deutsch agency decided to take a different approach not only to selling paper products but metering out emotion at the right times and in the right places.

“Angel Soft started off with campaign where we highlighted and celebrated the challenges that single moms have,” Bergsma says. “Another video series for Angel Soft was about the challenges that step parents have with children that do not automatically love you back.”

Whereas G-P traditionally had been very functionally driven about promoting products like Dixie accessories, “We switched to recommending and inspiring people to be more here while they are at dinner. Put away their phones and connect with your mom and connect with your daughter,” says Bergsma.

The marketer’s media mix still consists in large part of traditional TV and video and has become “a little bit more emotional” in its online content compared with TV, according to Bergsma. “So what you see for Angel Soft on TV is different from what you see for Angel Soft in the social media space,” he says.

When it comes to in-store shopper marketing, G-P’s messaging is more functional than on TV for example. “So it’s kind of the closer you get to the point of purchase the more functional we get. The farther away we are from the point of purchase, the more emotional we are,” Bergsma says.

We interviewed him at the ANA Masters of Marketing annual meeting in Orlando. This video is part of a series produced at the conference. Beet’s coverage is sponsored by Cadent. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

Whereas the AFE had previously focused on the quality of family entertainment overall, “This year we’ve really focused on #SeeHer, which is all about the accurate portrayal of women and girls in media,” Quinn says during a break at the Masters of Marketing Conference of the Association of National Advertisers.

According to Quinn, data show that the vast majority of parents are dissatisfied with the content that’s available for families to view, and the number one issue within that is the portrayal of women and girls. “They believe it’s either negative or is not representative of the diversity that actually exists in families and society at large,” Quinn says.

This can take the form of unconscious bias, poor representation of women, or basically ignoring them. “That’s particularly why it’s called #SeeHer,” Quinn adds.

It’s not just about promoting gender equality per se. The AFE believes that companies will achiever greater ROI for their marketing spend in doing so.

On the eve of the Masters of Marketing event, Quinn shared proprietary new data with the ANA board of directors showing that removing conscious or unconscious gender bias from advertising increases purchase intent by more than 26% for all consumers and more than 45% among women. This is why the ANA and AFE hope their Gender Equality Metric, which is fueled by ongoing research, will become the industry standard.

Scores from the new metric will be presented to #SeeHer members quarterly to track progress and help the movement to reach its goal: a 20% increase in the accurate portrayal of women and girls in media by 2020.

On a broader palette, Quinn sees fruit in the labors of the ANA’s Marketing2020 initiative, kicked off in 2014 to help its members determine how to best align marketing strategy, structure, and capabilities for business growth. One of the big takeaways was the importance of “purposeful positioning” for brands.

“Even today I’ve seen so many examples on the screen here of brands that have taken on incredible things from a storytelling standpoint, values of the culture, that really adds an additional layer of purpose to the brand,” says Quinn. “The thing that I’m seeing this year especially is the need for the industry, the marketing profession, to be seen as doing something good and valuable to society.”

We interviewed him at the ANA Masters of Marketing annual meeting in Orlando. This video is part of a series produced at the conference. Beet’s coverage is sponsored by Cadent. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

The purpose-driven theme that SunTrust dramatizes in its advertising is that everyone should be “able to be there in the moments that matter in life and to be financially confident so you can enjoy those moments that matter,” Ventura explains in a interview with Beet.TV while attending the Masters of Marketing conference of the Association of National Advertisers.

“So in a lot of our creative, you’ll see examples of really strong imagery that in a split second you know that’s an important moment in someone’s life,” says Ventura. That imagery was encapsulated in a commercial for SunTrust’s onUp Movement during Super Bowl 2016, as captured in this behind-the-scenes video.

By joining the onUp Movement, consumers are motivated to “Move from financial stress to confidence.” But first, SunTrust must get their attention.

“Consumers are always in charge, of course, and now there are so many things for them to focus on,” Ventura observes. “From a brand perspective, it’s hard to break through.”

In the pre-digital era, marketers looked at their media exposure in distinct buckets, but that no longer works.

“We used to think about everything separately, and now we have to think about everything the way the consumer receives it, which is all stacked,” says Ventura. “And so you can’t just say it was one media mix element or another. It’s about the combination of all of them that makes an impression, that’s compelling and ultimately gets the consumer to act.”

SunTrust is taking the approach that “it’s just not acceptable” for some 80% of people to report that their finances keep them up at night, according to Ventura. “What we’re trying to do is raise awareness of the fact that you can actually reduce your stress by doing some simple steps, like getting budgeting and setting up online alerts,” she says.

We interviewed her at the ANA Masters of Marketing annual meeting in Orlando. This video is part of a series produced at the conference. Beet’s coverage is sponsored by Cadent. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.