Such guaranteed optimization could emerge by late this year or early 2020, Turner’s Dan Aversano explains in this interview at the recent Beet.TV leadership forum titled Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World.

By combining behavioral and viewing data from AT&T’s digital and television assets “we can now add in some fairly simply analytics to understand when and where people are exposed to ads and then use causal analytics to actually prove that they’re taking an action,” says the SVP of Ad Innovation & Programmatic Solutions.

An example in the auto industry could be “being able to prove the visitation that’s driven to a particular auto dealership because of the campaign they ran on TBS or a campaign they ran on CNN Go,” says Aversano. “That’s step one. Step two, where this data gets really interesting is how we start to make it actionable.”

Many advertisers are unsure exactly who they should be targeting or uncertain when it comes to building audience segments. Those in themselves have typically consumed many weeks of conversation.

“Now that we have these analytics that we’ve built and we’re automating them so they’re fast and fairly inexpensive for us to run, we can do that at scale.” Analyzing historical campaigns to understand who actually converted provides a “seed set” that can be modeled up. “Now I have an ROI-defined segment,” Aversano adds.

Moving even higher up the value chain is the ability to optimize media campaigns based on output. “This is where you forget about the who for a second.” Historical data from Turner media can show “when I put this brand’s ad here, how many people go to the dealership, two people for this unit, three people for this unit.

“So all of a sudden, now I’m building a media schedule not based on how many impressions or GRP’s it’s going to deliver against a demo or segment, but based on how many actual physical location visits you’re going to get. It’s optimizing for the actual outcome.”

If all goes by plan, Turner could end up providing outcome guarantees by the end of this year or early next year.

Asked by interviewer Howard Shimmel, President of Janus Strategy and Insights, how all the data can help to inform advertising from top to bottom of the purchase funnel, Aversano says “Putting that puzzle together is really, really tricky.” Backed by a lot of proprietary research into, among other things, consumer journey mapping, “We’re pushing hard on it.”

This video was produced in New York City at Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World, a Beet.TV Leadership Forum, presented by 4INFO and hosted by Viacom. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

In this event recap, Prohaska, CEO and Principal of Prohaska Consulting, talks about identity as it currently stands, the rise of companies seeking to help track it and the industry’s progress to date.

On identity: “It was impressive to see that in an industry where there are, let’s say some headwinds around data privacy, and if you read broad business and consumer press there are a lot of landmines and a lot of places where people would think ‘oh my god I can’t do this, I can’t do that. I don’t want even think about targeting in anyway possible.’”

Players in the space: “There were at least fifty companies represented today in this room that are on offense and recognizing there is a proper path to do it, if you have proper transparency, if you have consumer opt out, if you have consumer opt in before the entire engagement begins, whether it’s through hardware or software. To be able to identify folks not just even at the household level but to the unique individual. We all know the pitfalls that can happen when creative goes to the wrong place.”

On determining identity: “It was encouraging to see that processes are getting a little more cleaned up. I heard people talk positively about second-party data for the first time in six months, that was a great sign to see. And the individual buying leaders that are either taking over entirely new organizations and coming from a data practice where they’ve run it, creative and media. To be able to tie that all together.”

Where the industry stands: “We now are getting closer. Most folks talked about maybe three of four on scale of one to ten and getting there. Optimistic for sure because we were in the ones and twos maybe even six months ago. Whole lot of promise and a lot of upside for the industry.”

This video was produced in New York City at Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World, a Beet.TV Leadership Forum, presented by 4INFO and hosted by Viacom. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

Comscore’s seat at the table was its “data-centric, panel-informed” data assets across digital media, TV and OTT, according to Carol Hinnant, who is EVP, National Television Sales. “We bring that together in a single-source panel and then we really use that to drive our outcomes,” says in this interview at the recent Beet.TV leadership forum titled Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World.

NBCU had the benefit of data from Fandango, the movie ticket business of which it is majority owner. STXFilms was guaranteed that NBCU and its Audience Studio team would produce ticket sales and searches for information about the movie, as Broadcasting & Cable reports.

With Comscore’s matching its digital and TV data with Fandango’s data, “those outcomes were based on Fandango ticket sales and online searches for the film. So we really were able to tie that entire marketing ecosystem and have it be outcome based on how we actually drove that,” says Hinnant.

Asked by interviewer Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp., how agencies and marketers manage to bring together all the data needed for outcomes-based campaigns, Hinnant says “it really takes a collective effort of everybody.” She cites Comscore’s relationships with such third-party data providers as Polk, Experian and IRI.

“We also invite first-party data to come in. In the case of Universal, they brought in their Fandango data set, we did a match on that.”

So what is required to reach a tipping point of sorts for similar campaigns? “I think that you have to get the ecosystem to be able to accept those outcomes. So it’s not only just looking at those audiences but you have to have that be able to flow through the whole planning and posting cycle and we’re starting to see more and more of that happen.”

Although planning based on outcomes is “at kind of a small scale today,” Hinnant observes that Viacom is “winning with their advanced audiences structure so I think we’ll see more and more of that as these media networks and publishers have more success with that.”

This video was produced in New York City at Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World, a Beet.TV Leadership Forum, presented by 4INFO and hosted by Viacom. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

From a tactical standpoint, getting marketing data into mobile ad ID’s, IP addresses and connected TV ID’s will deliver “that targeting and measurement capability that you saw in digital into the TV space and then bridge the two to get at the cross-screen mechanism,” the SVP & GM, Audience Solutions, says in this interview at this week’s Beet.TV leadership forum titled Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World.

Asked by interviewer Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp., if a TV identity graph applies only to advanced, IP distribution platforms versus traditional linear TV buying that extends through additional platforms, Tangredi cites the creation of a universal ID.

That ID says “it’s this household with this persona who’s watching on a regular TV, a mobile device, maybe their desktop, maybe a PlayStation or a gaming console. So it’s creating that linkage.

“Think of it as linkage of bringing that altogether and hitting that person based on where they choose to watch,” Tangredi adds.

Swartz also wanted to know whether a tipping point where identity graphs drive more planning decisions will be driven by traditional TV buyers “expanding their skillsets and being curious and seeking to learn more” or by digital folks playing a more active role in television. “I think there’s a little bit of a turf war going on for that right now,” says Tangredi. “Certain TV companies or organizations will come out on top and certain digital folks will come out on top. But there definitely is a turf war right there right now.

“Which is good. It creates that desire to move things along faster.”

This video was produced in New York City at Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World, a Beet.TV Leadership Forum, presented by 4INFO and hosted by Viacom. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

The newly appointed U.S. CEO of Hearts & Science sees progress being made on the collaboration front, some of it client driven, she explains in this interview at this week’s Beet.TV Identity Forum in Manhattan.

Agencies need tech talent that “intellectually understands that there has been a disconnect in the industry in terms of the data that we’ve used from an upper planning perspective and the data that we use from an activation perspective and measurement as well,” says Matts, who joined Hearts & Science last month from Annalect, where she had been North American CEO.

“Unless we’re able to wrap our heads around the identity graph and actually pull that through the entire process to deliver an ideal consumer experience, we’re missing the whole thread and we’re missing the whole buyer.”

Asked by interviewer Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp., whether the creative leadership at agencies is “open and ready to ingest data into the process,” Matts says absolutely, with some exceptions to the rule.

“There’s still, like, the creative directors with their black turtlenecks who are thinking about things in a very traditional way,” says Matts. “But nine times out of ten, every creative director I talk to is really interested in making sure that the work they’re producing actually works. That’s where a data-infused strategy really comes into play.”

She sees the media side becoming more adept at talking to its creative partners “in a way that doesn’t alienate them and actually ensures that data inspires creativity and doesn’t limit that.”

As for the traditional finger pointing between creative and media over campaign success or lack thereof, some of it has been mitigated by client-dictated teams.

“That means teams sit together, they collaborate together. I think what I’ve found particularly successful is when you have a collaborative team that sits together maybe three days a week but sits back at their own home agency the other two days a week or whatever combination of those days are.”

Preserving and leveraging the “magic of your agency and what that means” can perhaps involve something as simple as having everyone don a Hearts & Science T-shirt for a meeting. “If you lose that you lose the nuance and the magic associated with that agency, which will be valuable to that collaborative approach. It sounds really tactical but that to me has been a really great way to mitigate the finger pointing,” Matts says.

This video was produced in New York City at Identity in Focus: Understanding the Cross-Screen Consumer in a Fragmented World, at Beet.TV Leadership Forum, presented by 4INFO  and hosted by Viacom.  For more videos from the series, please visit this page.