Addressable Ads Growing on Linear TV

Chris Maccaro, chief executive of Beachfront Media

“We’re most excited about accelerating addressability across traditional linear, and that’s where we see an enormous amount of growth, both this year and into the future,” Maccaro said. “Our focus has really been on enablement, building the infrastructure to enable that addressability to happen, and then bringing the ability to access that supply through automated channels,” Maccaro adds.

Addressable TV Is Bridge Between Linear, Streaming

Adam Gaynor, vice president of network partnerships at Vizio

“Addressable TV today acts as the bridge between linear and streaming,” Gaynor said. “When I think about it from the buy-side, when I think about it from the brand side, we now have a real opportunity to help brands as they find their audiences in both the connected TV world and the linear world, to connect them by using addressable TV.”

Media Measurement Underpins Convergence

Beth Weeks, vice president and group director at Digitas

“Measurement becomes critically important as we’re losing reach on linear, but gaining in digital video,” Weeks said. “How are we validating the effectiveness of that holistic reach as we think about bridging those platforms, and being able to validate and verify that we’re achieving those critical KPIs and those business outcomes that our clients are expecting.”

Unification Means Greater ROI

Huda Kazi, vice president of ad technology and operations at Discovery

“Unification is key. We’re hyper-focused on creating a large deduplicated supply pool for our advertisers,” Kazi said. “This allows us to provide greater ROI for the advertisers while maintaining the value of our own content.”

Video-on-Demand Offers Brand Safety

Chris Pizzurro, senior vice president of global sales and marketing at Canoe

“We have a very well lit, brand-safe VOD environment today with the Canoe footprint,” Pizzurro said. “We absolutely need to maintain that quality, but we know we need to open up the pipes to programmatic so our programmers can sell 100% of their inventory…We’re up-and-running, and we look to turn up the heat this year.”

Brand, Consumer Experiences Are Key

Rob Christensen, vice president of advanced TV sales and distribution at Vevo

“As we’re running ad pods in multiple minutes per hour, it’s important for us to make sure that it’s a great experience for brands, it’s a great experience for users and of course, maximizing the monetization opportunities,” Christensen said.

Don’t Forget Frequency Capping

JoAnna Foyle, senior vice president of inventory partnerships at The Trade Desk

“[Ad] frequency is a big challenge, that if you’re not using the right platform and the right tools – we see this as consumers while we’re watching content on mobile devices, on streaming services…the odds are frequency isn’t being managed very well,” Foyle said. “One of the things we talk to our buyers a lot about is making sure that they’re using the tools available to them.”

CTV, OTT See Data-Driven Innovations

John Vilade, head of ad sales at Premion

“We’re out right now doing a lot of education with marketers. Marketers are seeing rapid changes in the marketplace. There’s a lot of complexity and fragmentation. There’s a lot of nuance in terms of what you can do inside the connected TV space,” Vilade said. “I’m most excited about now is the data-driven innovations that we’re seeing inside of connected TV and OTT.”

You are watching “Convergent TV: Driving Addressability Across Traditional and Connected TV,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Beachfront. For more videos, please visit this page.

For years, CTV has been a side note to many media plans.

But, in this video interview with Beet.TV, Digitas VP Beth Weeks says brands in the current season of upfront ad sales deals should embrace the channel.

Upfront tipping point?

“For many advertisers that are big linear spenders, this year, this upfront year is going to look different and that we really need to embrace different video channels and different means because consumers’ behaviours are changing,” says Weeks.

“We’re really seeing consumers shifting over to streaming … it’s critical to really ensure that our clients are up to speed and aware on this changing and dynamic marketplace.

“It’s also critical for our brands to be changing the way that they’re investing.”

Similarly, GroupM executive director Jen Soch has told Beet.TV that some clients are considering CTV “their main foot forward”, an approach she endorses.

Understanding the market

These agency buyer sentiments are important because they point to addressable and connected TV having solidified in the marketplace.

That tipping point starts with responding to consumer behavior, but it continues in the proliferating number of ad options available in the channel.

“It’s critical to understand the dynamics of the connected TV marketplace, because we know that it is dynamically and rapidly changing,” Weeks says.

“We’re seeing new partners emerge. We’re seeing reach in different places and spaces, and it’s becoming far more competitive. It’s also becoming more competitive for where you can reach your consumers within ad-supported environments.”

Easing complexity

Still, as ad buyers lean into CTV and addressable opportunities, they nevertheless must brace themselves for a world of complexity.

Repeated buyer sentiment surveys tend to show up frustration at what is a fragmented landscape, unlike TV before it.

Digitas’ Weeks is excited by the opportunity to reach individual customers at distinct points in their buying journey and the ability to reduce ad loads.

But she wants to reduce fragmentation in doing so.

Role of SSPs

Technology is the solution, Weeks says, and supply-side platforms (SSPs) have a critical role.

“Some publishers are striking certain supply deals with a certain SSP,” she says.

“So it’s important to be able to kind of follow the inventory.

“As we work with SSPs, I think there is a great opportunity to take advantage of more programmatic guaranteed buying as we look to the upfront and being able to secure inventory in a programmatic fashion.”

You are watching “Convergent TV: Driving Addressability Across Traditional and Connected TV,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Beachfront. For more videos, please visit this page.

But where, once, TV was relatively straightforward to buy, how are agencies how approaching the proliferating platforms, opportunities and challenges?

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Beth Weeks, VP and director of media at Digitas North America, explains.

Standardization sought

Weeks says she hopes the industry can begin to standardize some fo the many ways that are emerging through which agencies can buy ads in connected TV platforms.

Where, once, TV was a largely self-contained medium, with few operators and few places from which to buy advertising, now there is a plethora of services.

Weeks wants a solution.

“We know, as we like to continue to innovate and layer on, let’s say first or third party data against guaranteed audiences, there really is a unique opportunity to standardise the supply and the CTV space to make that a more unified approach,” she says.

“So we’re really working closely with our SSP and DSP partners to find opportunities to do that.”

Guarantees encourage buyers

Weeks says programmatic-guaranteed, the process through which ad buyers agree to buy a fixed number of impressions for a guaranteed price, can work well in connected TV.

“Whether that be with guaranteed opportunities or non-guaranteed auction based bidding, both really represent a great opportunity for our advertisers to access this premium, big screen inventory in a more automated way,” she says.

“We’ve seen this big sort of AVOD viewing. Fortunately it’s no longer just the Hulus and YouTubes of the world.

“But accessing that inventory really requires a great partnership with the SSPs as well as the DSPs … to be able to transact from a programmatic guaranteed perspective.”

Header bidding opens new opportunities

Weeks thinks header bidding, a software technique which sees ad auction systems able to entertain bids from multiple demand sources simultaneously, thereby increasing publishers’ yield, can also work for ad buyers.

Header Bidding Can Redefine OTT Ad Sales: PubMatic’s Berlingo

“We’re eager and open from a buying perspective to see how header bidding will enhance CTV,” she says.

“We think it will help with monetizing that ad that full ad pod, which can open up that supply, which is especially beneficial as we look to continue to layer on first or third party and different data sources.

“But one thing to be cautious of is we know that the CTV space certainly has some technological limitations that are different than desktop and display. So it will be really interesting to see how header bidding will be able to navigate some of those challenges of the CTV space.”

Watching fraud concerns

Despite the opportunities, Digitas’ Weeks is keeping a watching brief on the possibility that ad fraud, which has so plagued the display and even digital video advertising environments, could yet manifest on TVs in the living room.

DoubleVerify, an ad fraud detector, recently told Beet.TV it had noted a 161% increase in fraudulent impressions on connected TV from January to April of this year versus last year.

Three Ways Connected TV Ad Fraud Is ‘Swelling’: DoubleVerify’s Ross

That’s after a study for the ANA last year pegged the problem at $5.8 billion globally.

“Where money flows, fraudsters tend to like to try and capture on that inventory,” Weeks warns.

“So I think it’ll be critical for us to work with our brand safety verification partners to really continue to figure out ways to be monitoring and identifying and preventing that fraud from happening.”

This is from a Beet.TV series titled “The Accelerated Evolution of Programmatic OTT” presented by PubMatic.  for more videos please visit this page.