That is why we are seeing so much discussion on whether advertisers will change their use of TV, which, traditionally – in absence of such metrics – has been to use a mass audience for brand building, toward using it for “performance” outcomes.
But how far will the pendulum really swing in this direction? At Beet Retreat In The City, a panel, “TV In Transformation as Addressable Lights Up”, heard executives discuss that question…
Their discussion was led by Janus Strategy & Insights president Howard Shimmel.
Ampersand is the former NCC Media, a group owned by Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications to ease the path to ad sales on cable and now new-wave TV platforms.
Ampersand’s Ward said:”How can we use deterministic data in defining audiences more narrowly and more robustly just to look at traditional media measures – reach, frequency on duplicated reach, not in isolation, but in addition to attribution work and brand outcome measurement?
“I think a lot of attention is paid to bottom-of-the-funnel performance measurement. I think a tremendous amount of progress can be made in the industry as we begin to think about deterministic data driving traditional media measures.”
That amounts to: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” In other words, TV will be able to support performance-driven ad attribution at the bottom of the funnel as well as top-of-funnel brand-building.
Charter’s Klippel said: “When you look at what TV does well, (it) scale, it’s reach, it’s high-quality produced video and brand-safe environments.
“Also, the engagement of TV and the emotional engagement (beats digital). I’ve never heard anyone run around quoting taglines or saying dillydally after watching it in a digital campaign.
“We’re still getting our arms around that to kind of bring the best of the two together. When you look at what’s happening with viewership trends, there’s no doubt that there is a shift, but there’s also absolutely no doubt that there’s still a lot of eyeballs on ad-supported TV.”
The event was notable for industry executives discussing a new buzzphrase – “deterministic” TV advertising. Other panelists have already attempted to define that.
Ampersand’s Ward offered his definition: “Data that is held to be true versus probabilistic data, which I think is oftentimes inferred or based on panel survey modelled data.
“Probably 10% of our business, thereabouts, is transacted on a deterministic audience-based data and the vast majority still on an age (and) gender panel survey-based.
“We don’t think that deterministic data replaces, overnight, survey-based probabilistic data. We think they will both live in harmony and serve different purposes in concert with one another.”
It isn’t just a single set of known data that creates the biggest opportunity, Ampersand’s Ward said. The real power lays in combining such data sets from different parties.
“It begins … with the name and address of the subscriber,” Ward said. “We know that to be true because the cable companies are sending a bill. Then you start to pivot off of that with other known sets of data – set-top box, ad exposure, commercial viewership, programme viewership data.
“The value that is available in the marketplace is the ability to unlock that data in concert with other deterministic data sets in the marketplace. (For example), Geico happen(s) to know the name and address of their policy holders and whether they’re a homeowner or a renter, if they own a motorcycle or an RV or a boat.
“So it’s that Venn diagram of being able to link deterministic data that we think begins to unlock value opportunity in the marketplace.”
Viacom’s Zilberbrand said infrastructure issues pose a problem to any large-scale shift in the use of TV from brand-building to performance. Namely, forecasting data is too fragmented amongst the variety of operators.
“There are technology gaps with a lot of traditional TV companies that make it very, very complex to forecast,” he said.
“It’s variable depending on, ultimately, the operator that you’re working with.
“There are obviously, I know, efforts to kind of shift that and work towards that and provide solutions there.”
Beet Retreat In The City @ Horizon Media is presented by 605 and Spectrum Reach. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
]]>“National advertisers don’t want 40 million. It’s a good start, but I think we’ve got some catch-up to play,” Kline says in this one-on-one discussion with Tatta at the recent Beet Retreat in the City.
Upon the sale of Cablevision to Altice, Tatta joined the startup 605, on whose board Kline now sits while also holding the roles of President of Spectrum Reach and EVP of Charter Communications. Tatta is President of 605.
Asked by Tatta to define the state of addressable TV, Kline points to the traditional business model of the cable providers whose participation is needed to expand the national footprint by using their two minutes of local ad time.
“I think a big reason for that is many operators, many distributors are in the subsection television business. They’re not in per se the advertising business, and I think that perception is starting to change,” Kline says.
“They’re always going to be in the subscription business, selling video products and high-speed data and telephony and soon mobile phone service for some of us,” Kline adds. “Advertising has always sort of been, ‘hey we’ll take that money, it’s great high margin, but we’re not going to invest that much in it.’”
Having just launched linear addressable in Los Angeles, Charter’s “footprint in New York will be months away. I think it’s not moved fast. Maybe it’s moved fast in cable years, but it hasn’t moved fast in anything else,” Kline says.
On the way to additional scale, addressable is providing a foundation upon which TV networks can enhance the value of their national inventory, according to Kline.
“If they really want to make their network inventory more valuable, they need to get it better targeted. More relevant. And we have the platforms that can do that.”
In the meantime, he sees the model for networks as acquiring the widest possible amount of distribution and collecting license fees from distributors. “But I’m not naïve. We know that things will evolve and viewership will move to other places. But there is still a ton of viewership on what we would call traditional platforms, and I think that’s going to continue for quite some time,” Kline says.
This video was produced at the Beet Retreat in City & Town Hall on June 6, 2018 in New York City. The event and video series are presented by LiveRamp, TiVo, true[X] and 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>In July, the pair announced 605’s methodology and technology would be used by Charter to fuel census-based TV measurement and analytics.
In this recorded discussion at Beet Retreat, Charter ad products and strategy SVP Rob Klippel and 605 president Ben Tatta discussed the partnership, and what comes next.
“While we’ve deployed this application that now allows us to sell TV in terms of audiences and impressions, we realized the larger value really, of being able to bring insights and value to the programmers, to the national advertisers and agencies,” Klippel said.
“And, while I think we have great data assets and a census level data to us, really the value of 605 is to be able to take our data, to pull it together with other data sources and to better serve the national marketplace.
So what has the partnership yielded? Specifically, a software platform that allows Charter to develop custom audiences for ad buyers, helping along the migration of TV ad sales from an old, demographic-based world to one which is based on targeting audiences more accurately.
The biggest hurdle, with both Charter and for all operators making the switch, Tatta said, is in adapting to the collect data from the fragmented cable TV ecosystem.
“In the case of Charter is you’re talking about over 80 plus markets, over 1000 ad zones each of which have their own inventory and rates information,” he said. “It’s a lot of data ingestion, a lot of the work was processing the data, getting it to a state that it could be acted upon very quickly with low latency.”
But Tatta and Klippel opened up on examples in which the ensuring product can help advertisers understand audience preferences at the local level.
“Austin South indexed 2x against BMW and then the adjacent market was like 1 1/2 times for Kia,” Tatta said, citing an automotive advertising example. “It’s things like that the local sales people have never been able to see before. What’s interesting is just to see how this kind of rolls out on a really local level and then obviously, our broader ambition is to nationalize this so we can do this on a much broader basis.”
Klippel says the new platform “has fundamentally changed the conversation that we’re having with our customers”.
“They can sit down real-time and create custom schedules that are tailored to a specific audience and the output is very transparent,” he added. Under the old model, if you need to make changes you kinda go back to your research and planning team and you start that multi day process all over again.”
This video was produced at the Beet Retreat Miami, 2017 presented by Videology along with Alphonso and 605. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
]]>At the Beet Retreat, Swartz led a deep dive into the future of TV advertising, especially as it relates to data and measurement.
Key players in the TV advertising landscape are looking for a unified system that pulls in legacy TV, over-the-top and digital and lets marketers and providers plan and optimize against that, Koester says during the discussion.
To get there, the industry needs to take risks on media, new measurement and new integration. “We need to push the envelope and go out of traditional measurement and try new things. Get new measurement for some campaigns. We are working with advertisers to get some insight on a correlation of media with sales. . .it’s not an overnight solution,” says Kevin Patrick Smith, Senior VP at Comcast 360 Media. “But I love working with partners who will work with us and will change the game.”
One of the biggest questions for the future of TV and digital advertising is what sort of backend measurement can enable standardized metrics. “You need to allow for standardized data modeling that lets you drive the transaction for operators, programmers and advertisers,” says Art Minnaugh, Senior Business Development Manager, Adobe Primetime.
Understanding audience data consistently cross the customer footprint is key to Charter, says Rob Klippel, SVP Advanced Ads and Strategy at Charter. “That’s the foundation to everything we try to do. For us, that’s to drive capabilities to let us become more efficient marketing partners for our advertisers, to turn around media campaigns and media plans, and to help them accomplish their goals and have the data to prove that out.”
This panel was conducted at Beet Retreat 2016: The Transformation of Television Advertising, an executive retreat presented by Videology with AT&T AdWorks and the 605. Please find more videos from the event here.
]]>