In fact, that future is already happening. It’s called “addressable TV”, and recent estimates of the number of addressable US TV households count about 45m properties.

So what’s next in the addressable journey? Beet.TV convened a panel of leading exponents to offer their views.

Innovation will start in Europe – Dave Downey, CEO, INVIDI:

“We launched the most sophisticated targeting system in the world in Brussels. It’s a cloud-based decision system, it supports several million simultaneous linear buys

“We pioneered that technology in Europe hoping to bring it back to the United States. You … get this system going in the United States and the first reaction of the MVPD owners is, ‘I want to keep this for my inventory,’ because they’re getting great results.

“Well we, of course, always wanted to do it with NBC and CBS and ABC because that’s where the big money is. So a lot of our innovation goes and happens in another market with an eye towards, ‘When will it be ready for the States?’ And I think we’re getting close.”

National addressable will happen – Scott Ferber, CEO, Videology:

“There will be MVPDs, broadcasters … all selling addressable-linear … in the future. It’s a combination of … the technological deployment, the business model and… the human condition.

“We all have to get comfortable with the fact that the world is changing, be okay with changing it. Twenty years ago, the idea of saying you were tethered to some sort of electronic device that was always with you, you’d be like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ So that’s the human condition element.”

Addressability will hit scale – Brian Cordes, director, AT&T AdWorks:

“The marketplace is demanding it. We’re at over 50 million households right now. Projections are that, by 2020, we’ll be in over 80% of households nationally.

“What’s been happening with advertisers demanding these increased metrics and accountability is something that’s going to drive us forward and I think it’s inevitable for it to happen on a national scale.”

This panel was moderated by The Vertere Group CEO Tim Hanlon.

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.

TV ad technology provider INVIDI, which enables household-level TV ad targeting for broadcast companies more used to beaming out a single message en masse, is getting excited about a technology “satellite switching”.

How could satellites enable addressability? INVIDI CEO Dave Downey explains, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“Until recently, the bandwidth on those satellites was in very high demand, they were very expensive,” he says. “With the advent of low-orbit satellites … there’s an abundance of geo-stationery transponder space.

“INIVIDI came up with the idea of switching the ads on some of these transponders, that are now not being used at all, to broadcast TV feeds.”

That means satellite TV operators wouldn’t just have to pre-load a selection of ads to subscribers’ DVRs, for targeting at the client end – they could also light up their entire footprint with addressability.

“If it was able to be launched in North America, it would be a great caveat to introducing national addressability,” Downey adds. “If you were to target the four or five broadcast networks, this may be an ability to get to another 25 to 30 million homes.”

For now, New Jersey-based INVIDI, which has a growing business of its own overseas, is targeting international operators with the technology.

In South America, Downey aims to help operators launch background channels carrying ads, which would be switched to during addressable moments.

This interview was conducted by Matter More Media CEO Tracey Scheppach for Beet.TV.

This interview 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.

But they are not doing it alone – the pair are joined in the deal by fellow acquirer WPP, the world’s largest ad agency holding group, though it is AT&T which will hold a controlling share.

New Jersey-based INVIDI helps advertisers serve household-targeted ads in to TV streams in the two minutes per hour of programming available to MVPDs. But it is also gaining traction overseas, where operators have fewer restrictions, with a launch to support Liberty Global’s Belgian broadcaster Telenet and channel owner SBS Broadcasting. The acquiring trio’s press release says INVIDI is “negotiating distribution agreements in Europe, South America and Asia”.

“Maintaining our independence and deepening our existing relationships with AT&T, DISH and WPP is a big move for our company and our people,” INVIDI CEO Dave Downey explains in the announcement, carried by The Drum. “Our ability to increase the value of ad inventory is transforming the way video advertising is purchased and distributed.”

Earlier this month, Adobe announced plans to acquire video ad-tech operator TubeMogul, in what many hope will be a wave of much-needed consolidation that makes a fragmented ecosystem more straightforward, especially on the buy side.

INVIDI seems destined to work with an increasingly well-armed AT&T AdWorks division, through the acquirers say they will leave it operating independently. INVIDI’s future will not only lay closer to the big guns acquiring it, nor just with a larger global footprint – the company is also going to space.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, recorded at last week’s Beet Retreat, CEO Downey says the company is launching technology called “satellite switching” – using low-orbit satellites to offer broadcasters multiple channel streams of linear ads in such a way, when substituted during commercial breaks, could perform something like addressable advertising.

“If it was able to be launched in North America, it would be a great caveat to introducing national addressability,” Downey said. “If you were to target the four or five broadcast networks, this may be an ability to get to another 25 to 30 million homes.”

This interview 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.

The company already has traction, and the pace of change it is already seeing suggests a big uptick in the opportunity this year.

“We have 92 million homes under contract, 30 million of those installed,” CEO Dave Downey tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Last month, we did 9 billion addressable impressions and we’re gonna triple that by next year so it’s at a rapid pace of growth.”

Invidi is currently in a big international expansion, with the company’s technology due to underpin an addressable service launch by Liberty Global’s Belgian broadcaster Telenet and channel owner SBS Broadcasting.

That is just one part of its ambitions. Downey says he has another 100 million homes identified all over the Pan Asia area, Europe, South America and other markets.

So what does “addressability” mean to this addressable pioneer?

“If we’re watching American Idol or The Voice or any of the more popular television shows and they go to a commercial break and the commercial’s for Revlon, obviously that’s a commercial geared towards a female of a particular age group,” Downey says. “There’s obviously other people watching that show who are outside that cohort.

“With addressability, we’ve been able to take television advertising and increase the value of single commercial instances of up to 700% … Think of direct mail with the sight, sound, and motion of TV – it’s a great combination.”

This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.

You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.