The squabbling is prominent in the addressable television advertising space, Gotlieb noted in his keynote speech at this week’s Advanced Advertising Forum in Manhattan. In this interview with Beet.TV, the advertising veteran says that while there have been some breakthroughs, there have been more frustrations.

“And the frustrations come from the fact that we operate in a context where the constraints are no longer technology based” given that the enabling technology for addressable TV has existed for nearly a dozen years.

What have gotten in the way are the various components of the industry, according to Gotlieb. “The MVPD’s have to execute the addressable ads. The content owners have to agree with it. The net problem here is that each have their own interests.”

One longstanding reality is that for decades, the relationship between TV distribution and content ownership has been, and continues to be, fundamentally adversarial. To prove his point, Gotlieb alludes to current headlines about carriage-renewal conflict between DirecTV and Viacom. “Those relationships are so adversarial that there isn’t the trust required to move things forward.”

Even with vertical integration, as evidenced by Comcast and AT&T, the ownership is the same “but the business interests remain somewhat siloed in that they operate their own independent P&L’s and are rewarded based on the performance of their P&L’s. And so these things get in the way,” says Gotlieb.

As a consequence, it is still “remarkably difficult to plan, to execute and to steward addressability or advanced advertising, far more so than it should be.”

Then there is the limitation on addressable advertising inventory, which predominantly consists of the two minutes per hour that the MVPD’s control. “And even there has been some internal squabbling between those people who feel that addressability is replacing geo targeting, and geo targeting usually accrues to the benefit of businesses like Spotlight, and everybody protects their turf,” Gotlieb says.

Beet.TV recorded this interview at the Advanced Advertising Summit in New York City.

For nearly 10 years the industry has been aware of the challenge of “needing to do something different and better,” Rockwood explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent CIMM Cross-Platform Video Measurement and Data Summit in Manhattan. “I think in the last two we’ve probably made a lot of progress. I think before then there wasn’t enough of a business need but now there certainly is and I think there has been a lot better progress.”

The SVP of Ad Sales Portfolio Research says of Comscore and Nielsen, “I think that they both have started to do more that’s actually helping us” while echoing the concerns of many CIMM participants about the need to make it easier to conduct business in cross-platform premium video.

“It’s just too hard. As this measurement improves it will become easier to transact.”

She describes the fragmentation of viewing options as “so extreme that it may not be the best thing for the consumer. So I do believe that they’re going to start looking for simpler solutions that provide more value” And while the marketplace is fragmented is now, it’s “going to coalesce around some solutions that actually have more consumer value.”

Asked whether there are too many measurement options for the sell-side, Rockwood doesn’t think so. “I think you have to have competition in this marketplace and you have two major companies that are trying to solve for this,” both of which are “getting traction.”

Beyond that competition is the disparity in data sets, whether they derive from an MVPD or in Turner’s case DirecTV and NBCU with Comcast that “can all be used in different ways and I think we’re finding our way through that now. I don’t think that the complexity is getting in the way of us doing business.”

On the subject of identity graphs, Rockwood stresses their importance in how video advertising and viewing related to individual households and individuals.

“Having high-quality information around what devices belong to which households and then which people are using those devices is I think really important,” Rockwood says. “I think that the Xander data will certainly give us a leg up in that race.”

So it was when Charter scooped up Time Warner Cable (now Spectrum)  just over a year ago. Since then, renegotiation of comScore’s agreement with Charter brought comScore from 22 million measured households to more than 35 million, according to Jeff Boehme, SVP, Television Research at comScore.

The bottom line: comScore ended up with about 75 million reportable television sets in use, giving the company greater insight into tuning behavior, Boehme explains in this interview with Beet.TV.

“The importance is not just the tuning data. It’s the ability to match that tuning data with relevant audience consumer datasets so that not only can we track tuning we can track tuning we can track advertising and we can track consumption,” Boehme says.

Between its own data warehousing and relationships with companies like Experian, comScore can identify programs with high propensity of certain advertiser audience segments and match it to advertising campaigns in those programs.

“Now we can provide much more detail on the accountability of advertising, both in television as well as digital,” Boehme says.

comScore also has been on the ground floor of addressable TV advertising, given its own roots as well as those of Rentrak, with which it merged in early 2016. Early addressable players like DIRECTV and DISH relied on comScore and Rentrak to provide measurement capabilities.

One casualty of advanced audience measurement and correlation with consumer purchasers is waste, which has been a given throughout the history of TV advertising.

“Television now becomes more accountable because now what they can do is plan more effectively and deliver their segments with higher efficiencies,” Boehme says. “So no longer do we have waste factors that are standard among media buys.”

For programmers, the gains are mainly in the ability to better manage their portfolios “so the programmer understands what audiences now identified as consumers they need to attract and how.”

We interviewed Boehme at the Cynopsis Measurement and Data Summit in New York earlier this month.

“Instead of a one-size-fits-all, one big event, we take a more tailored approach,” Maria Mandel Dunsche, VP, Head of Marketing, says in this interview with Beet.TV.

AT&T has been sharing with agencies and marketers findings from some of the hundreds of addressable campaigns handled by DirecTV, which it bought last year and hasbeen in the addressable marketplace for four years, as Advertising Age reports.

“It’s about educating them about how to best use addressable, not only TV but across platforms as well,” says Dunsche. “There’s a tremendous opportunity to educate clients.

She sees addressable advertising becoming a more important part of the conversation during this year’s TV Upfront season as marketers look for more accountability from TV advertising. Addressable not only can eliminate TV ad spend waste but also is “highly measurable and trackable through entire marketing funnel,” says Dunsche.

This segment is part of a series leading up to the 2017 TV Upfront. It is presented by FreeWheel. To find more videos from the series, please visit this page.

“There has never been a time with more challenges, but there’s never been a more intellectually interesting time to be in the business,” Martin says in a reference to the explosion of both content and consumer choices for consuming it.

Turner has set an ambition for itself to “literally reinvent the company from the inside out.” While it intends to dominate its core businesses with premium content, Turner also knows it must keep abreast of shifting distribution venues, according to Martin.

“With these new distribution mechanisms and with so much choice available for consumers, we really want to be a fan engagement company,” he says. This is because engaging with fans “who come back over and over and over again are the easiest people to monetize.”

Such engagement needs to span all age groups. While the average age of a CNN viewer on linear TV in the U.S. is 58, the equivalent figure on Snapchat is early 20’s. “Nobody would have thought that people in their early twenties would have been interested in CNN, but that’s not true,” Martin says.

“Massive investments” in technology have enabled Turner to reach these varied audiences, in addition to new distribution partnerships, according to Martin.

And then there is the proposed merger with AT&T, which Seeking Alpha believes is on a track toward approval. Martin sees the deal as being able to “supercharge our growth” with the addition of 25 million DIRECTV subscribers and AT&T’s 130 million mobile customers.

While Turner won’t offer its content exclusively to AT&T’s customers “because we make money by being agnostic, we’re going to be able to learn a lot.”

Martin is optimistic about this year’s Upfronts and Newfronts negotiations with media buyers, given its lightened commercial loads and the improved quality of ads on its networks. “We’re seeing really great early success and I’m quite confident going into the Upfront this year. I think it’s going to be healthy,” Martin says.

This video was produced in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress 2017.  The series is sponsored by Turner.  Please visit this page for additional segments from MWC.

“We’ve been spending a lot of our time and a lot of our money on addressable television,” Mike Welch, Head of Strategy, Product & Business Development for AT&T AdWorks, says during an interview with Beet.TV this week at the Future of TV Advertising Forum.

AT&T, DISH Network and WPP recently announced their joint acquisition of INVIDI, a leader in providing addressable advertising platforms. In addition to extensive distribution in U.S. households, INVIDI is actively deploying its technology and negotiating distribution agreements in Europe, South America and Asia.

“The INVIDI acquisition is just an example of us being very bullish on the future of addressable,” Welch adds. “We think that there’s huge opportunity both domestically and internationally.”

From its billing relationships with TV and mobile customers, AT&T garners verified subscriber identities. When those identities are coupled with third-party data in an anonymous, privacy compliant manner, AT&T can deliver addressable ads to TV sets and mobile devices.

“We’ll do this with our owned and operated apps,” Welch explains. “So if it’s a DIRECTV, TV Everywhere experience that someone is watching on a mobile device, we’ll be able to deliver a specific, targeted ad to that device as well as to their TV set.”

AT&T’s cross-device reach is amplified through a partnership with Opera Mediaworks, the mobile advertising and marketing platform that serves tens of thousands of apps, Welch explains.

“You don’t have to necessarily be watching content on just an AT&T app in order for us to do this cross-screen addressability,” Welch says of the association with Opera Mediaworks.

Asked about the buy-side sentiment for cross-screen addressable solutions, Welch says “We need to continue as sellers to prove that it works. We’re seeing significant lift when you have exposure across screens.”

He cites the case study of an automotive marketer that saw an 85% lift in buy rate among targeted consumers versus a control group that was not exposed to any ads on any screens. “That’s powerful,” says Welch. “If we could get that story out and make believers out of folks, I think you’ll see this market explode.”

We spoke with Welch at the Future of TV Advertising Forum in London. Beet.TV’s coverage is presented by the 605.  For other videos from the series, please visit this page. 

The $49 billion DIRECTV deal has grown AT&Ts addressable household roster to 14 million from 12 million. “Our strategy is to continue to grow our addressable footprint but also grow our addressable offering across platforms,” Dunsche says in an interview with Beet.TV.

AT&T AdWorks has more than doubled the number of advertisers using its addressable TV offering, with thousands of campaigns currently in flight and a 90% repeat purchase rate. “Advertisers get a taste of it and it performs well for them and they want to do more,” adds Dunsche, citing categories that include automotive, consumer packaged-goods, financial services, quick-serve restaurants and retailers.

“At the outset, addressable addressable advertising CPM’s are higher than traditional linear spend, but when you look at the net effective CPM level because there’s zero waste it’s actually a far more efficient and effective spend,” Dunsche says.

On the distribution side, the union of AT&T and DIRECTV means access to more than 150 million screens across TV and mobile, fueling cross-screen ad targeting and results measurement. A main goal is “seamlessly delivering entertainment experiences cross platform,” Dunsche adds.

AT&T took the plunge into political addressable TV campaigns by pairing DIRECTV with DISH Network, forming the joint partnership known as D2 Media Sales. D2 can send targeted political messages to about 22 million addressable households.

“We work with every political presidential candidate that’s been in market,” says Dunsche. “It’s been a great year. Political advertising is definitely up.” One of the main selling points of addressable ads for political campaigns is the fact that “you can keep it within state boundaries” as opposed to traditional DMA-based buys.

This video is part of a series produced at the NYC TV and Video Week’s Advance Advertising summit. The series is sponsored by 4C Insights. For additional videos from the series, visit this page.

“AT&T has taken the lead and I think they’re probably the best positioned” in the cross-screen addressable race, Bokor says in an interview with Beet.TV. “The thing that I think makes it challenging for cross screen is generally, the providers are not the same and the identifiers are not the same,” he adds.

For addressable TV, media agencies can avail themselves of a pay-TV company’s subscriber rolls, match those names and addresses to their target lists and do a match. By comparison, mobile devices are targeted based on ID’s, not names and addresses. “So you don’t have the same identifier that’s used to build the target list,” which makes it difficult to determine reach and frequency—particularly the latter, according to Bokor.

AT&T’s edge: it has access to consumer identifiers consisting of names and addresses, plus unique device ID’s. “What we really don’t want is, on some platforms that are emerging, you see the same person just getting hit many, many, many times,” Bokor says. “And you reach a point where the person is not happy about seeing the same ad over and over again.

“We need to be able to control frequency across screens and AT&T is now starting to offer that. It’s a very intriguing offering.”

While Mediavest | Spark hasn’t run many campaigns yet, “I think that’s going to become something that’s going to be of great interest over the next six months to a year,” says Bokor. He also hopes to be able to reach beyond just the AT&T user base. “But how you do that where two platforms that are not controlled by the same entity is a little bit more challenging,” he says.

The opportunity around addressable TV advertising  for AT&T is reported in an article in today’s New York Times

This video explores the state of cross-screen addressable video advertising. The series is sponsored by AT&T AdWorks. Please visit this page to view more videos from the series.

On the eve of FreeWheel’s annual client summit in Europe, Beet.TV interviewed Yu about the company’s plans involving the QA side of the tech business. “The problem we’re dealing with, especially on the technology front, is it’s no longer making a platform to satisfy one or two customers. It’s satisfying a lot of customers and also at the same time making the platform extendable in the future,” says Yu, who first connected with co-founders Jon Heller and Doug Knopper when all three worked for DoubleClick.

In line with its founding intent to practice Agile development, FreeWheel is adopting a trend in engineering that has developers doing more testing work while delivering working software on every iteration.

“A big change we just made at freewheel is that for the next three years, we’re going to gradually remove the QA function as a function group,” Yu explains. “Everybody will turn into a developer not only just implementing code for the future but also coding for testing as well.”

That’s a major shift in the sense that “nobody has tried that with a large-scale BtoB technology platform yet. But are making that movement and it’s going to keep me very excited for the next couple of years,” says Yu.

FreeWheel’s customers include the largest media and entertainment companies in the world, including AOL, DIRECTV, NBC Universal, and Turner in the U.S., and Sky and Channel 4 in Europe. Anticipating the needs of these companies as they try to unify their audiences and monetize content across desktop, mobile, OTT and traditional STB devices means always being one step of those needs.

“To me, it’s not as critical to actually know every single customer’s demand because you need to anticipate their demand will always change,” Yu says. “You need to be able to have a platform that can adapt to any demand the customer wants.”

Which is where the nautical analogy surfaces. “If you build a platform and you’re not flexible, you cannot not meet the demand and it’s going to become a bigger and bigger ship you cannot turn around,” Yu says.

We spoke with Yu at the recent FreeWheel European summit in Cologne presented along with StickyAds.tv. Please visit this page for additional videos from Beet’s coverage.

“I was amazed at how quick the political ad agencies were to accept this and to want to use” D2 Media Sales, its Director of Political Ad Sales, Mark Failla, said of 2014 during a panel discussion at the recent Beet.TV summit on politics and advertising. “Now in 2016, what we’re starting to see is some of the digital players fight for that money and say it’s really a digital buy,” Failla explained in response to a question from panel moderator Matt Prohaska of Prohaska Consulting.

According to Failla, political buyers are drawn by the “precision of direct mail with the accountability of digital, but with emotional impact and reach that only a television commercial can give you.”

Among D2’s main attributes is its ability to create scalable household-addressable media buys at the local level, enabling political campaigns to target their buys within given states, along with its approach to prevent wasted impressions. “If the commercial is played during a DVR playback and they skip through the commercial, it doesn’t count as an impression,” Failla explained. “If someone changes the channel instead of watching the commercial, it doesn’t count.”

Even though D2 offers some 50 demographic audiences for targeting, in addition to voter file data, buyers bring their own data to the table in line with their specific needs.

“Especially in this election cycle, there’s unique audiences that are affected by the top of the ballot problems that maybe we have on the Republican side or the Democratic side,” said Failla. “That affects the down-ballot candidates.” By matching campaigns’ own data to D2 households, “now you can target just these disaffected Democrats or reluctant republicans. You name the target audience. There’s a ton of them out there.”

Asked whether campaigns have begun to harness dynamic creative messaging to deliver sequential messages to target households, Failla said buyers are interested but there are concerns about cost and scale.

Although most voters would agree that this is a unique election season due to the personalities of the presidential candidates themselves, TV still plays a fundamental role regardless of how much free media coverage a candidate can generate.

“I think television as a vehicle still has to be a persuasion vehicle and still has to be used in a traditional way in many cases. It’s just that targeting is so much more superior,” Failla said.

You are watching videos from Beet.TV politics and advertising summit presented by OpenX along with Intermarkets. Please find additional videos from the series here.

Brown joined AT&T via from the DirecTV via the recent acquisition by AT&T.

He says that addressable advertising has become pervasive for automotive marketers and is growing quickly in the consumer package goods and financial services.

Programming Note:   Brown will a participant at next week’s Beet.TV executive retreat in Fort Lauderdale.

Nowhere more so than in moving images. Where, once, online video was seen as an entirely separate channel from TV, the emergence of multi-faceted screens and cross-screen planning and buying is forcing redefinition.

“It’s not TV, digital or mobile – now people are talking about it more broadly as video across platforms,” says AT&T AdWorks marketing VP Maria Mandel Dunsche, in this interview with Beet.TV. “How you buy (advertising on) that is changing … to buying more of a format across platforms.”

AT&T finally closed its $49 billion acquisition of satellite television provider DirecTV this summer, following regulatory clearance, giving it the ability to deliver ads in to these screens.

“It only took 14 months!,” Dunsche jests. “The merger is finally complete. The future of delivering entertainment content on any screen the consumer wants it on is exciting. But from an advertiser perspective … AT&T Adwords now post-acquisition is in an incredible spot where we have the opportunity to become the leader in cross-platform advertising.”

We spoke with her last month at an event about the future of addressable TV presented by AT&T AdWorks in association with Beet.TV  Please find more videos here

The other key to the deal is Latin America, which is a sleeping giant, Swartz says. Currently, DirecTV counts about 18 million subscribers in Latin America, and the economic growth rates in that region are about three to five times that of the United States. Add in the 42% of the population having access to broadband, and there is tremendous opportunity to boost broadband penetration in that region, she says.

For more insight into the potential merger, and the driving factors, check out this commentary.