In this video interview with Beet.TV, Senior Vice President, Advertising Sales at A+E Networks, describes two trends focusing on the home:
- Household-level TV ad targeting, and the quest for even more precision.
- TV show hosts and production crews making and broadcasting content from their own homes.
The new at-home media revolution
“The last 10 months have been really fundamentally groundbreaking in terms of personalization,” Heftman says.
“The idea that, instead of going out into the world, we’re bringing things into our home now that we’ve never been able to bring into our homes before – whether that’s the food we eat, whether that is the products that we buy and certainly the media that we consume.
“The reality is that we’re going to a world where content will be available in the home in the same way that it’s available out in a movie theatre or in other places like that, and the expectation by the consumer is that they can bring whatever they want into the home, whenever it is, that they want it.
“So the speed with which the media world has had to adapt to that, I think has been one of the most amazing things to come out of this COVID environment.”
CTV growing
US cable networks posted strong viewing increases for 2020, after a tumultuous year forced millions of Americans to stay at home.
It was a year in which connected TV services – both SVoD and AVoD – soared to new heights, and in which its demographic profile broadened, as elder viewers switched on.
Beside the SVoD boom, the growth in new ad-supported channels is drawing advertisers with capabilities like targeting, frequency capping and programmatic buying.
As a result, eMarketer expects 2021 connected TV ad spend to grow by 401.% to $8.11 billion, 3.5% of total US media ad spending.
As well as SVoD operations, A+E’s Heftman has a growing raft of ad-supported carriage with the like so Roku, Tubi, Pluto and Samsung.
Identity crisis
Next up, Heftman wants to go beyond household-level targeting, and he wants even highly-targeted ads to look seamless, like traditional commercial breaks – but that’s going to be difficult.
“Identity is both the billion-dollar opportunity and also the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” he says.
“There’s a big challenge going from a household identity down to individual person identity, and to get to an addressable future. That is something that really needs to be solved and it’s something that there’s a lot of progress being made on.
“Identity remains really, really challenging. Getting household IDs quantified and standardised across all of the different CTV providers, that is something that is very challenging.”
Heftman is hoping 2021 is the year when identity solutions, already being created to solve for the deprecation of third-party desktop cookies, will also lend a hand to connected TV targeting.
And he wants such things standardized.
Talent at home
Until then, it’s not only viewers who remain at home. TV talent, too, is back to being home-bound.
“(It is) very challenging from a content perspective,” heftman says. “California just announced another production shut-down. Jimmy Kimmel is going back into his home starting this week.”
But, whilst shows may be different, the new limitations have also forced a new creative approach to production.
“The flip side with that is the technology advancements making that possible,” Heftman adds. “Just because you can’t produce in a high-volume way out in the world, doesn’t mean you can’t produce in a high-volume way from the talent’s home.
“It’s really helped us streamline our production capabilities. The days of sending 20 people on a production shoot probably are over for companies like us, because we can produce so much more efficiently with iPads and with Zoom and the quality remains very, very high. I think that, that continues to move forward into the future.”
You are watching “Making CTV Happen: A New Ad Infrastructure Emerges,” a Beet.TV leadership video series presented by Publica. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>Now advanced connected TV platforms are getting in on the “attribution” act.
Plain old linear TV can promise advertisers the same power – but more complex attribution techniques need to emerge over time, says one TV ad sales leader.
“At A+E, we are trying to move from a world where the only data that matters is Nielsen age and gender demos,” says Ethan Heftman, Senior Vice President, Precision & Performance Advertising Sales at A+E Networks, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“We’re trying to move into a world where outcomes, actions, those are the things that matter for our business. It’s a conversation that linear television can have a major impact in. At A+E, we will guarantee two very specific results (from advertising):
- “We will guarantee foot traffic into a store location.”
- “We’ll guarantee web attribution.”
Heftman has previously observed that many in the industry are already staring to price guaranteed ads on a CPW, or Cost Per Whatever, basis.
A+E Networks, which operates channels A+E, History Channel and Lifetime, is accomplishing attribution by partnering with an array of technology and data providers, like LiveRamp, whose RampUp event Heftman was speaking from.
Ultimately, Heftman wants to guarantee advertisers more outcomes than just physical or web traffic – but therein lays more complexity.
“Where you begin to get into more difficult scenarios is where there are more steps in the sales process, in the funnel,” he says. “It just becomes a lot harder.
“There are a lot more steps in the chain between an ad exposure and a sale, steps that we want to make sure that we’re all on the same page and we’re all partnered for the same thing.
“There are a range of vendors and suppliers that can all do individual discrete things. Piecing those vendors together and paying them each individually is a challenge for our business.”
The interview was carried out by Beet.TV director of editorial and strategy Jon Watts.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of RampUp, LiveRamp’s summit for marketing technology in San Francisco. This series is co-sponsored by LiveRamp and ZEFR.
]]>But buyers need to be walked through the transition, and an ultimate conversion to 100% addressable may not be the end outcome regardless.
In a panel at Beet Retreat In The City, “What Programmers & Brands Want from Advanced TV”, three industry executives were asked why around 10% of national TV ad spend goes toward advanced TV targeting, rather than around 50%:
- A+E Networks – SVP, precision, Ethan Heftman
- LiveRamp – John Hoctor
- NBCUniversal – Dominick Vangeli
They were questioned by Janus Strategy & Insights president Howard Shimmel..
Transition is hard
A+E’s Heftman said: “The reality is, doing business outside of Nielsen age, gender demos is time consuming.”
NBCU’s Vangeli agreed: “The process of onboarding a first party data set … think about how much more complicated that is than transacting on adults (aged) 25 to 54.
“There’s a legacy business with decades and decades of a specific way to transact, and then all of a sudden all the viewership behaviour started to change and fragment.”
No race to bottom-funnel
Although connected TV and advanced targeting capabilities hold the potential to use attribution methods in order to offer performance-driven TV ads, A+E’s Heftman thinks assuming that will be the norm is a misconception.
“Sophisticated marketers at brands and at agencies have always known the value of television for upper funnel, awareness and consideration metrics,” he said. “And now we’re finally able to put lower funnel, foot traffic sales, those types of metrics against it.
“I think the fear of throwing the baby out with the bath water, the idea that we’re all just going to focus on the lower funnel value of television at the expense of the upper funnel… that’s really overblown because we’re all pretty sophisticated.”
Learn to love incomplete
LiveRamp’s Hoctor warned advertisers not to over-estimate the powers of the new medium.
“You have to go into the problem realising you’re never going to have all the data,” he said. “You have to know that out of the gate. Because you’re never going to know if your neighbour recommended the car, or something like that. That’s just not something that’s publicly available, or even privately available for you to do analytics against.
“We have to really calculate a baseline and what would have happened in the absence of the media that we’re measuring”
Context optimizes inventory
NBCU’s Vangeli detailed how NBCU is offering advertisers the ability to buy inventory adjacent to particular show moments, based on machine learning analysis of scripts and closed captions, plugged in to ad sales platforms.
“Let’s pretend a movie is starting to segue into a commercial break, and there’s a great scene where James Bond is shaving in the mirror,” he said. “And this is exactly something that we saw and we tested internally.
“Well then right after that, why is there not a Gillette ad or Dollar Shave Club ad? And so there’s a way to bring context at greater scale on a lot of the programming.”
This video was produced at the Beet Retreat leadership event hosted Publicis Media in New York. The event and video series is sponsored by FreeWheel and LiveRamp. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
]]>That is the message from one leading advertising exec at US TV company A+E Networks.
The company, which operates channels A+E, History Channel and Lifetime, says it is now beginning to sell ads whose prices are guaranteed on viewers completing certain actions that take place after the ad is viewed.
“Right now, the two that we trade on specifically at A+E is web attribution and foot traffic,” says Ethan Heftman, Senior Vice President, Precision & Performance Advertising Sales at A+E Networks, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“Those are the two areas based on automated content recognition (ACR) and measurement algorithms that work with multi-touch attribution.”
In the traditional model, TV ads are used to merely reach the right groups of viewers, defined by age and demographics, in groups of thousands, priced on a CPM (cost per mille) model.
In the emerging opportunity, software would track which viewers were exposed to which ad, link that record to brands’ own data and draw a line between the two, attributing real, end business results to the initial ad exposure.
How do you price that? Heftman says some in the industry are starting to refer to it as CPW, or Cost Per Whatever, because the desired end outcome may be different for each advertiser.
“It is not enough for television, any longer, to put up a proxy that doesn’t make sense to an investor. It’s not enough to talk about data points that only make sense to marketers. Marketers have to be able to speak the language of business and of finance, and that is what performance is all about.”
This video is from a series leading up to, and covering, the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara. This Beet.TV series is sponsored by Xandr. Please visit this page to find more videos from the series.
]]>Over the last 18 months, TV networks have wrestled with that question, as booming VOD subscriptions has gone hand-in-hand with growing consumer frustration toward excess interruption.
That has spurred many networks to rip up and re-shape the norm for what a commercial break looks like, and how long it runs.
A Beet Retreat panel convened during three days of debate in Puerto Rico to discuss ad load and the viewer experience…
The big reduction that wasn’t
The debate kicked off when the analyst leading the discussion confronted two networks that have launched initiatives to reduce ad loads with data showing, in many cases, it has not come to pass…
Joanna O’Connell, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester
“I saw this really interesting research from Kantar that ad load, for all the talk, had not actually declined from Q1 2017 to Q1 2018. Actually, it had data on all of your properties which was super interesting to look at…”
Peacock’s cut is coming
Answering O’Connell, a leading NBCUniversal executive re-stated the company’s intention to reduce at load by 20% in some TV formats…
Denise Colella, SVP, Advanced Advertising Products and Strategy NBCU:
“It’s really a challenge because we need to find a way that the consumers will enjoy the experience and the advertisers will get their message out, and of course we will make money … How do we produce content that’s meaningful to consumers? It’s something that we’re very focused on for the next year.”
Linear is hard to change
Another network exec echoed recent industry sentiment about the pace with which TV is turning itself around, suggesting that the traditional TV business as defined by its legacy medium may not change any time soon…
Ethan Heftman, VP, Precision/Performance, A+E Networks:
“In the linear format, we have an existing business model that unless I can figure out a way to sustain it and grow it the way I have to in my role, yeah, it isn’t just necessarily going to change. You have the opportunity in OTT and in new formats to build the ad model from the ground up.
Danielle Seth, VP, Client Partnerships, NCC Media:
“We obviously still have challenges as it exists today, I think, beyond just the consumer we’ve all experienced where you see the four ads. There are a lot of technical reasons why that happened. With video on demand, the ad load is a bit reduced compared to linear TV, but more importantly for the consumer experience, there are caps put in place. An ad can’t run more than two times per hour.”
Tech can solve for excess
If linear is hard to change, panel speakers suggested that technology platforms could help the networks and all parts of the value chain to make good on promises to reduce the frequency with which ads are seen, if not quite yet the number of them…
Denise Colella, SVP, Advanced Advertising Products and Strategy NBCU:
“It’s really incumbent on the technology providers to solve (it), regardless of who buys the ad, who puts it out there. It needs to be frequency-capped.”
Danielle Seth, VP, Client Partnerships, NCC Media:
“NCC’s point of view is through partnering with the likes of Freewheel, who is really focused on this topic, and can help control for frequency across platform, but then also building scale.”
Viewers are revolting
Beyond these implementation challenges, though, a bigger threat is evident. In 2019, the booming success of subscription video on demand, which often comes minus ads of any kind, is inculcating an ad-free viewing culture. Steadily, viewers used to immediate content are discovering a disdain for advertising they always knew was latent but which has now bubbled to the surface…
Denise Colella, SVP, Advanced Advertising Products and Strategy NBCU:
“Our woes are certainly existent, but really the reason why (consumers are) fleeing the ad model is because we make it unbearable.”
Joanna O’Connell, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester:
“Generally, so far, television has fared better from an attitudinal standpoint than digital channels, but I fear that that will change because of the exact things that we’re talking about right now. (Consumers) understood the role that the ads played (in linear television).”
Re-think the ad unit
Panelists agreed that the very nature of an ad needs to be re-thought – and not just in terms of its length. Custom creative and interactivity should all be on the table…
Joanna O’Connell, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester:
“Creative management platforms and DCO (dynamic creative optimization) technology is the most-under appreciated category of technology out there. The things that you can do with these technologies are really amazing, and yet the awareness is almost null in the industry. These guys are (just) playing around in formats like OTT.”
Proof of the pudding
Networks are more likely to respond positively and fully implement consumer-friendly advertising breaks if they can see data showing effectiveness – one panelist said that poses a problem in TV…
Lisa Lutz, VP, Product Management – Advanced Advertising TiVo:
“If I replace my (traditional advertising) pod with two 30-second (spots), instead of seven spots, what’s the retention? What’s the migration? Where are people going? Did this work? Did this not work? There’s always been such latency in terms of being able to get the data and measure it. (But) now (there is) the ability to have data at your fingertips and be able to really measure a few days after you run something.”
This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page.
The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.
]]>In this interview at the recent Beet Retreat 2018, Heftman elaborates on networks’ mediator-like role in trying to please both advertisers and agencies in an increasing complex, consumer-led TV universe.
Brands are talking about business results like topline growth, better metrics and greater ROI. “When we talk to agencies, obviously agencies are intimately involved in that but ultimately agencies are also judged on a cost efficiency basis,” Heftman says. “And so that necessarily creates a bit of friction in the conversations that we have between brands, agencies and ourselves.”
Increasingly, the seller’s role “is being a bit in the middle of that,” he adds. “Making sure that we are delivering the cost efficiency and proper business rationale to our agency business partners, while working with brands to try and convince them that television in particular is a driver of their business. We never really had to do that historically. The agencies took care of that for us.”
He isn’t suggesting that some agencies don’t tell that story to their clients. But given the roadblocks that exist to connecting television to business outcomes, “it’s not necessarily the best decision to let somebody else do that for us. We have to take some of the lead on that ourselves.”
Heftman sees more marketers than agencies leading the way on innovating new forms of ad products, one reason being it’s not a skill set that one necessarily finds within agencies. “Sometimes it is faster to go straight to the client and work with them on something that works for their business.” This is particularly true for newer, direct-to-consumer brands that might not have a legacy relationship with an agency. “They simply have different expectations from television, and part of working with them is that it has gotten us up to speed in talking more about outcomes and different types of creative and different types of executions that are going to get use there.”
He’d like to see two things going forward. First, realistic acknowledgement that big changes aren’t going to happen overnight, and second an understanding that TV serves certain purposes that can be “a little bit dual” in nature. “I would like to see clients and agencies spend more time thinking about their funnels and really being honest about the places where TV fits into the funnel and things that it has to do to succeed there,” Heftman says.
“I think the sooner we get to a place where we are honest about what each different format can do, that’s going to get us closer to where we’re headed.”
This video was produced in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the Beet.TV executive retreat. Please find more videos from the series on this page. The Beet Retreat was presented by NCC along with Amobee, Dish Media, Oath and Google.
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