Once advertisers know enough about viewers to precisely target ads, will they also deconstruct their 30-second spots in to a million different permutations, for the many different consumers out there? Today, that’s not happening at significant scale. But a Beet Retreat panel discussed the prospect…

But “we will”, says SMG precision video EVP Tracey Scheppach. “The reason we don’t see more activity around versioning is because there’s significant amount of waste. We are in the process of wringing out the value that is created by better targeting. Once you get through that value, the client will want to continue to wring out value. You’re going to see creative come to play.”

An ad group veteran is excited about the prospect. “What’s the point of being able to slice and dice your audience if everybody’s going to see the same message?,” according to GroupM global chairman Irwin Gotlieb. “The new holy grail is likely to be relevance to a specific need state that the segmentation takes you to.”

Before we get there, how does the industry want to measure the effect of these new-wave ads?

“We measure success on whatever the results were that the client wanted,” saysDish media sales VP Adam Gaynor. “We’ve seen sales lift of 2%, 3%, I’ve seen sales lift in a category of 160%.”

But others caution against expecting significant uplift at the start.

“If you don’t see lift, that’s okay, too,” according to AT&T AdWorks national sales VP Jason Brown. “The product works. Clients sometimes don’t have their target right.”

Magna Global advanced TV VP Matt Bayner agrees: “Don’t expect a sales lift at first. We’ll be able to get some good insights to do it better next time. I can’t promise lift the first time. But we do promise a journey to get there.”

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.