Kevin Lemberg, head of partnerships for advertising solutions at Comcast Technology Solutions
“There has to be some sort of unification and some sort of common language and goals between the partners within a solution or technology that we’re offering out to the industry,” he said. “Partnerships are going to be very important to round out the technology offering and the solutions for the industry in order for us to move forward.”
Jen Soch, executive director of specialty channels at WPP’s GroupM
“We’re really seeing an idea where we can be with addressable and CTV part of the main video recommendation that goes into what we’re doing with a client, and look at it more holistically.” she said. “I do see a lot more interest in bringing it [addressable and CTV] very much to the forefront and being a bigger part of their overall play.”
Kelly Abcarian, executive vice president of measurement and impact at NBCUniversal
“Interoperability across linear and digital without losing the value of premium content along the way is going to be so critical,” she said. “If we lose and swing the pendulum too far to ‘audiences only,’ imagine content being cheapened over the coming years and basically creating a society that the value is placed on audiences alone….I look forward to working with the industry on how, as we try to equivalize and become more interoperable, we don’t lose the value of premium content.”
Kristine Bayles, vice president of advanced advertising sales at AMC Networks
Addressable TV “enables us to get the insights into communication and driving deeper understanding in the industry,” she said. “We all know TV is important, but CTV and VOD is just as important…Viewership is truly fragmented now, and it’s not that less people are consuming, they’re just consuming differently. We need to understand this, and move forward with converged impressions.”
Mark Marshall, president of advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal
“Our goal on that [automated workflows] is to work with our partners on the agency side be able to get rid of about 30% of the manual work that we do,” he said. “How do we find different APIs [application programming interfaces] and different ways to interact, and take out some of the manual elements to allow us to move faster and hopefully improve margins for clients.”
Nicole Whitesel, executive vice president of advanced TV and client success at Publicis Media
“We need systems that collaborate — tools that talk to each other, data that can break down those walls, IDs that can understand each other,” she said. “Better sharing of that data enables us to have conversations with our clients about outcomes, and outcomes that deliver change to their business, and outcomes that change the way they decide media mix.”
Vicky Fox, chief planning officer at OMD UK
“We’ve moved from a place where people were quite wedded to a linear schedule,” she said. “Self-scheduling is going to be the norm for everybody. Anybody who switches on the TV and either looks at their connected TV menu or their EPG [electronic programming guide] can see how much has changed, because some of the linear schedules may take second place.”
Richard Nunn, vice president and general manager of advertiser solutions at Comcast Technology Solutions
“Through automation and understanding what has worked and what hasn’t in more real time across channel – that in principle, should mean a greater ROI across what is a fragmented channel base,” he said. “They’ll drive that solution a lot more efficiently because of technology.”
You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.
Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Jon Watts who collaborated and reported for this series.
]]>But, if they are not careful, some TV ad sellers and buyers also end up feeling the extra complexity that goes hand-in-hand feels like Kryptonite.
A new thought leadership project, What Next for the TV Advertising Market?, from Comcast Technology Solutions, is highlighting how ad volumes are to proliferate – and sounds a warning that companies may struggle to cope.
“What we’re seeing is a massive increase in ad volume growth and ad versions,” says Richard Nunn, VP and GM of advertiser suite at Comcast Technology Solutions, in this video interview with Beet.TV senior adviser Jon Watts.
“A big spike and a tipping point in ad volumes is going to hit the marketplace.
“There’s a whole bunch of stats out there that say that, over the next three to four years, we’re going to see a seven-fold increase, which is huge in terms of ad volume.
“And then, if you layer addressability on top of that – you’re going to get different versions of ads, so maybe up to a thousand versions or more of one core ad that then turns into many – then you’re just going to see a massive acceleration of ad volume.”
Nunn thinks that is going to pose a challenge for an industry already struggling to cope with the convergence of linear and connected TV ad infrastructure.
Other surveys and studies have found ad buyers believe exploiting the opportunity of convergence is too complicated.
That is causing TV networks to worry that, if buyers are put off, the opportunity may be squandered.
So we have seen several initiatives and consortia form in the last couple of years, aiming to thrash out standards and working practices.
For Nunn, the chief answer comes in the shape of software.
“You have to deal with that through technology and automation,” he says.
“It’s really critical that you can bring together all these different channels, different assets and see what the performance is doing all in one place.
“And that’s a really critical thing to ensure that we can deal with the fragmentation and proliferation of channels and devices and manage that accordingly.”
What Next for the TV Advertising Market? took input from over 40 senior executives across the TV and video ecosystem, both in Europe and the US.
It focuses on:
Nunn says it shines a spotlight on a frustration within the industry.
“It’s a well-known fact,” he says. “There’s a lot of manual handoffs about how assets get from a creative agency, the way through to the eyeball. And that’s both on the buy and the sell side.
“A lack of a bridge between TV linear and digital and there are challenges around seamless reporting around what TV linear and digital do.
“A behaviour change that has to happen because, at the end of the day, as I mentioned, upfront, ads have got to eyeballs. It’s work in progress.”
You are watching “What’s Next For Advertisers? Key Changes That Will Drive The Industry Forward,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Comcast Technology Solutions. For more videos, please visit this page. For Comcast Technology Solutions’ paper on these topics, please visit this link.
]]>Amid the demand for streamlined work flows, Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) this month began a technology integration with ad-serving and analytics company Flashtalking. The integration helps to unify media buy systems, creative asset libraries, rights management and traffic and delivery engines into a single platform.
The integration “allows us to…bridge that linear and digital divide,” Richard Nunn, vice president and general manager of advertiser solutions at CTS, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “Then we tap into Flashtalking, which then allows that creative asset in the right format to be sent and served by Flashtalking across all the digital endpoints that they cover.”
The integration also gives advertisers a holistic view of their video advertising on linear and digital channels.
“This is a great jumping-off point because what it will do then is with the real-time nature of digital, we might see a specific ad version in the digital space,” Nunn said. “That can start to inform maybe what linear ads we’re then serving in terms of speed and response. We’re starting to get into that virtuous positive circle of addressability and performance.”
“The reality is that within the industry, there’s a siloed approach with the linear world and the digital world. We’ve bridged that gap,” Nunn said. “All the conversations we’ve had in the industry, both brand-direct and agency — it solves a massive pain point for them.”
Although CTS is owned by cable and media giant Comcast, it provides solutions to the buy-side and sell-side of multiplatform global advertising.
“We’re completely agnostic. It’s a technology play,” Nunn said. “There’s a lot of point-based technological solutions out there, so we’re trying to be a unifier.”
Nunn foresees further development with addressable advertising that will make it more personalized and responsive to viewers, giving advertisers more insights into how to optimize their campaigns across linear and digital platforms.
“That is the next bastion to crack in a world of emerging addressability across channels,” Nunn said. “We’re really excited about that next hurdle.”
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