But now the set of capabilities and consequences produced by that data is changing shape.

What will the future look like? That is what “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” our recent Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio, set out to uncover.

In these highlights, hear the takes of nine advertising executives on the issue.

1. Mobile brings a TV boost

Joao Machado, marketing SVP at Sabio, a company which powers connected TV ads using mobile data, says the combination is a win.

“The mobile device is the perfect mirror of a person’s affinities, their likes, where they are in their life stages,” Machado says. He wants to “couple it with the promise of what CTV digital television offers”.

Reborn, QR Codes Are The Glue Between Mobile & TV: Sabio’s Machado

2. TV is getting richer

When it comes to new-wave TV, AJ Kinter, head of advanced video strategy at Publicis Media Exchange (PMX), says the opportunities are burgeoning.

Kinter draws a distinction between “programmatic CTV” and “direct CTV”. “Since the CPMs have started to become much closer to programmatic CTV, you now have a linear, addressable TV and programmatic CTV kind of range in the same type of CPM,” he says.

Data Tell Story of Changing Viewership Habits: PMX’s AJ Kintner

3. Fusing media and mobile

Device data needs to inform media buys. That is why Aziz Rahim, Sabio CEO, says his company also started an app analytics division.

“Sabio is focusing on the media aspect of the industry, providing a deeper, unique targeting, reach and capabilities, and then along with creative capabilities,” he says. “The App Science side is to provide agnostic analytics and insights on CTV and OTT, along with mobile campaigns.”

After IDFA, Mobile Is Identity Gold For CTV: Sabio & App Science’s Rahim

4. Double-down on de-duplication

Ad buyers need to avoid exposing consumers to the same ad across multiple devices, says Dave Kersey, executive media director at GSD&M.

“Duplication is certainly a challenge in the industry,” Kersey says. “(We need to be) understanding the entire consumer journey across all video platforms.”

Mobile Data Help to Avoid Ad Duplication: GSD&M’s Dave Kersey

5. Data helps post-pandemic ad recovery

At MBuy, a unit of Mediaocean, media strategy and operations SVP Michael Parent is using data to welcome back travel brands that want to resume spending.

“We’re taking the data that we’re getting — everything from geography to programming to dayparts to the response that we’re getting,” Parent says.

CTV Data Provide More Insights for Ad Targeting: MBuy’s Michael Parent

6. Real-time duplication monitoring

At Sabio’s App Science, EVP Helen Lum says ad duplication is starting to worry more ad buyers.

“I think a good way to solve for that is actually to track and reduce that duplication and monitor that reach and frequency across partners and publishers, so that advertisers can reinvest those wasted dollars in real-time for their buys,” Lum says.

CTV Offers Faster Data Insights Than Linear TV: App Science’s Helen Lum

7. Mobile is the key to e-commerce

Mobile is evolving toward becoming an e-commerce driver for TV ads, says Jeff Liang, head of digital product at WPP’s MediaCom.

“We’ll eventually get to a point where we’ll be able to allow for comparison shopping on CTV and give consumers the ability to transact within that single remote device rather than driving people to their mobile phones,” Liang predicts.

Mobile Data Enable Audience Targeting on CTV: MediaCom’s Jeff Liang

8. Understand TV & mobile together

It’s no longer an “either-or”. Kelly Metz, managing director of linear activation at Omnicom Media Group, says ad planners must understand how consumers use mobile and TV in tandem.

“The way we choose to manage that or support that from a planning perspective is by emphasizing holistic campaign planning and holistic campaign measurement,” she says.

Mobile, TV Data Provide Holistic Audience Insights: Omnicom Media Group’s Kelly Metz

9. TV can target the right patient

The ability to target TV ads can revolutionise healthcare advertising, according to Starcom’s EVP Melissa Gordon-Ring.

“We can double-down on things like connected television or addressable television, and have a higher likelihood of reaching our patient in their household, versus hoping that this is the right target audience for us to be purchasing against,” she says.

Mobile Data Support Personalized Healthcare Marketing: Starcom’s Melissa Gordon-Ring

Started in Japan in the mid-nineties, QR code were initially popular with the countries NTT DoCoMo mobile carrier. They never quite took off until they were baked into the cameras of iOS and Android.

Recently, however, practices like contactless ordering from restaurant menus have seen QR codes become even more popular, and a clutch of companies has been trying to embed them in TV shows, too.

For Joao Machado, marketing SVP at a company which powers connected TV ads using mobile data, humble QR codes could be the next big thing again.

Making TV shoppable

“People have realised the value of QR codes, again,” Machado says in this video interview with Beet.TV . “As an industry, we kicked them around the curve because there were bad experiences in the distant past. But it’s always been a good piece of technology, it’s always a bit useful, and it’s a good thing for context change.”

Sabio has long been helping advertisers use consumers’ mobile data to better target CTV ads. Now it is also using mobile QR codes to bring those ads to life, through things like interactive buying experiences.

QR codes displayed in CTV ad creative are the key to unlocking such experiences for advertiser brands.

“We are trying to move all of our CTV campaigns into something more transactional,” Machado says, “by incorporating a QR code into the TV.

“A QR code for a big box retailer allows a consumer to go, scan the QR code, immediately put those products into a shopping cart, pay them, and have them deliver, and then to have it left at doorstep,” Machado adds.

The mobile mirror

Machado’s Six-year-old Sabio is an ad-tech platform offering a connected TV (CTV) platform that is powered by mobile phone data.

It claims to leverage app-level data from over 300 million mobile devices, which can then be fed into CTV buying systems. Sabio has its own DSP, SSP and DMP.

CTV is a medium traditionally hampered by classical digital methods of identifying viewers – so mobile could be a useful signal.

“The mobile device is the perfect mirror of a person’s affinities, their likes, where they are in their life stages,” Machado says.

He says he can use signals from mobile apps including location history, plus added data like shopper behavior, to build ad-targeting profiles executable through CTV.

Mobile’s identity challenge

That’s the theory. But mobile, too, is now facing big challenges in the gathering of consumer personal data used to build those profiles.

Apple’s decision to make more location and behavior tracking by apps opt-in by default for consumers is a seismic shift that will limit the ability of many to make useful material out of mobile app activity.

But Machado says Sabio has two rosier outlooks:

1. Whilst 50% to 60% of iOS users have opted out of such tracking, according to Machado, only 30% of iOS users are on the latest, most privacy-supporting version of iOS.

2. Sabio has adopted Unified ID 2.0, kickstarted by The Trade Desk, into its household identity graph, in an effort to rely less on consumer-provided identity signals.

But what if other clues about smartphone usage could continue giving advertisers valuable signals about users’ identity?

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Aziz Rahim, CEO of ad-tech software provider Sabio and App Science, says alternatives could continue to be valuable.

Leaning on installs

He is advocating, instead, monitoring which apps a user has installed, in order to elucidate signals to be used as targeting characteristics.

“The type of apps a person has has on their phones and is likely to have on their phones … gives you a really deep understanding of not only where someone is, mindset-wise, today, but where they’re “heading,” says Rahim.

Let’s say someone is loading honeymoon apps or apps that, you know, are involved with a wedding. Those apps then allow us to see kind of intent of where that person is going mindset-wise.

“That then connects the dots with someone who’s potentially looking for a new house or a new apartment that then connects the dots to someone who is eventually looking for honeymoon locations, as well as other change events in their lives.

“Achieving this in a privacy-compliant way is critical because we’re not interested in obviously understanding someone on a PII basis. We’re interested in understanding someone from any holistic basis of what they’re likely to do next, to provide them deeper, more accurate and relevant advertising, both on mobile and CTV.”

Mobile to TV

Six-year-old Sabio is an ad-tech platform offering a connected TV (CTV) platform that is powered by mobile phone data.

It claims to leverage app-level data from over 300 million mobile devices, which can then be fed into CTV buying systems. Sabio has its own DSP, SSP and DMP.

CTV is a medium traditionally hampered by classical digital methods of identifying viewers.

And mobile, like all of digital, is also now a channel that is suffering from an identity crisis, as identifiers like Apple’s IDFA dry up in usefulness.

Learning to target

But Rahim is adamant that latent opportunities remain – and that mobile is also a transformational indicator with which to buy CTV ads.

He says location data from mobile phones can also tell advertisers plenty about who a consumer really is.

Sabio uses automated segmentation and predictive learning to identify and reach customers.

The capability is accessed through a “programmatic portal” platform.

You are watching “Data: Powering CTV for Marketers,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio. For more videos, please visit this page.