To Jamie West, Group Director of Advanced Advertising at Sky, programmatic transactions in the broadcast world are about automation. The notion of biddable inventory is not “particularly relevant for a broadcast world,” West says in this interview with Beet.TV at the 2017 DMEXCO advertising and trade show.
Like other traditional broadcasters, Sky has made a big push to enable advertisers to do business with its various platforms via whichever means they desire. Hence the continued evolution of its AdSmart addressable platform, Sky Advance cross-screen offering and Sky Analytics media planning and transaction tools.
With AdSmart, current efforts involve building out the reach and targeting capability and easing the friction in the transaction funnel. “The feedback from the market has been ‘you’ve got to make it easy and transparent for the market to use.’ That’s one of the things that we’ve been focusing on for the last few months,” says West.
In the cross-screen realm, Sky Advance is designed to bring down “the barriers between TV and digital so that we can serve sequential campaigns across TV and digital.”
The next big phase at Sky is around analytics tools, including launching the ability for advertisers and agencies to plan addressable TV campaigns on a portal so they can then “push a button and get that integrated into our booking systems.”
Sky believes that TV campaigns “will still be traded in a truly linear way, much in the same way as they are today through direct buys.” Nonetheless, “It’s important to enable brands and agencies to transact however they so wish with Sky, and that’s what our partnerships with the likes of Videology and Comcast are all about.”
Like their U.S. broadcast counterparts, Sky is trying to determine the appropriate commercial load and lengths for TV and digital viewing. In linear TV, the U.K. tends to have about nine minutes of commercial time per programming hour, “which is substantially less than the U.S. model,” says West.
In digital, “We tend to have a relatively clean environment,” with perhaps two or three pre-roll ads and two or three mid-roll positions.
Asked if Sky would offer six-second ads as do some U.S. broadcasters, West said that while “we tend to operate on metric lengths” of possibly five, 10, 15 or 20 seconds, if the market wants six-second spots Sky will oblige.
This video was produced as part of Beet.TV leadership series from DMEXCO, presented by NBCUniversal. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>One key competitive advantage is that it only charges advertisers for impressions that garner a 75% view-through rate, its Group Director of Advanced Advertising, Jamie West, says in this interview with Beet.TV. West was one of some four dozen advertising and media leaders who gathered for the Beet Executive Retreat 2017 titled Video Everywhere: The Transformation of Media & Advertising.
Sky is Europe’s largest entertainment company, serving the UK, Austria, Germany, Ireland and Italy, West explains in response to a question from Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp., the inventory and supply chain management company serving premium publishers.
“When you think about Sky from an advertising perspective, we’re most known for our advanced advertising products and scale,” says West.
As The Drum reports, Sky takes an agnostic approach to competing for advertising budgets not only with the likes of ITV and Channel 4 with with digital giants. “We as a broadcaster and an innovator have to compete head-to-head and toe-to-toe with the likes of Facebook and Google to truly compete in the digital age,” he told The Drum.
Asked by Swartz about the biggest change to Sky’s business over the last three to four years, West cites data enablement. It’s been a driving force behind not only Sky AdSmart but also Sky AdVance, which West describes as the ability to serve ads in a digital environment “as the result of some kind of consumption, whether viewing to apps or programs.”
The third pillar of the company’s operations is its analytics capabilities, including its viewing panels that now reach some 3- 3.5-million households and provide insights into second-by-second viewing. “With that appended to device ID’s and IP addresses means that we can serve ads across the whole digital estate as a result of that viewing consumption,” says West.
With Sky AdSmart, advertisers are charged only for impressions that have a 75% view-through rate. “On a 30-second commercial, that will be something like 20 seconds of incremental value versus some of the digital players that charge on one or three seconds,” West says.
This video is part of a series produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat in Vieques. The event and series is presented by Videology and 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>You also get to experience a sense of shared success—whether the topic is television audience guarantees, addressable advertising, or new offerings from the likes of Hulu, Innovid and Spotify, according to Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp. and the self-described Dean of the Faculty of the annual Beet.TV Executive Retreat, which was sponsored by Videology with 605.
In keeping with longstanding tradition, in this video Swartz gives a brief recap of two days of industry give and take in a venue that eschews divisiveness for camaraderie and shared success.
This year’s Retreat was truly a global affair, with the presence of experts from Liberty Global, Sky TV and others. But for Swartz, there was something more basic at play.
“How blessed I am to have such amazing colleagues,” she says.
This video is part of a series produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat in Vieques. The event and series is presented by Videology and 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
