“What’s different about them is they come to the TV investment process with data of their own” typically consisting of e-commerce conversion data, CEO Baker says of direct-to-consumer marketers. Dataxu’s OneView identity and data management platform can “turn that into a TV plan,” he explains in this interview with Beet.TV.

“That’s one of the big trends in advanced TV in 2019 and it’s one of the reasons why we’ve seen our revenue go up forty times year over year from connected TV.”

Already comfortable with a data-driven marketing process, newer users of the company’s TouchPoint demand-side platform seek to leverage all of their online and mobile data in new channels.

“Many of them have seen things like Facebook or Google search sort of saturate as a play for conversions, and so they’re very interested in not only the branding aspects of TV but also the ability to drive return on investment for new customer acquisition.”

Nine years ago, long before the concept of advanced TV, demand-side platform TouchPoint was dataxu’s starting point. Along the way the company found that most marketers had a problem with connecting the dots between targeting and measurement on PC’s and mobile phones. OneView, which solves for this and can now factor in streaming devices and connected TV, “has really been the center point of our growth in TV and addressable TV,” Baker says.

Consumer device identity is a problem shared by the sell-side, as evidenced by dataxu’s involvement with media sellers like Sky in the U.K. “So on the sell-side, we’re increasingly working with some of the big media companies to help them on attribution and media planning that merges digital and linear data.”

In addition to direct-to-consumer brands, agencies with billings between $50 million and $100 million that never developed big TV teams, are bringing some of their clients into advanced TV. Baker predicts that some of the biggest agencies will be joining in as well.

“What’s been holding them back has been a little bit of uncertainty around who owns converged TV” within those agencies, Baker says.

As for a misconception that advanced TV cannot be done at scale, he adds, “I think at CES we’ll be talking a lot about the fact that you can and a lot of people are doing it today.”

Update: NBCU’s Yaccarino Issues Call To Action On Advertising Standards

On Jan. 7, NBCUniversal sales chief Linda Yaccarino cited “privacy issues, data misuse, measurement chaos and brand safety neglect” at “major digital advertising platforms” while seeking industry unity for high business standards.

“For decades, audiences have loved premium content, and advertisers have trusted networks’ multiscreen advertising ecosystems,” Yaccarino said in an article published on the NBCU website. “That’s why the premium media industry has refused to compromise its core values for how that content is created and distributed, even as we disrupt legacy mindsets and reinvent how we operate.”

Among other benefits, lowering barriers to entry for marketers to engage in TV advertising has attracted direct-to-consumer brands, Yaccarino noted.

“Already what had been an exclusive space for established companies is now welcoming a wave of entrepreneurs whose disruptive brands had long been at a disadvantage against larger incumbents. But here’s the best part: The marketplace is opening up without any compromises on consumers’ or brands’ safety.”

She called for all media publishers, agencies and platforms “to raise standards to let a safer, smarter, more accessible advertising ecosystem take flight.”

This video is part the Beet.TV preview series “The Road to CES 2019.” The series is presented by dataxu. For more videos, please visit this page.

This is not lost on marketing analytics provider DataXu, which has been in the programmatic space since 2009, fittingly using combinatorial algorithms originally developed by one of its co-founders for guiding NASA’s Mars missions. DataXu has a broad footprint in the demand-side platform side of the business and has set its sights on helping media companies so as to stay one step ahead of would-be competitors Amazon et al.

In this interview with Beet.TV at the DMEXCO advertising and media trade show, DataX CEO Mike Baker explains what the buy-side wants from programmatic TV and the race to beat digital giants to help the sell-side better cope with automated transactions and measurement.

A big focus of DataXu to date has been on connected OTT screens via its core DSP called TouchPoint. Via self-serve software buyers can track campaigns running across seven types of devices, providing the benefit of automation “unlike some of what’s plaguing some of the TV targeting with linear streams,” said Baker.

Along with automation, he identifies application of digital audience insights and campaign attribution as three main issues of interest among buyers. With insights, it can be as granular as using mobile audience data to target a live ad on ESPN.

“That’s really provocative and I think an industry first,” Baker observes. OTT inventory “is much more valuable when you’re able to buy these kinds of granular targets with your data.”

There’s a shift by some ad tech companies toward the digital TV landscape given the continued growth in viewing habits. That’s where are Amazon, Facebook and Google come in.

“I think everybody at this point sort of understands this is the next frontier for these companies and they come very well equipped indeed” with data, analytics and other resources. DataXu is busily developing its media company segment to help some of these very large incumbent TV players adapt and fit up to be competitive with these Internet giants as they “encroach inevitably on TV,” Baker says.

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.