“That’s really exciting because we’ve been investing in our data capabilities and our audience platforms for a couple of years now and we’re ready to put our money where our mouth is,” Colella explains in an interview at the recent Beet.TV Executive Retreat titled Video Everywhere! The Transformation of Media & Advertising.

In the past, NBCU’s Audience Targeting Platform was available only during the Upfront period, while its NBCUx programmatic linear product was limited to buys in the scatter market. “Now that we’re seeing the great results that we’re getting and we’ve invested in the ability to scale these, we’re turning all of our data products always on,” Colella says.

Part of the momentum comes from advertisers, which are increasingly investing in their own data infrastructures to enhance TV audience targeting. NBCU has a unique position in that advertisers can use their own data and demand-side platforms to buy programmatically on NBCU’s platform, according to Colella.

“At this point in time we know who is consuming the content,” she says. “The value proposition is really to speak to consumers individually and make sure we’re providing the best return on ad spend for our advertisers.”

Given its plethora of properties—ranging from entertainment to sports, news to Hispanic brands—NBCU has no shortage of insights into its more than 100 million unique visitors.

“We know a lot about our consumers, whether it’s what platform are they consuming our content, when are they booking golf games with our properties like Golf Now, what movies are they watching on Fandango and when are they going to the theatre,” Colella 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.

“There has never been a time with more challenges, but there’s never been a more intellectually interesting time to be in the business,” Martin says in a reference to the explosion of both content and consumer choices for consuming it.

Turner has set an ambition for itself to “literally reinvent the company from the inside out.” While it intends to dominate its core businesses with premium content, Turner also knows it must keep abreast of shifting distribution venues, according to Martin.

“With these new distribution mechanisms and with so much choice available for consumers, we really want to be a fan engagement company,” he says. This is because engaging with fans “who come back over and over and over again are the easiest people to monetize.”

Such engagement needs to span all age groups. While the average age of a CNN viewer on linear TV in the U.S. is 58, the equivalent figure on Snapchat is early 20’s. “Nobody would have thought that people in their early twenties would have been interested in CNN, but that’s not true,” Martin says.

“Massive investments” in technology have enabled Turner to reach these varied audiences, in addition to new distribution partnerships, according to Martin.

And then there is the proposed merger with AT&T, which Seeking Alpha believes is on a track toward approval. Martin sees the deal as being able to “supercharge our growth” with the addition of 25 million DIRECTV subscribers and AT&T’s 130 million mobile customers.

While Turner won’t offer its content exclusively to AT&T’s customers “because we make money by being agnostic, we’re going to be able to learn a lot.”

Martin is optimistic about this year’s Upfronts and Newfronts negotiations with media buyers, given its lightened commercial loads and the improved quality of ads on its networks. “We’re seeing really great early success and I’m quite confident going into the Upfront this year. I think it’s going to be healthy,” Martin says.

This video was produced in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress 2017.  The series is sponsored by Turner.  Please visit this page for additional segments from MWC.

“Our biggest priority right now is measuring audiences, because we know that there’s a tremendous amount of co-viewing that happens on a television set,” DeTraglia says in an interview with Beet.TV. “You’re less likely to have a family gathered around an iPad.”

At last year’s Upfront, Hulu revealed a new collaboration with Nielsen to enable digital ad measurement through Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings to capture OTT viewing in the living room environment. Hulu said it would have the capability to deliver the accurate measurement of viewership beyond the PC for advertisers on a campaign-level basis.

At the recent 6th Annual Cross-Platform Media Measurement & Data Summit of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, DeTraglia offered an in-depth profile of Hulu viewers as they continue to flock to connected devices in the living room setting. Hulu has 33 million “young and affluent” viewers of its ad-supported offering, according to DeTraglia’s presentation.

As recently as 2014, 54% of Hulu viewing was in the living room, compared with 75% currently. PC viewing declined to 9% from 28%, while mobile slipped slightly, to 16% from 18%.

Drilling deeper into device preferences, Hulu finds that its 5% of tablet viewing over-indexes for older audiences, while its Latino content is more likely to be viewed on a mobile device. Programming about news and information over indexes on PC’s, as do short-form video clips.

Asked about the Digital Ad Ratings initiative, DeTraglia says, “We have made a lot of progress and you’ll probably see more from us on that in the coming weeks. I think this audience measurement will have an impact because it’s a different way than we’ve sold before,” DeTraglia adds. Having third-party audience verification will be “a lot of what we’ll talk about at the Upfront.”

Although television was up 3.3 percent overall, broadcast volume was down by 800 to 815 million and cable volume was down by 500 million. This was largely due to cuts by major advertisers like P&G, GM and Kellogg’s.

“Volume was down and overall spend was, per se, but CPMs increased in many regards,” Swartz says. “But they definitely were not the big jumps that a lot of the networks held out for last year.”

But why?

“Does it mean that total spend in television is being cannibalized by other mediums, like online video?” Swartz asks. “Does it mean that there’s channel cannibalization? Does it mean that total spend is less? Or does it mean that dollars are being held back?”

Online video is estimated to be up 42 percent to $6 billion in 2014, while television saw only 3 percent from 2013 to 2014.

“At the end of the day, online video is going to become more and more relevant,” she says. “It’s going to be interesting to see how online video becomes a business lever used in the scatter market to drive scatter pricing as a long tail over the course of the year, especially when it’s coupled with event or sports-driven stuff that is more real time.”