Talking to Jon Watts, the co-founder and managing partner of MTM London at the Beet Retreat, a half-day Beet.TV event in New York hosted by Publicis Media, Vendetti says that while the TV industry has changed largely for the better over the last 10 years, it’s also become more challenging for advertising agencies to find and understand audiences.

“Our goal is to reach the right person with the right message at the right moment, and the fragmentation and diversification of television and video overall makes that a bigger challenge,” says Vendetti. But, the opportunity there is worth investing the time and money required to solve the fragmentation problem. “The ability to serve ads through digital platforms and personalize ads gives us the opportunity to be really effective.”

Zenith’s main goal is to drive value for clients as an agency, by helping them figure out where to invest their marketing dollars, drive business results and develop a process to be able to prove out what’s working and what’s not. But that’s the most difficult part right now, according to Vendetti. For instance, if Zenith guides clients to invest 60% of their marketing budget in linear TV, 30% of it in VOD and 10% in FEP, it’s hard to prove to clients that each investment had incremental impact on the bottom line. While linear TV still has the same benefit for advertisers that it always has – mass reach – being able to capitalize on that as well as more targeted, personalized mediums at the same time is difficult because of how quickly the industry has changed in some ways, and how little it’s changed in others.

Like Zenith Media’s evp of national video activation, Nicholas Hartofilis, also told Beet.TV, finding a solution is going to require a consolidated effort from the industry as a whole.

“Our systems have not evolved quickly enough to keep up with the way consumers are accessing content, and the way we need to be nimble and flexible for clients, so that friction is real,” says Vendetti. “It will take the entire industry coming together and figuring out better ways in order to reduce it. It needs to be prioritized.”

This video was produced at the Beet Retreat leadership event hosted by Publicis Media in New York. The event and video series is sponsored by FreeWheel and LiveRamp. For more videos from the event, please visit this page. 

“Have [advanced TV] be a complete choice in what targets we can apply, the ability to actually get to a point of true automation, going full end-to-end, and being able to do that at speed and scale. That’s not where we before,” Hartofilis tells Jon Watts, the co-founder and managing partner of MTM London at the Beet Retreat, a half-day Beet.TV event in New York hosted by Publicis Media.

Right now, these capabilities aren’t yet matured, except for data-driven linear, Hartofilis says, which has helped precision in planning and audience targeting and in getting more yield out of TV. “We just now need to get to that next phase, which is beyond planning,” says Hartofilis.

That’s where Zenith’s 2.0 phase comes in. After launching a precision TV service two years ago, returns have diminished as the industry has continued to evolve and the company is now expanding. “[We’re] getting to the point where with one lens you can see a much broader landscape, and starting to take it to the next level,” says Hartofilis. That includes a focus on convergence – taking areas where companies are spending a lot of money and bringing them together in order to make the most of those investments.

More convergence and collaboration will take shape in 2020, says Hartofilis, as companies leading transformation in the industry will need to work together instead of partake in a “data arms race.”

“There’s definitely an arms race – there’s a data arms race, an addressability hidden arms race going on right now and at the end of the day, we need to come together to be able to scale as all collective stakeholders to make sure that what we bring to market is right,” he says.

This video was produced at the Beet Retreat leadership event hosted Publicis Media in New York. The event and video series is sponsored by FreeWheel and LiveRamp. For more videos from the event, please visit this page. 

This video is a highlight compilation our several of our conversations.

The first three are a related trio of concerns. Quality storytelling derives from consumer data and insights, the end product of which can be ripe for brand integration. Meredith Corporation’s extensive presence at the NewFronts was crafted to address all of these concerns.

“We’re trying to create advertising that becomes what people are interested in, rather than simply interrupting what they’re interested in,” is the way that Shane Akeney, President, Havas Media Group NA, sums things up in this video compilation, which Meredith presented in its NewFronts event on the big screen at Manhattan’s Hudson Theatre. “Big leaps can be made in creating content that is so compelling that consumers want to watch it, want to see it, want to actually be experiencing it.”

Rather than “insert” themselves into content, brand should be there “because they’re making the content better,” says Matt Seilor, President Brand Solutions, Dentsu Aegis Network.

Accountability means measurable returns on advertising spend. “I think the days of an advertiser just kind of spending money and hoping for the best are over,” says Jason Harrison, President and Client Partner, Essence.

Brand safety was a major theme during the week of NewFronts events, echoed by most participants and those featured in this video. They are:

Marla Kaplowitz, President & CEO, 4A’s.

Will Warren, EVP, Digital Investment, Zenith Media.

Yin Woon Rani, VP Integrated Marketing, Campbell Soup Company.

Christine Peterson, Managing Director, Digital Investment Lead, Mindshare.

Shane Akeney, President, Havas Media Group NA.

Matt Seilor, President Brand Solutions, Dentsu Aegis Network.

Jason Harrison, President and Client Partner, Essence.

Joe Barone, Managing Partner, Brand Safety Americas, GroupM.

Ben Winkler, Chief Investment Officer, OMD.

Joe Barone, Managing Partner, Brand Safety Americas, GroupM.

Louis Jones, EVP, Media & Data, 4A’s.

This video was presented on May 4 at the Meredith NewFronts presentation on the big screen of the Hudson Theater.

This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts. It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts, which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For the full version of videos from the series, please visit this page.

As Variety reports: “Digital players such as Hulu, YouTube and Vice are all slated to pitch Madison Avenue power brokers at this year’s slimmed down NewFronts, which kick off April 30 as a complement to TV’s annual upfronts. This year’s lineup is smaller overall but more tightly focused on premium content companies.”

As well as the shift to premium, what else could be different?

One media agency exec wants to see a more concerted commitment from publishers on how they can use their data in ad campaigns.

“With regard to the NewFront, one of the things that has come up historically has been almost an abstract discussion of data,” says Zenith  Media digital investment EVP Will Warren.

“I think what needs to come into play is, ‘How are publishers themselves using those types of information that they own specifically to help drive their own business forward?’

“I think the potential is still there but it is one that is I’d say slightly unfocused, that maybe it needs to have a bit more focus as we shape solutions moving forward.”

The NewFronts, almost by definition, are centered on how publishers use content to sell ad space to advertisers. But, in the new advertising world, agencies like Warren’s also want to see that they can offer audience data as part of the sell.

It’s not that Warren doesn’t see the value of content in its own right.

“The value of some premium content producers is that it’s not only a brand-safe environment, it’s one that should be brand accretive as well,” he says. “The context of what is being the story that’s being told, the opportunity to connect more deeply with that content in a way as marketer that could have much more value in that front.”

But he wants publishers to go deeper with data, saying: “Data by itself is dumb.”

This video is part of a series titled The Road to the Digital Content NewFronts. It is a preview of topics to be explored at IAB’s NewFronts, which begin on April 30. This series is presented by Meredith Corporation. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

From year to year at CES, Shlachter sees a lot of incremental changes in technology, particularly regarding connected vehicles and homes. “For me what’s most interesting is what can we do with that? It’s been a promise for a long time and I think it’s going to become more of a reality now, particularly between the car and the home and the person itself,” he says.

Uniform standards for targeting people with ads one-on-one and measuring the results will provide “better value for consumers and make more use out of the space that we play in,” he adds.

The convergence of the digital and traditional media worlds now more than ever is opening a whole new world of opportunities from a creative standpoint, according to Shlachter. However, new approaches are needed to move things along.

“We have to get past the days of trying to fit one creative concept into a lot of different screens and formats, because we see that it doesn’t work as well,” Shlachter says before acknowledging that it’s hard to create a lot of native experiences for every single platform across a 360-degree media plan.

Finding better ways to integrate data and technology to automate creative delivery will be more useful than trying to “create some one-size-fits-all messaging that may help us scale but may not pay off,” he says.

In the meantime, Shlachter is excited about the one-to-many approach that Verizon took when partnering with other companies to live-stream the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2016. As Broadcasting & Cable reports, NBCUniversal produced a live stream of the parade separate from NBC’s broadcast that was shot with 360-degree cameras and viewable on Verizon’s YouTube page.

Calling it a “monumental effort,” Shlachter says Verizon garnered “a ton of positive feedback and sentiment from everything we were able to measure.”

This video was produced as part Beet. TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.