MIAMI \u2013 Maybe it\u2019s fitting that a panel about the promise of advanced television advertising takes place in the state that brought us the Ringling Brothers. While data is fueling more qualitative audience targeting decisions, media agencies and their clients can be forgiven if they often feel like perpetual jugglers.<\/p>\n

What becomes clear from the mix of agency, marketer and media company panelists at the recent Beet.tv Retreat 2016 is that technology really hasn\u2019t made the budget allocation process any easier, and that the Upfront period of forward spending commitments not only endures but is spreading to digital as well.<\/p>\n

Asked for his thoughts on the move from agency to client by moderator Matt Spiegel of MediaLink<\/a>, MasterCard\u2019s Ben Jankowski\u2014who spent 28 years in the agency world\u2014says \u201cIt\u2019s more different than I thought it would be.\u201d<\/p>\n

What stands out most is the amount of time that Jankowski, who is SVP of Media, has to spend thinking about AdTech. \u201cI spend probably three times more time than I thought I would on things like ad technology,\u201d says Jankowski. \u201cIt\u2019s a colossal amount of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, putting aside the quantitative side of media optimization, Jankowski believes \u201cthe cool part of what we\u2019re doing\u201d is applying data and insights around more qualitative factors. This includes \u201chow we can use data to become better story tellers,\u201d Jankowski says.<\/p>\n

Jason Baadsgaard, Chief Revenue Officer for video marketing technology company Eyeview<\/a>, says his clients took Eyeview into addressable TV. \u201cWhat I do know is the space we created is very powerful, but it\u2019s also very confusing for the buyers out there,\u201d Baadsgaard says. \u201cI think we overemphasize the technology too much, make it too tech driven and the marketing gets lost. Buyers are just very confused.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to a question from Spiegel about budget allocation, Dan Bruinsma, SVP, Director at GroupConnect, says it\u2019s a combination of top-down and bottom-up activity. It begins with setting a clear vision, according to Bruinsma<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we\u2019re plotting the future of what we want to accomplish in video, then we compartmentalize it in such a way that it allows us to be very forthright when we go into the market,\u201d says Bruinsma.<\/p>\n

On the bottom-up side, while addressable TV \u201cmay be important,\u201d Bruinsma says he can\u2019t just indiscriminately decide \u201cgo ahead and put $5 million in there. We need to do the work to understand all of the economics associated with the size of the segment and communication goals we want to hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

As in many things in life, timing is everything. \u201cTypically we\u2019re still doing a lot of planning and a lot of investment in and around an Upfront, whether it\u2019s a broadcast year or calendar year,\u201d Bruinsma adds.<\/p>\n

His comments provide a segue for Spiegel to inquire about the importance of Upfront deals and how marketers should decide how much budget to commitment ahead and how much to hold back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a balancing act. We\u2019re constantly mixing with a lot of different moving parts on that,\u201d says Andrew Deming<\/a>, SVP of Marketing at Bank of America. \u201cSome years I feel like we actually put a greater importance on the upfront process. Then there are other years where we\u2019re putting less importance on it. Just depends on where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a> is new to the forward spending commitment game, according to Ryan Moore, the platform\u2019s Global Agency Development Head.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first year where some agencies are actively committing upfront TV dollars to our video products,\u201d Moore says. \u201cThat\u2019s an interesting experience where we\u2019ll do year-long contracts based on fixed prices. That was not the twitter world a year ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deming cites Turner Broadcasting\u2019s audience guarantee deals as a positive sign in the trend away from targeting on age and sex demographics. \u201cThese types of insights make me a lot warmer to the idea of laying a higher percentage of the dollars down upfront, because of the fact these tools give you a lot more opportunity to optimize against your audience segments,\u201d Deming says.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you don\u2019t have that fully designed at the time you lay the money down, if you\u2019re working with a Turner and are able to say we have this shift\u201d in audience segments during a campaign, \u201cwe can actually shift the inventory around to align to that. It lowers the risk there,\u201d Deming adds.<\/p>\n

This interview was conducted at Beet Retreat 2016: The Transformation of Television Advertising<\/a>, an executive retreat presented by Videology with AT&T AdWorks and the 605<\/a>. Please find more videos from the event here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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