CANNES \u2013 Sir Martin Sorrell says marketers are changing their attitudes toward programmatic media buying at the same time as the growth of alternative content continues unabated. In this interview with Beet.TV, he also talks about WPP\u2019s investments in content producers and how advertising \u201cin one form or other\u201d is seeping into Netflix.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the television UpFront season, Sorrell thinks traditional networks have done pretty well price-wise. \u201c\u201cI think they\u2019re quite bullish about the UpFronts in the U.S. They\u2019re seeing reasonably significant prices increases in the mid single-digit area at a time when we\u2019re seeing deflation elsewhere,\u201d says Sorrell, who is Founder & CEO of WPP. \u201cSo I think owners of the inventory feel pretty good about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then cites \u201cobviously broader and much more significant opportunities\u201d for advertisers in the programmatic space. It\u2019s an area where WPP<\/a> has made significant investments in its Xaxis unit and [m]PLATFORM technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re offering something a little bit more than programmatic as it overlays brings in data and technology inputs, which make it far more sophisticated in terms of targeting,\u201d Sorrell says.<\/p>\n

Clients that had been concerned about some aspects of programmatic buying are thinking differently, he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing I think the start of a groundswell of change in attitude toward programmatic,\u201d Sorrell says, citing marketers\u2019 in-house operations \u201cperhaps becoming less attractive\u201d for reasons that include the need to keep updating the technology.<\/p>\n

Turning his attention to newer content providers like Amazon he notes, \u201cThe amount of money that these companies are willing to invest in content is quite considerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says it\u2019s not uncommon for Amazon to spend $10 million on one, hour-long episode, \u201cNetflix maybe $7 million and the more traditional producers spending about three.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for whether Netflix, which according to Sorrell loses money on a cash flow basis, can ever turn that around, the answer will lie in its subscription and advertising policies. \u201cIn a way Netflix is already advertising, it has product placement warnings in front of some of its series already. So we are starting to see advertising in one form or other start to invade the Netflix platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Companies like WPP, which traditionally had concentrated their investments outside of the content creation sector, have changed their thinking and are ramping up on the sell-side. Sorrell points to investments in Vice Media, Refinery29, 88rising<\/a> and Mic as examples of his company\u2019s need to experiment \u201cto see how we can learn more and how are clients can be involved in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This video is from The New TV Ecosystem Forum at Cannes Lions 2017, presented by FreeWheel<\/a>. For more from the series, please visit this page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CANNES \u2013 Sir Martin Sorrell says marketers are changing their attitudes toward programmatic media buying at the same time as the growth of alternative content continues unabated. In this interview with Beet.TV, he also talks about WPP\u2019s investments in content producers and how advertising \u201cin one form or other\u201d is seeping into Netflix. In the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[6587,6588],"tags":[5286,5314,5281,4136,5182,5237,6408,6597,6608],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}