MIAMI \u2013 As connected-TV\/OTT viewing proliferates and adds to viewer fragmentation, it\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing if you can buy audiences as opposed to demos. And while two minutes of local able advertising inventory remains the norm for addressable campaigns, that\u2019s slowly changing.<\/p>\n
In the connected-TV and OTT space, \u201cThere are quite a few ad-supported services and those are growing,\u201d including Crackle, Vudu and Pluto TV<\/a>, says Jonathan Bokor, Director, Precision Video, Publicis Media Exchange.<\/p>\n In terms of channels or apps being viewed, non-linear viewing does continue to fragment viewership, Bokor explains in this interview at the recent Beet Retreat Miami 2017<\/a>. And since inventory on platforms like Roku is purchased across the entire footprint, it\u2019s done by demographics.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re starting to see and we\u2019re working on programmatic activation. Instead of buying demo, buying audiences on connected TV, which I think is the promising area. Fragmentation is somewhat less of an issue when you\u2019re buying an audience across apps.\u201d<\/p>\n Cable TV operators continue to enable addressable advertising technology, thereby expanding the pool of households than can be targeted with specific ads, but it\u2019s a system-by-system approach and doesn\u2019t yet provide anything near national reach.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do get sort of national reach with the satellite operators because they can be accessed anywhere, but it\u2019s a spotty national,\u201d Bokor<\/a> says.<\/p>\n What\u2019s changing is that programmers themselves are trying to up the addressable inventory pool.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen some outreach from a few of the larger network groups who have secured some inventory on the Comcast platform coming to us and wanting us to invest in addressable TV through the programmer as opposed to the MPVD. That\u2019s a big difference,\u201d Bokor adds.<\/p>\n Streaming pioneer Hulu \u201creally is connected TV and it\u2019s the largest publisher,\u201d while Roku aggregates ad inventory it secures from programmers. \u201cRoku has been a significant source of inventory.\u201d<\/p>\n Publicis is \u201cworking very hard to identify the partners\u201d that can provide \u201ca programmatic pathway for our video teams to be able to access audiences on connected TV across any connected-TV device.\u201d<\/p>\n