While there are tactical ways to make advertising more relevant, Terry Kawaja believes there\u2019s a bigger concept at play: relegating interruptive advertising to the past.<\/p>\n
The Founder & CEO of LUMA Partners<\/a> will be one of some 250 industry leaders attending The Relevance Conference<\/a> hosted by AT&T in Santa Barbara on Sept. 24-26. On the opening day he will join Otter Media\u2019s Tony Goncalvez and others on a panel titled Putting A Price On Content that will explore the \u201chappy medium\u201d between paid subscription models and ad-supported media.<\/p>\n While AT&T has planted a very large flag in acquiring some of the biggest content and adtech assets, it all comes down to brands changing the ad experience for consumers who have lots of choices, he says in this interview with Beet.TV at the annual DMEXCO<\/a> conference.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be very exciting to see a company with deep pockets, very, very capable, pursue the dream that is convergent television,\u201d he says of AT&T in the wake of its bringing Warner Media and AppNexus under its communications, content and advertising umbrella. \u201cIt\u2019s great for ad tech but forget that, it is great for media and marketing writ large. This is a company that demonstrates that it\u2019s not afraid to put its money where its mouth is and get the very, very best.\u201d<\/p>\n At base level, relevance can have meaning with respect to targeting, personalization and other tactics, but with today\u2019s consumers there is a much higher level at which the term needs to be considered, according to Kawaja.<\/p>\n \u201cNetflix has trained them that they can get premium content without interruption,\u201d he says, and \u201cwith the training that these paid models have got us all used to, now it\u2019s hard to go back, either once you have the skip button on an ad or just don\u2019t see any ads at all. The ads have to have a different nature.\u201d<\/p>\n Noting that the advertising industry is one \u201cbuilt on the premise of interruption,\u201d he adds, \u201cI think we have to get away from that.\u201d<\/p>\n He cites as an admittedly \u201cextreme\u201d example paid search, where unlike other advertising, consumer intent means everyone involved can win.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I\u2019m looking for a Thai restaurant in St. Louis and I enter that search result, I\u2019m going to get back a bunch of media with ads in it. Turns out the ads are facilitative of my original intent of pursuing that media.\u201d<\/p>\n More in the mainstream realm, he mentions ads in The Weather Channel app that don\u2019t block the experience because they\u2019re in the background, juxtaposed with current weather conditions. \u201cThe ad is, in fact, additive to the content. At the core we need less advertising, certainly less interruptive advertising and the notion of relevance I think gets to that acknowledgement that we need a better consumer experience.\u201d<\/p>\n