SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico\u2014Eventually, all television content will be IP-delivered and all advertising inventory will be made available \u201cin the same place in the same way,\u201d according to NBCUniversal\u2019s Denise Colella. But not all ad inventory will be bought on audiences, she predicted at this year\u2019s Beet Retreat<\/a>.<\/p>\n Colella joined Howard Shimmel<\/a>, formerly of Turner Broadcasting and now the head of the Janus Strategies and Insights consultancy, in a fireside chat titled Setting the Aperture for a Consumer-Centric TV in which Colella<\/a> described NBC\u2019s audience optimization solutions and discussed its motivation to join the OpenAP consortium.<\/p>\n \u201cCan there ever be one unified pool of inventory?\u201d asked Shimmel. \u201cIf you have to go to five different stores to buy the ingredients for your dinner, it\u2019s a little annoying.\u201d<\/p>\n Colella acknowledged that \u201cit\u2019s a real problem\u201d in light of digital walled gardens and several marketplaces, including AT&T\u2019s new Xander unit. \u201cBut eventually there will be a reduced number of marketplaces, as well as one report across channels that advertisers will be able to look at.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked by Shimmel whether that\u2019s a decade away, Colella responded, \u201cI\u2019m typically a glass-half-full person so I think it\u2019s a bit faster than that, but it\u2019s definitely a few years out. No matter how great a digital system or addressable we develop, as long as there are these legacy systems we\u2019re not going to be able to get the data we need, we\u2019re not going to be able to target the way we need to.\u201d<\/p>\n She then provided a recap of NBC\u2019s audience optimization efforts, which use second-by-second viewership data to target at the show level. \u201cThe optimizer is able to find your audience in its highest concentration at a desired frequency,\u201d said Colella, who does not foresee a wholesale shift to audience buying.<\/p>\n \u201cI think in the future we\u2019re still going to see sponsorships. I think that there will be a portion that is bought on an emotional buy.\u201d<\/p>\n NBCU\u2019s decision to hold off from joining the OpenAP audience targeting consortium until about a year after its launch was the result of a feeling that it wasn\u2019t far enough along, combined with internal concerns, according to Colella.<\/p>\n \u201cSo our decision to join was when was joining OpenAP not going to set us back with our own systems, because we had ways of doing things, investments had been made. So we felt when it was mature enough we would take the plunge,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very much a work in progress. We\u2019re tasked with a gigantic problem.\u201d<\/p>\n