US
International Media was the host of the second meeting of the Secret Society on
TV Programmatic held just before Thanksgiving. Mitch Oscar presided over the
cohort, which included representatives from 4C Insights, AT&T/DirecTV,
BIA/Kelsey, Cablevision, Epsilon, Experian, Horizon, Media Kitchen, Prohaska
Group, Rentrak, Rovi, Sintec, TiVo, USIM, and Videa.
As
part of the secretiveness of the meeting, all wore masks…just for the group
photograph. Then the masks and gloves were off. The areas of lively contention were De-duping
datasets, the cost of data and Data-gaps.
My
Take: The Secret Society was formed to take a deep, objective dive into the
issues of TV Programmatic. In a media storm of pronouncements and self-promotions
by various companies, it is difficult for many of us to make sense of the real
challenges in rolling out programmatic into TV, especially national TV. For
example, while I was aware of the need to de-dupe data, I never considered the
challenge of STB household data overlap when one begins to collect STB data
from several suppliers. I assumed that the PII (Personally Identifiable
Information) would solve for that problem. With this issue, as with the others
outlined in this article, the question of responsibility loomed large. The
data-ists at the table thought the responsibility of de-duped audiences resided
with the ad agencies and programmers; the ad agencies and programmers
vehemently suggested the reverse. From what I see so far, TV Programmatic is
becoming one big game of hot potato.
At
the first meeting of the Secret Society, a few months ago, programmatic local
TV platform Videa discussed the need for the media community, buyers and
sellers, to have access to multiple data sources to drive programmatic market
transparency. They said that they were in discussion with a variety of data
companies - 4C Insights, Cardlytics, Civis, FourthWall, Nieslen, Rentrak and
TiVo – to obtain data sets from each in order to comprehend how they could be
utilized to better serve their constituencies.
Data Overlap
For
a marketer cobbling a national campaign using the full set of data suppliers
from Rentrak to Nielsen, TiVo to Fourthwall, to AT&T/DreicTV to individual
MVPDs, there is the issue of de-duping these standardized but overlapping
industry datasets. No one is doing this now. All concurred. Videa’s Bret
Adamczyk, VP Business Development & Strategy, led the discussion. “Here is
part of my problem, I’m paying, or will be paying, millions of dollars to
license datasets from the majority of people that are on that side of the
business and a lot of those people are licensing the same data from the same
people that are on that side.”
Data De-Duping
The
question raised was: Are the buyers of data getting the same data over and over
again? How can the players in the space that are utilizing the data de-dupe it
so we can be sure that we are not using the same homes several times when we
only need to use them once? “When I try to do my targeting on a program level
basis, we (Videa) are pulling information from our station partners’ traffic
warehouses that we have four years of history down to the spot level: what ran,
what the price was, what the rating was… What we need to be able to do is
overlay data from an audience targeting perspective so we can index those
attributes against every program that is on the schedule,” Bret explained.
Dayparts
Mitch
Oscar, the Secret Society organizer, said, “In terms of national programmatic TV, advertisers do not
know the specific TV network programs that they purchase. We only know networks
and the total number of impressions purchased by the individual network. No
dayparts. At the conclusion of the campaign the post analysis consists of total
impressions broken down by individual network, daypart breakdown by total
schedule (all networks) and if requested an As Run report.” In terms of the As
Run report, Mitch quipped: “the As Run report for one of our campaigns, which
cost $150,000, consisted of over 163,000 lines of reportage detail spread of
3,500 pages.”
Addressability
The
discussion then jumped to the topic of data and TV addressability. The group agreed
that local broadcasters, at this juncture, do not have addressable
capabilities. An advertiser can buy the DMA, which is tough to target audiences.
A debate ensued about what type of data intelligence could be brought to local
other than the generic DMA buy or the more granular zip level. Frank Foster,
SVP, GM TiVo stated, “The CEO of Walmart says that programmatic TV doesn’t do
what he wants for Walmart. He may want to drive people to the store from
12n-5pm so they need to see the message from 10am-12n. We therefore need first
party foot traffic and be able to show the differences in campaigns for both
local and non-local.”
Next Steps
As
the meet concluded, a task was presented to different members: Videa was
directed to put together a list of 10 data points that they would want the data
providers to help answer; TiVo, 4C Insights, Rentrak and Epsilon were tasked
with coming up with 10 data points that individually they think Videa should be
requesting; and USIM, Horizon and The Media Kitchen would compare notes and
present findings.
The
challenges seem formidable. Even the creation of a JIC (Joint Industry
Committee) to facilitate the standardization of edit rules or duplication of
datasets is fraught with business conflict. If, for example, it is decided that
one data company has a large duplication with other data companies, how would
the market respond? Would the highly duplicated company lose business?
Something that ultimately could help the many could potentially be deadly for a
few. But not findings ways to address data concerns is also problematic.
As
Russell Zingale, President of USIM, noted, “Every data company should be purchased
by everyone in the food chain, whether it is a content creator, content
distributor like the MVPDs or an agency. That is a lot of data for each of
these groups to license – though it would be wonderful for the data companies
to have such a lucrative business.”
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