Managing Local TV Market Traffic in the Ad Tech Age

Local traffic systems are often legacy systems, having processed local TV market buys for the industry for years. Now, in an age of greater data diversity and granularity, many of these systems are straining to keep up—but the future of local TV market traffic must bring change.

You Need Data and Reach

With big data sets now available to measure television, a low sample size should be a thing of the past—even at the local level. “Of the local agency clients (of Rentrak) with whom I have spoken, they have stressed the importance of stability in the ratings, availability across all networks, ‘no zeroes,’ and the ability to characterize the audience beyond age-gender,” says Caroline Horner, co-founder of advertising agency SpicyTequila. Horner also notes that advertisers buying across multiple markets want consistent metrics and tools.

This means local traffic systems should be able to import more granular data to better track contract inventory. There’s also a need to go beyond ratings and delivery as a measure of success in trafficking contracts. Reach is becoming even more of a must-have for advertisers—but few systems have updated or attempted to address either reach or target reach. “The growing importance of local reach and the need for updating the reach methodology is a common conversation,” says Horner.

Read the full article at the Videa blog.