List of Interviews

Oct 5, 2018

Mike Bologna Predicts the Future of Addressable Television


As the structure of the TV buy and sell paradigm evolves with advancements in automation, technology and protocols, the future of television is filled with a range of dramatic possibilities. Mike Bologna, President one2one Addressable, Cadent, presented his views of what he sees as the future of Addressable TV at the recent TVB conference held in New York. 

Bologna spoke with Videa President Shereta Williams about what’s next in targeted TV and automation for broadcasters. The discussion focused on the automation of the business model to, as he explained, “enable new business models; what broadcasters are doing to advance standard API adoption through the TIP initiative; what is the local broadcast Addressable Advertising opportunity now and in the future; and how will connected TVs and ATSC 3.0 adoption enable Addressable Advertising.” The TIP initiative is a partnership between system providers in order to streamline transaction workflows and create greater inter-activity between various buy and sell systems. 

The Pressure is On
For Bologna, TV once involved the entire family sitting around a wooden TV box viewing content together. But that was a long time ago. “TV was easier to plan, buy and measure,” he reminisced, “But that is not the case anymore. Now no one is at home watching TV. We are now in a world where consumers have all the choices in the world.”

All players in the ecosystem have their challenges. Overall, the industry needs to be nimble and forward-moving. There is a natural tendency to strive for the perfect solution but that can hamper progress but hesitation is lethal. “TV is changing,” he stated, “and we can't wait until its ‘perfect’ to adopt addressable.” He also pointed out that data and technology are the center of the TV business and the industry is poised for great change.

Brands are under a lot of pressure to “get the most bang for their buck,” while, “Media owners need the highest rent they can get so they can continue to produce great content. It is a complex marketplace,” he noted. And agencies, according to Bologna, have the hardest job of all. “Agencies have the burden of putting all of it together holistically and not in silos.”

Actionable Steps
Broadcasters face their own unique challenges in implementing addressable (including carriage agreements, unified measurement system). Marketers are limited with two minutes per hour. And between the two entities, there are a myriad of legacy buy/sell systems that have “a lot of pieces to be stitched together across twelve different systems. There is no way we can scale without solving that problem. That is where the TIP initiative comes it.” The opportunities are there for these two sides of the buy/sell to facilitate the targeting of messages to reach the right consumers at the right time.

“Define a segment and send a message to that particular home,” he stated. “Addressability should deliver audience at scale. Not 120 million households but whatever the percent of the U.S. your target audience is. And it should tie back to a sale or whatever you are trying to achieve.”

The messaging “has to be efficient as calculated by price divided by return in investment,” he noted and added, “It has to be transparent in terms of scale and it has to drive results you want. (Addressable) is the only area of TV where you start with a segment, match it, feed it in and tie it back to a sale.”

New Technology
Broadcasters need to take full advantage of the emerging technology of smart TVs. “If your TV is connected to the internet you can receive an addressable ad. This is the broadcaster's marketplace to win and conquer,” he said. “Today, implementation of addressable advertising faces challenges of scale. With an alliance between the TVB and several Smart TV OEM’s, this is a great proof of concept and interim solution until ATSC 3.0 is in play,” he advised. 

But he is also realistic about the timeline for ATSC 3.0. “Speaking specifically about broadcast, ATSC 3.0 will solve this for us tomorrow if it was mandatory, which it is not. Because it isn't mandatory and it costs money it will be a slow roll out.” Despite this, he is bullish on the ATSC 3.0 Protocol Stack as a future game-changer. “It will speed up adoption of addressable TV, though it could be a while until this protocol is widely adopted,” he hedged.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com


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