Unlocking The Addressable Future

According to eMarketer, Addressable TV ad spend is on a tear, increasing from $760million in 2016 and projected to rise to $3.49billion by 2021. The advantages that addressable offers both buyers and sellers also benefits consumers who can now receive messaging that is tailored to their interests and needs. Many companies believe that there is an even greater opportunity for growth in the next few years and are willing to place more dollars against it in the next sales cycle. 

Advertising Week’s panel titled, Unlocking the Addressable Future brought Discovery, Xander, FreeWheel and Omnicom together to discuss how they will ‘unlock’ these opportunities. The potential is great. “First, the infrastructure exists,” stated, David Algranati, Chief Product Officer, Comscore, there is, “the ability to version ads at the household level at scale.” And with national addressable, “If the networks, in conjunction with the MVPDs were to version the inventory that the networks own, the scale or available inventory for addressable advertising would dramatically increase creating a whole new set of opportunities for advertisers.” 

Where is Addressable Today?

For Dan Rosenfeld, Vice President Data Strategy, Xandr, addressable offers relevant advertising delivered one-to-one directly to the consumer or a household through TV distribution or digital. Keith Kazerman, Executive Vice President, Digital Sales, Advanced Advertising and Research, Discovery, essentially agreed, adding that the ads are dynamically inserted.

On the agency side, Matt Kramer, Managing Director, Advanced Advertising, Omnicom, suggested that companies consider the levels of delivery. “At the top you have data driven linear, using first and third party data to better select what networks, dayparts and programs to buy,” he explained, “Layer number two is getting down to the household level and finally you have the IPTV space which is built upon connected devices at the access point and the OTT apps you are trying to sponsor,” which is at the programmatic level.

For Claudio Marcus, General Manager, Data Platform, FreeWheel, addressable identifies segments of consumers who share common attributes and is not necessarily one-to-one marketing.  “This is not,” he assured, “targeting people on a single individual basis.” This is an important distinction, coming at a time of GDPR in the E.U. and state level privacy legislation such as CCPA in the US. He added that addressable offers not only target-ability but is also ubiquitously measureable. “The measurement component of addressability extends beyond the households that don’t support targeting today,” he stated, meaning that an advertiser can deliver a linear ad and still understand which household received that ad. 

Where is Addressable going?

So today, Addressable can be used in a myriad of ways to capture consumers by segment and to measure against traditional targeting and delivery. But where is it headed? For Marcus, looking ahead three years from now will bring profound applications. "Three years from now, the definition of addressable TV advertising will be ads that are targeted to anonymous, likeminded segments of consumers who are reached via TV and premium video content, regardless of the type of delivery or device. Addressable TV ads will be seamlessly enabled across National, Local and premium digital video, and will considerably easier to plan, buy, execute and measure," he predicted.

For Zazerman, the stakes are high and collaboration is pivotal. “If national programmer addressability is not available at scale in 3 years, everyone on this stage should be held accountable. Collaboration is key to bringing this opportunity to market for our collective clients,” he concluded.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com