Athena may be known as the goddess of wisdom, courage and
inspiration in some circles, but in the media world, Athena is best known as a4’s
new addressable advertising platform. Michelle Pannell, a4’s Director of
Product Management, is overseeing the rollout and implementation of Athena and
is enthusiastic about its range of abilities for advertisers. “It’s all about
the audience,” she explained, “We are creating a way for small businesses to
have easy access to data so that they know that they are targeting the right
audiences.”
Pannell has deep experience in digital sales and advanced
advertising, combining local sales acumen with product development and
marketing. Her work on Athena over the past two years has been to build out the
system and expand the range from footprint-only linear television and digital multiscreen
to national TV and digital everywhere. “The last two months we started rolling
out the newest version of Athena which is digital everywhere,” she noted. Her
job now is to train all of the local sales executives in all of Athena’s
features and capabilities. “We have 200 sales people from across the country
and a lot of them are traditional linear TV sales people. My job is to show
them how digital works.”
Athena the Powerful
Athena’s
power rests in the data. “We have an advanced way of reaching audiences at the
household level because of the technology that sits in the cable system behind
the firewall. It allows us to gather IP addresses,” she stated. And this IP
data is constantly refreshed so it is as accurate as possible. a4,
which is owned by Altice, partners with a slew of data services which enables
advertisers to highly target their audiences outside of the Altice footprint.
“We have access to many data sources nationwide that other companies don’t have
access to,” she added.
Athena the Private
Working with
so many datasets and capturing data off the box leads to the question of
privacy. For a4 and Pannell, privacy compliance is paramount. “We are taking
those IP data, which is obviously tied to a household address, and feed it into
a compiler which takes all the IP data and translates it into a unique
household ID that we then use to target in the aggregate to maintain privacy,”
she explained. “That UHH ID is what we share with the DSP. We are not sharing
an address. We’re not sharing names.” These IDs are just to create a segment
for advertisers to use to target their audiences.
Athena the Sales Solution
Athena
offers advertisers an opportunity to easily craft their campaign. There is the
opportunity to choose location, audience characteristics and lifestyle, “We
also have automotive data because it is such an important category,” she
stated. The platform also has a media recommendation capability that helps
advertisers better match their segments to the right platform and media. Then
advertisers add their budget and the platform calculates an optimized media
plan with de-duped reach into the media buying platform.
The response
from sales people has been very positive. “There are quite a few digital
agencies specifically and larger agencies that are excited to have access to
the data. The feedback has been great both internally and externally,” she
concluded. Going forward, since the television component is “national level
only right now and digital is everywhere,” she would like to see “local television
enablement everywhere in the country as well, so an advertiser in a non-Altice
market can create a media plan and advertise on television and digital.” That
future is not that far off.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
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