Getting Rid of the Noise in Advertising and Data. An Interview with a4’s Hamid Qayyum

Hamid Qayyum, Head of Strategic Partnerships at a4, is a data and media veteran, starting his career at ratings upstart, erinMedia back in the 1990s. He is currently charged with taking all the data and media that is gathered from Altice and other data partnerships and acquisitions and use it to supercharge a4’s local and national sales efforts. 

Qayyum works with brands, agencies and supply partners “to facilitate our ability to deliver advertising effectively across all devices that consume media,” for the a4 universe of 92 million optimized linear TV households and 65 million IP addressable households. 

Charlene Weisler: You have worked for companies who very early on were working with data in very creative ways. How has the data landscape changed since the 1990s?

Hamid Qayyum: Data collection is far easier now. As the world becomes more digital, there is better data and as the TV world becomes more IP, we have access to more data. But on the flip side, we have to be more careful with how we treat that data – with more privacy and making sure that we are good caretakers of people’s profiles and habits. We have access to data that is very personal so we have to make sure that we guard that data very carefully. The more data we get the better products we can provide. From the media advertising perspective, we can do a better job of understanding what a consumer wants and delivering it to the consumer who wants it. 

Weisler: Talking about privacy and GDPR, how do you see this impacting the U.S.?

Qayyum: It’s very relevant for us. Altice, being a cable company and a4 being a division of Altice we take privacy very seriously. We have a lot of safeguards, such as a firewall between us and the data, to be sure that we got things right. How we use data, the ways we use data, we make sure that it complies with the latest privacy rules. Some industries will be greatly impacted by GDPR more than it will impact us because have already taken steps to be ahead of the curve and be GDPR compliant … or better. We don’t scrape data. There are a lot of companies that will scrape the bid stream and say ‘We have an IP address that we can target’ but we don’t do anything like that. That data is not really authenticated.  We authenticate everything in a privacy compliant manner.  

Weisler: What are the different datasets that you use?

Qayyum: One of the advantages we have is that we are part of Altice USA which is a very large marketer. We work very closely with the Altice marketing team to facilitate their marketing efforts. We also use the data that is used for marketing Altice’s products to better serve our strategic marketing partners from demographics to lifestyle to purchase habits to all of the viewership statistics – some of it is proprietary and some is acquired –as well as IP data. We have created a data warehouse that we can use for our national partners, brands and agencies. We also have a lot of political data, unique viewership data sets and have created a range of proprietary segments.

Data is at the core of what we do. But we don’t sell data. We are a media company. When you come to us you can buy local media, national media, TV, Digital and we will use all of this data that we have to find your audience.

Weisler: Altice was Cablevision. So this is Cablevision data?

Qayyum: We also have Suddenlink in addition to Cablevision plus data we acquire and data we receive through partnerships.

Weisler: What about the impact of the new technology – ATSC 3.0 and 5G?

Qayyum: The way we look at it from our side of the business, the more bandwidth you have, the more you will consume that bandwidth on more devices in the home. That is why we like the IP targeting aspect of our business, because consumers will consume more outside of just watching the television, whether through OTT or some other mechanism of content delivery.

That bandwidth has a couple of uses. One is driving the streaming part of the business and the other is driving the gaming part of the business. Everyone wants low latency in gaming. We are making huge headway in CTV and OTT with new offerings that leverage our IP targeting technology to deliver the next generation of addressable television. We have partnered with AT&T to cover the linear part of the addressable business to make a national footprint but also have the future of addressable through OTT and CTV where we leverage the IP targeting technology incorporated in our system to create a true multiscreen addressable solution.

Weisler: Can you de-duplicate your data?

Qayyum: Yes. We partner with various companies such as LiveRamp and Experian for data matching, etc. and we have a superb data team here internally that warehouses it and does the deduping. We then make it available to our customers for media buying through our platform, Athena. 

Weisler: What are some of the critical issues that the media industry faces now?

Qayyum: First, there is a lot of noise out there – what companies say they can do vs. what they can actually do. There are privacy regulations but data is still in the ‘wild west’ phase of evolution.  It would be great to have something that assigns a value to the data you have. People say, ‘here is the value of my data’ and that data may be wrong or improperly collected and there is no real way to say that this data is pure, authentic or good. 

The other issue is value of media. There are a lot of media choices as media consumption fragments. You no longer have families gathering in front of the TV on a Thursday night at 8 pm to watch Seinfeld. So while the audience and devices fragment, the business still works in silos. There are TV buyers and digital buyers. We need to get those walls broken so an advertiser can get the best value for their money. We broke down that barrier for Altice with a comprehensive media approach and are doing the same for other progressive marketers. 

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

What Is ATSC 3.0: The Latest Updates on the New Standard

Back in February, the industry was abuzz about ATSC 3.0 and its possibilities for transforming television, especially local TV.

There was the hope that ATSC 3.0 would lead to a more level playing field by enabling local stations to sell their data as well as leverage new technological capabilities such as on-demand.
Since then, though there has been a lot of quiet, behind-the-scenes work, the lack of public announcements has led to some questions about its progress. So, what is ATSC 3.0’s current status?

Current Build-Out Status

According to ATSC, work on ATSC 3.0 is divided into layers:

• Physical – the core transmission system for over-the-air broadcasting usability and quality. This has been tentatively adopted by the industry.
• Management and Protocol – the plumbing that connects the physical layer with the application layer, enabling things like delivery, personalization, and interaction. A consensus has been reached, although details are still being worked out.
• Application and Presentation – handles viewer experiences involving video and audio coding and the run-time environment. Key features will include enhanced TV, on-demand, subscriptions, digital rights, mobile and fixed devices, and hybrid delivery with pushed content.
• Extensibility – methods that will allow ATSC 3.0 to keep up with industry changes as the initial technology improves and advances.

Though these layers are in progress, much work remains.

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

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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How Will ATSC 3.0 Impact Local Television?

ATSC 3.0 has been receiving a lot of buzz at industry shows like TV of Tomorrow and CES. Described as a game-changer, this new protocol promises advancements that will enable interactivity on-demand for over-the-air local television.

Experts from the field are often bullish but admit there will be a lot of disintermediation, disruption, and transformation that—at least for the short term—could create uncertainty. Here are some of the anticipated pros, cons, and in-betweens.

Further Consolidation

There could be additional local consolidation by companies like Tegna and Sinclair Broadcasting, which might “enable those companies to streamline content production, content delivery, programmatic buying, and ad delivery from a central location,” said Tracy Swedlow, co-founder and chief executive officer at TMRW Corporation.

This could work well for advertisers by creating cost efficiencies and new opportunities for monetization, but could remove the local feel by leaving office operations to be conducted outside the market.

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Welcome the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The TV of Tomorrow Offers an Exciting and Dystopian Future.

Where is TV headed? What is the TV of tomorrow? That was the question on my mind while attending the TV of Tomorrow conference held in NYC last week.

Many issues are hitting the industry now. “People are trying to aggregate data in order to organize the KPIs and monetize them while understanding all of the barriers involved how to bring all that data together,’” noted, Tracy Swedlow, Editor-in-Chief of ITVT and Founder of the TVOT Conference. In the realm of social media, many companies are grappling with “YouTube and their changing algorithms, libraries that are being de-monetized and the creation of greener pastures,” she added. 

One thing is clear; the TV ecosystem of today will definitely not be the TV ecosystem of tomorrow. Millennials are cord-nevers who didn’t grow up in a world of TV networks. Don’t expect them to change their habits as they age. And they don’t see the media landscape the way older viewers do. As Helen Katz, SVP/Global Director of Media and Insights, Publicis Media, explained when she asked her daughter what her favorite TV channels were, replied, “What is a TV channel?” 

For those of use with years invested in the industry, the changes discussed at the TVOT are at once exciting and dystopian. Here are my takeaways:

Increasing Technological Dominance

This drumbeat of technological change is leading to what Stein Erik Sorhaug, VP Product Strategy, Vimond, terms the Fourth Industrial Revolution where, through artificial intelligence (AI), we will drive human behavior and human thought. AI, as applied through Machine Learning, has the future capability to craft the most engaging content, map the most effective media plan and measure everything everywhere through the consumer journey. Ideally there will be room for both AI and human input where computers "create an inference layer" according to Mika Rautiainen, CEO/CTO, Valossa Labs, followed by "human curators editorially creating playlists and new channels," Sorhaug added.

Skill sets need to keep pace

Certain jobs could disappear in this new media ecosystem or will require different skill sets. "No question that people in yesterday's supply chain will be wiped out," stated Dave Morgan, CEO, Simulmedia, "marketing managers today don't have hard science background and will lose jobs to those who do." Swedlow suggested future media mavens, “create their own channel with their own ideas for original content. There will always be an opportunity for great content with real personalities and people who have a compelling story to tell.” 

Measurement Still a Challenge

“The lines between linear and digital are blurring,” explained Jenny Burke, SVP Sales Strategy, NBCU, “so we are concentrating on content; distributing it to whatever platform the consumer prefers.” How can this consumer journey be best measured? Aaron Fetters, SVP National Agencies and CPG Business, comScore, noted that, “times are changing and measurement must change with it. We need to future proof measurement with the growth in IoT, OTT and wearables.” But how can we accomplish this when there are walled gardens and silos of data and no industry standard content identification system in place? Until we can agree on the best way to track content, through content identification and ACR, full cross-platform measurement will continue to be a challenge and will become more complex.

OTT is Growing and Cuts Out the Advertiser

Ignore the influence of OTT at your peril. “Four major OTT services account for 80% of viewing time in OTT households with Netflix at 39%,” stated Katz. And it is growing. Since much of OTT is subscription based, this can shut out advertising. Fetters added, “We see that viewers are spending 25 hours per month with Netflix on their TV screen and that is 25 hours per month that is not available to advertising. We need to find ways of adjusting the advertising plan to reach those households.”

ATSC 3.0 Brings TV into the New Age

Although still in the arena of the engineering wonks, the advent of ATSC 3.0 will prove to be a game changer for local TV. This new protocol will, as Swedlow explained, “enable regular digital television over the air – local television and every other broadcaster - to be able to explore the relationship between linear over-the-air and interactivity on-demand.” How fast and how profound ATSC 3.0 will be depends on timing – when will all of the new chips be installed? It will take a while, she explained, because there is no deadline by the government, “but I think it will pick up steam,” she concluded.

We have to be “savvy enough to take advantage of all of these new technologies because everything will be interactive. There will be shows that will be voice activated and there will be shows that will require you to interact with another person or deal with blockchain to monetize your content,” explained Swedlow. The best advice I can give is to embrace change and be nimble. The future of television will demand more of us but it will be an exciting journey.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Television Prepares For the Brave New Technological World at the TV of Tomorrow Conference

The New York TV of Tomorrow (TVOT) conference is coming up on December 7, 2017 and promises to offer the most cutting edge trends in media today. I sat down with Tracy Swedlow, co-founder and CEO of TMRW Corp., the parent company that owns InteractiveTV Today and the TV of Tomorrow Show conferences to find out what to expect from this year’s meeting:  

Charlene Weisler: What makes this TVOT different from previous TVOTs?

Tracy Swedlow: This year we have a very broad array of participating companies, including many companies that are participating in the show for the first time, such as Amazon, Visa, MGM and IBM Watson Media, which I think attests to the growing importance of the advanced-TV/video industry as a whole, and the increasing number of areas that are impacted by it.

Weisler: Why are these companies now deciding to join the TVOT participant ranks? 

Swedlow: We believe it's because our presence and influence is growing, and more and more companies are starting to understand the value of being a part of this event. Each show focuses debates and sessions on new timely industry topics, new controversies and the hottest TV trends.

Weisler: What are the major trends and topics for this year?

Swedlow: We always cover OTT, advanced advertising, content, measurement, data, etc., this year we are also doing a mini-track on potential repercussions/effects of ATSC 3.0--which is a broadcaster tech that people believe will transform the TV industry at large.

Another area is artificial intelligence (AI)--the way it is being deployed, how it is being utilized, and what companies are planning to do with the technology. Data and the use of AI software are going to influence every aspect of TV experience--with everything from content being suggested to you, to how your TV is programmed, to the kinds of advertising you see. It will be the blood in the veins of the industry. AI will be broadcasters' and networks'--and really any content distributor's or advertiser's--superhero power, providing a turbo boost to data analysis, and allowing companies to use data incredibly dynamically and creatively.

Some other areas we'll be focusing on are the rise of diginets, the increasing importance of social-video creators/influencers, 360-VR film making, and the future of the TV viewing experience. And, of course, measurement continues to be a hugely important topic: among other things, this year we have leaders from multiple ad-industry organizations--the MRC, the 4A's, the ANA , the IAB, Ad-ID and EIDR--discussing the latest work they're doing on setting new standards for cross-platform measurement.

Weisler: What are the major challenges to TV in the next three years?

Swedlow: ATSC 3.0 is coming on very strong and could transform the entire TV industry--but how will that happen? It has the potential to completely change the local TV landscape, but the challenge lies in how will the industry be able to collaborate on the standard. Devices will need a special chip to make ATSC 3.0 happen--and how long will it take for that to reach critical mass? Will consumers be willing to buy the new ATSC 3.0 chip devices? So while ATSC 3.0 has huge potential, it still has adoption challenges to overcome.

Another area is in OTT. While it is a trend/topic we discuss every year, it seems that right now OTT still has a lot of issues to iron out. There is a huge amount of content on the market with so many platforms (i.e. Showtime, CBS All Access, Netflix, YouTube, Apple and more) trying to scale and find a customer base, while customers are trying to figure out what service works best for them. The result has been a lot of confusion for consumers and the creation of the dynamic of binge-and-bolt, where people sign up for a particular service to view one series and then cancel it once that series is over. So, ultimately all of these platforms are dealing with retention issues and trying to figure out how they can better manage these relationships and prevent all these cancelations--or else develop new business strategies that embrace the fact that high churn rates are now normal.

Then of course there is measurement, tracking and data which is always a challenge, with companies still trying to figure out how best to track viewership across platforms, how best to relate viewing data to purchase behavior, how to better manage data, how to share it, what to share (i.e.: privacy issues). We believe AI will play a significant role in the future of this area.

Weisler: Is linear TV dead, evolving or doing just fine as it is?

Swedlow: No it is not dead. In fact it is doing more than just fine. Right now, for example, diginets are emerging as a major new area of innovation in content and advertising. Also, ATSC 3.0--which basically brings IP to broadcast--has the potential to bring rich interactivity to linear TV. It likely means that linear and interactive and onDemand are going to combine in unusual ways.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com