The Value of Audience Based Marketing. A Discussion with NYI’s Betsy Rella.

In the world of media measurement, there is arguably nothing more valuable to advertisers than delivering on their KPIs. For Betsy Rella, Vice President of Data and Research for New York Interconnect (NYI), measurements based on TV and Digital audience based targeting as well as tracking attribution are the core essences of demonstrating ROI.

Where is Audience Based Marketing Now?

In the recent past, audience based marketing has been viewed as a customized opportunity for advertisers. For Rella, however, audience based marketing, “is table stakes at this point. It depends on what your goal is for your campaign.   You don’t necessarily need to target a certain audience if you are at the beginning of your product cycle. But if you are further down the line and you are honing in on a specific group, then you are talking about audience based targeting. You can do that with linear, with addressable and with digital as well.”

At the current time, the state of audience based marketing depends on the platform. “With addressable we are able to deliver audience segments effectively. For digital, it depends on what you are collecting off of the tags if you can get down to that segment level. But right now we are at impressions and some of the other basic KPIs but not at segment level yet. We are working towards that and also automating that process in real time,” she explained.

Audience Based Marketing Campaigns in Action

NYI offers an expansive inventory selection from top distributors. “We rep inventory for Altice, Comcast, Charter, Direct, Dish, RCN, Blueridge and Verizon,” she noted. “For digital it is primarily Altice and other extension partners as well.”

Impressions appears to be the one benchmark metric that enables buyers and seller to link all platforms and data sources together to get a holistic view of campaign performance. But, “If we are looking in the attribution realm, we are looking at impressions and the closing reporting of sales lift,” she stated.

The proof of the value of audience based marketing is in the deliverables. NYI has conducted many campaigns across several sales categories with great success. A recent example was an Auto advertiser who used two targeting segments. “They had a significant sales lift and all segments did really well,” she revealed and added, “and that is not always the case. Sometimes one segment can do better than others. It depends. These did very well the last few quarters.”

Future Plans

There are a number of initiatives that NYI is working on for the future including real time functionality, increased frequency of reporting throughout the campaign and an enhanced dashboard. “We're moving more towards the automation of our reporting as quickly as we can,” she stated. “We hear from the clients that the campaign runs and then there is the attribution which can take a month and a half. They can’t wait. So we are trying to speed up that process. We are also trying to measure reach and frequency.” With dashboards, Rella is exploring those who can provide more granular results. Clients, “would see their overall campaign results with the with the specific API so we're trying to move more quickly with less manual work and more automation so that our people can focus more on the planning and partnership piece.”

As far as the future is concerned, “Two years from now I think everything that we're working on now will be at a completion point. We are moving more quickly, expanding inventory, making more of that shift from linear to digital and streaming, securing more inventory and increasing our reporting. It’s all about having all the processes in place so that two years from now, it will all be ready. That's the goal … along with securing those partnerships from an inventory perspective,” she concluded.

 

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Linear TV Means Consistent Ad Revenue

Every year brings a bit of trepidation in the media marketplace about rates and budgets. Will CPMs hold or increase? Will there be consistent ad revenue? Now there is the possibility that a recession, per Adweek, could impact the media ecosystem entirely.

However, these fears are unfounded: Even if the overall economy restricts, it only means that marketers will have more of an incentive to get their brand propositions in front of consumers to bolster revenue goals. And many look to television as a safe, verifiable must-buy.

Popularity and Reach

Despite the proliferation of viewing choices, there are many advantages that linear television offers advertisers. Linear television still enjoys great popularity and reach, even among younger viewers.
According to a recent Nielsen Total Audience Report, linear commands a majority of viewing time across all age ranges. CMO.com reported that most people are still watching traditional, scheduled television, including younger generations. Linear still constitutes half of Gen Z and millennials’ viewing habits, according to the Nielsen report.

Measurement Confidence

With currency measurement and internal content standards, linear offers advertisers placement safety and viewability as well as measurement confidence. You know where your ad will run and who viewed it, offering consistent ad revenue.

Live Events

Live events, especially sports, drive viewer interest and attention: Sixty-six percent of adults watch live TV on a regular basis, according to the NCTA. Further, when it comes to long-term viewing habits, twenty percent of viewers are watching more live TV than five years ago.

Data-Rich and Granular

Television is becoming more data-rich and granular through the addition of big datasets such as set-top box data. According to Capital Media, this “has allowed the industry to rely on addressable TV, which allows advertisers to go beyond basic demographic information and more narrowly target households based on data.”

The interconnectedness of TV and data—including online indicators, like website visits—provides increased visibility to conversion analytics and attribution, according to AdExchanger.

2020 Forecast

Stayed tuned for 2020, which is shaping up to be a robust time for media in general and linear television in particular. Political advertising spend alone is expected to reach $6 billion, according to Forbes.

Linear is not going away, according to Betsy Rella, vice president of research and data at NYI. With the explosion of content and the engagement of viewers in this content across platforms, television still stands tall.

“We see it in the campaigns. We see it in the data. Television still has massive reach over other platforms,” Rella concluded. “It is still a big portion of what’s driving consumers to take action.”

This article first appeared on the Videa blog

Putting all the Data Pieces Together to Follow the Consumer Journey. Interview with NYI’s Betsy Rella.

Disconnected data means the consumer journey is all too often a mystery. Advertisers that gain an understanding of that journey can also gain a competitive edge. That’s where New York Interconnect (NYI) comes in. NYI is arguably number one in reaching the full New York DMA because of its integrated data solutions. 

“We are in an interesting position,” said Betsy Rella, vice president, research and data. “We are a joint venture between Altice, Comcast, and Charter and their affiliates underneath them.” Because of this unique set of partners, NYI reaches 6.5 million television households in the New York area and boasts the ability to go multiplatform with a range of granular data available to measure, track, and target viewers, as well as attribute some consumers’ transactions.

Targeting Both Nationally and Locally

In my opinion, one of the most interesting datasets that Rella has at her disposal is from Cablevision (now Altice). I can speak to the richness of this data, having worked with it during my time at Rainbow Media (now AMC Networks) leveraging the range of county sizes, as well as capturing the most diverse and concentrated populations in America.

NYI is, at once, both hyper-local and vastly national. “We are able to find a range of audiences for auto intenders, quick-service restaurants to content preferences and beyond. We then link it on the backend to ROI,” she explained. “We are selling within the NY DMA, as well as partnering with [Ampersand] to layer in our NY campaigns with their national campaigns.”

But NYI also targets by zone. “If our advertiser only has stores on Long Island, we can cover that, too.”

Merging Disparate Datasets

NYI, with all of its available datasets, has the ability to combine data from many different sources.  “With set-top-box data, we have access to Altice,” Rella said, “which is highly granular.” 

NYI receives data from other MVPDs via safe-haven matching partners such as LiveRamp and Experian, “so we can do the attribution across Altice, Comcast, and Charter for exposed ads,” she added. “And, we have multiple partners in terms of third-party data such as IRI and Polk and work with companies for brand studies that match exposure ads to campaigns.”

Rella noted that NYI is bringing Comcast and Charter aboard for addressable for linear. This creates the need to artfully and accurately, “pull the data sources together in one place,” she said. “How does it come in, what does the format look like, how do we store it, and how does that funnel into one report?” This functionality is currently in development and will also include attribution, all in a privacy-compliant manner.

Going Forward

The biggest challenge, according to Rella, is pulling all of the disparate datasets into one platform. “There are organizations and platforms out there that have that ability to tie everything together from start to finish,” [GC1] she explained, “but we have to get all of our partners onboard for that co-mingling of the data.” In some cases, the systems are there; in others, NYI still has to address specific needs with its adtech partners.

“It’s putting together platforms, exposures and impressions, and ad serving,” she explained. “The goal is to have the linear, digital, VOD, and OTT all in one place from start to finish.”

Through all of this, Rella has a wise take on both the opportunities and challenges of shepherding an ad-driven, data-centric business in today’s media marketplace. “We are building the plane as we fly it,” she observed. And, right now, maybe that is the best way to manage ad flights.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com