The Many Facets of OTT and Its Expansion – A BIA Webinar Explores the Landscape

OTT has been a hot topic, made even more so by the fragmentation of television and the advancement of streaming options. To better understand the current OTT market and its expansion, Mitch Oscar, Director of Advanced TV Strategy at USIM and Rick Ducey, Managing Director, BIA Advisory Services, presented a panel of experts last week that included Kemal Bokhari, GM, Data and Analytics at Dish, Jessica Daigle, VP Sales Intelligence at Tegna, Nelson Ferreira, Senior Director, Regional Sales at Gamut, Justin Fromm, Head of Research at LG Ads, Phil Herring, VP Digital Strategy at USIM, Jo Kinsella, President at TVSquared and Adam Noble, Director of Product Marketing at Advanced Video.

The Challenges and Opportunities in OTT

OTT is not without its challenges. For Ducey, the biggest challenges to OTT today are, “Fragmented inventory, cross-platform measurement of linear TV + OTT, frequency capping and applying linear TV business rules using pods, pod positions, brand separation, brand safety, etc.”

But according to Noble, “OTT is not as hard as we think it is and as many perceive,” and while, ”there is a lot of disruption in the industry, any new method of reaching viewers is going to create new opportunities for advertisers in the industry.” Owners can now go direct to consumers, there is a splintering of buying opportunities and channels and the replacement of certain hardware such as set top boxes facilitates the convergence of linear with digital. There are also many new competitive entrants into the space like Pluto TV, “which gives consumers the option to view for free.” All of this impacts the business model.

“Confusion is driven in large part by fragmentation,” he noted. This confusion drives the need to sort through ownership of data, the coordination between services for a seamless advertiser buy and the lack of measurement standardization. “Who has the right to sell what inventory,” he queried, and how can it best be measured?

Yet, a myriad of opportunities abound in OTT. Ducey listed, “Converging the power of digital targeting, workflow, optimization, attribution with the power of premium OTT video combined with linear TV at scale.”

The Importance of Incremental Reach

For Daigle, “Fundamentally, OTT was formed to fulfill a promise of bringing together what I like to think of as digital superpowers of measurement, targeting with the magic of sight, sound and motion. That is why attribution, measure-ability, reach extension, etc. are so critical.” She added that the stakes are higher as clients are demanding more.

Ferreira agreed that, “Brands are demanding more of us, especially in local where it is harder to measure and define those attributes. That challenge is even more challenging.” To that end he is working with clients on solving for reach extension through frequency capping and recency capping.

Television’s overall value is unsurpassed in the marketplace. Fromm explained that, “TV remains one of the most if not the most important medium for many advertisers,” in both national and local. “It also enables tremendous reach in a short period of time. But linear viewing has changed drastically over the last decade or so.” This reduction in viewing underscores the need for reach extension in the OEM universe. “Reach extension is certainly something we are thinking about and the OEMs are well positioned to do.”

According to TVSquared’s recent survey on CTV engagement, Kinsella noted that, “the main reason for advertising on streaming was incremental reach. The people that we surveyed 70% cited the ability to extend reach and engage with audiences beyond linear was why,” they advertised on CTV. She added that, “17% said that understanding deduplicated and incremental reach across streaming platforms is their biggest barrier from fully leaning into streaming.” She advised that we have to be cognizant of the walled gardens and OEMs. “Most of the time they can only measure their data, their piece and more and more, marketers need to be able to measure everything.”

Bokhari noted that reach extension is, “an important part of the advertiser’s strategy to continue to maximize their reach for their ad. What we have done at Dish is to utilize our addressable technology, our viewership data to be able to let the advertiser know what their reach was on the Dish platform for that linear ad and then be able to target one-to-one to those household that were either missed, not exposed to that ad or who were underexposed and create a plan to maximize their reach.”

From the agency perspective, Herring explained that, “We are being held more and more accountable for the media we purchase on behalf of our clients. So while it is hard to make a one-size-fits-all statement when it comes to reach extension, it depends on the campaign, I would say the majority of campaigns, reach extension is important especially in the CTV space.”

The Future of OTT

The Future of OTT is bright. Ducey concluded that three years from now, “In local OTT, BIA is forecasting nearly 2x the ad spend we’ll see in 2021. I suspect we’ll adjust that to be both sooner and higher as time goes on. The industry is working toward an environment where impressions-based trading, measurement, and attribution will have increasingly less friction in cross-platform (linear TV + OTT) activations. I see linear for reach and OTT for targeting and extension to reach non-linear audiences. Linear and OTT will make a formidable 1-2 marketing punch in local video.”

This article first appeared in Mediapost.com

 

Mapping the Transformation of Television at Dish. An Interview with Tim Myers

It is a given that television has been on an accelerated path of evolution with greater complexity, fragmentation and choice which offers both opportunities and challenges for addressable. To better understand the current and future ecosystem of television and the role that addressable plays in it, Dish embarked on a pivotal study titled The Transformation of Television, the results of which clarifies the underlying issues, mechanics and attitudes that impacts addressable’s multi-level adoption and expansion.

Interestingly, this study came on the heels of the pandemic which, according to Tim Myers, GM Addressable Operations & Strategic Partnerships at Dish, resulted in an advertiser pull-back. “We wanted to really understand the mindset of buyers and agencies as well as our peers on the sell side,” he explained, “We wanted to learn what the trajectory would be for us in TV and what we could do to change that arc.” The information gleaned from that study proved out as the pandemic year progressed.

Addressable’s Advantages and Challenges

“Addressable is a tremendous opportunity,” Myers began, “and provides a lot of value for both the buyer and the agency in terms of being able to deliver a product and of executing marketing and advertising campaigns that tie into the trends that began to emerge and accelerate during the pandemic with better accountability, different forms of measurement, (and the ability to) go after high value audiences that reach consumers in new ways.”

But there are challenges that need to be addressed across all sectors of the ecosystem. On the sell side, scale continues to be a challenge as well as, Myers pointed out, “Making sure that we remove some of the complexities that create headwinds that lead to a lack of confidence about integrating addressable into the mainstream.” From the buying perspective, he noted, “We have to make sure that brands and agencies shift addressable out of innovation buckets and into the mainstream.”  However, he admitted that the mainstreaming of addressable had its trade-offs requiring concrete solutions with the agreement that, “The industry would adopt this mainstream approach and help fund the work that needs to be done to make this a more scalable product.”

In short, the study revealed that, “We definitely need to simplify the buying, managing of campaign across suppliers, increase in scale, provide more of a national footprint, increase interoperability among MVPDs and technology partners and solve some of the measurement issues,” he said. Measurement specifically needs to solve, “across the differences in how people have traditionally planned and measured television, how these new impressions based models work and ultimately how you can tie this into attribution and other techniques to measure the performance.” All of this is not impossible but will take a coordinated full industry effort and commitment.

The Path Forward

It takes a village or, in this case, an industry, to facilitate the mainstreaming of addressable. For their part, Dish has been focused on forming sell side partnerships. “We’ve been working with other distributors and platform and technology partners that we directly interface with to begin to make changes and that would also include non-traditional partnerships with companies like DirectTV,” as well as Comcast, Charter and Cox as well as Ampersand for local markets. “We are beginning to partner with the programmers themselves and offer addressable services,” he added, beyond the two minute local avails and into the 14 minutes of national inventory. “It’s not just available through the more traditional buying channels,” he explained, and that enables the mainstreaming of addressable by solving for scale.

According to Myers, the pandemic has accelerated trends that were already occurring pre-Covid, such as the proliferation of choice for viewers and more fragmentation in the marketplace. “People were looking for more entertainment in the home during the pandemic,” he stated, “We at Dish are always concerned about making sure that consumers receive the most value for their spend. That has created new opportunity in the TV advertising ecosystem where we have this fragmentation but we also have these new ad supported platforms that are out there for consumers.”

Measurement and the Future of Addressable

When it comes to measurement, Myers noted that, “addressable is an impressions based product that measures at a household level and that opens up the ability to also provide attribution and other types of measurement metrics. That is one of the major benefits of moving to addressable TV. It was way more precise measurement not only the delivery of the impression itself but then it can be linked to clear consumer behaviors which ultimately help calculate the ROI and the performance of that media spend.”   

As far as the future of addressable is concerned, Myers is optimistic. “We will continue to see addressable build in terms of its importance in the execution of TV advertising,” he predicted. “We will see it shift from innovation budgets into mainstream. We will be able to provide a simple and interoperable means of creating these transactions. Measurement will make it easier to tie it all back to the sales activity. Attribution will become more seamless and easier to execute. In three to five years addressable will become a mainstream part of the TV advertising mix,” he concluded.    

This article first appeared in MediaVillage.com

Is It Now or Never For Advanced TV?

Changes in the media ecosystem didn’t start with the pandemic. In fact, some aspects of media buying and selling have been in discussion since the 1990s including Advanced advertising, according to Research futurist Bill Harvey, who has been touting the concept of advanced advertising since then.

Harvey participated in a recent Myers Collective Leadership conversation on the future of Advanced TV with a panel that included Kevin Arrix, Senior Vice President, Dish Media Sales, Jamie Power, Chief Operating Officer, Cadent, Marcien Jenckes, President of Advertising, Comcast and moderated by Jack Myers, Founder of MediaVillage.

The Addressable Market Landscape Today

Myers launched the panel with an opinion that I believe many of us share in the industry. “I have been studying the advanced, interactive, VOD, addressable market for a long time,” he began, “and truthfully, I’m not all that clear on who’s who and what’s what.” There is a litany of companies in the media space, who seem to offer opportunities that can overlap or conflict or split the market.  “Help me understand the dynamics,” he asked.

For Powers, one of the reasons that there might be some confusion is, “because we over complicate it.” In looking at the current set top box addressable marketplace with the MVPDs, she explained that there is, “Ampersand that has about 60% of the addressable households … then you have Dish and then Xandr,” which, combined, rounds out to the rest of the 40% of the country. She then noted that they have expanded to IP addressable to get their clients full reach in television. Cadent’s role is that they have, “created a platform to make it easy to execute across all the different screens and channels with consistent workflows and universal data, to get measurement aggregated all in one place” she stated.

“It’s worth noting,” added Arrix, “Advanced television is a holistic category. I would define it as anything that is data driven. I think Addressable is a part of the Advanced television marketplace. From my point of view addressable is defined as deterministic. That is the line that makes something addressable or not.” Ampersand, Dish and Xandr all have deterministic, set top box data, he noted, adding Sling, ATT TV Now, YouTube TV, Google Live and Fubo TV that are also subscriber based MVPDs.

Jenckes believes that the competitive set within advanced television is complementary because, “different distributors reach different households. So in order to reach the full US market you have to figure out ways to work across them.” He agreed with Arrix that, “there are other new forms of distribution that are emerging, like Roku which is a virtual distributor in some sense and there are others with addressable capabilities out there.” He added that once the national networks are enabled, we should expect significant growth in the amount of addressable inventory available in the marketplace.

“I agree with everything that has been said. Addressable is the umbrella term and the one type we have not called out yet is data-driven linear,” explained Harvey who added, “All of this is aimed at better results for advertising. That’s the whole point.” For Harvey, the topology maps out as such: MVPD addressability through a switch from the set top box and the Connected TV which can be a Smart TV or a connected device. The challenge from a data standpoint (which is something Nielsen and Project OAR is tackling) is how to best combine different data streams (such as from a smart TV in a local household or from terrestrial and satellite sources) that may have different latencies, delay times and black screens.

The Addressable Market Marketplace

So where is addressable headed? Forrester predicted in 2000 that addressable advanced television would be a $30billion industry in 2020. “Well here we are in 2020,” Myers noted, “and it’s significantly less. It’s a fraction of that.” He added that, “our forecasts are that in 2025 it will represent about 8-10% of the television ad revenues which will be significant growth but not the $30billion that Forrester recommended we would have today.“ Considering how off predictions were in 2000, one could be forgiven for being a bit skeptical about the robustness of addressable revenue growth in the next few years.

And yet, Jenckes believes that the biggest barrier to addressable growth – the technological challenge of switching from programming to ads - has now essentially been solved. But, he added, “the limitations we are having right now are around the amount of inventory we have available,” which is the two minutes an hour for addressable but even then, this inventory is often used in other ways. “So the challenge is how you improve inventory and how you manage yield. You can sell the inventory in a lot of different ways. I can sell a full spot at a set CPM or a much narrower sliver of that spot for a higher CPM but as the owner of the inventory I have to figure out which is best and how I optimize the value of that.”

The final challenge, Jenckes added, “is measurement and the biggest issue around measurement has been the historical restrictions that Nielsen has imposed on us as an industry,” Addressable is easy to measure because it is impressions based. The challenge is to measure, “the under addressable part of the campaign. What happens to the rest of the spot? Since Nielsen is panel based, if one of the panelists happens to get a different ad it breaks the model because Nielsen doesn’t know if that is one impression or a lot of impressions represented by that one panelist. There is a lot of work that needs to happen on that front,” he concluded.” But,” he then added, “these hurdles have been coming down. There has been a lot of progress around standards, around enablement and even on the measurement front although I think that will be the last frontier.”

For Powers, “the opportunity of addressable has been around for years. But agencies haven’t done it because we haven’t invested in the ad tech,” to facilitate the consistent measurement across platforms and services. In addition, “as a marketplace we are not articulating what the value-proposition is. We are over-complicating it. Advertisers and agencies are not understanding it.” She advocates for the creation of standards and a common currency. "If we cannot even agree … it makes it really confusing and there is not trust in the marketplace to try it.”

According to Arrix, “The key to the future is all about interoperability. The technology is getting better, the process is getting better. There has been a significant amount of progress made in the last few years.” That, with the recognition by the industry that, “data-driven advertising is just smarter,” is leading the industry to a growth surge for addressable.

The Future of Addressable

Propelling a robust future for addressable is data and measurement. In the past, the industry was wedded to the Nielsen panel. “But,” as Harvey pointed out, “right now there is more data each individual party has. The data is now disaggregated into these silos and if we put them all together we have the measurement system of the future. We don’t need panels except for nuances like co-viewing projections and stuff like that. Eventually that goes away too.” He admonished the industry to, “work together. Not just say it like we used to do but actually do it.”

That is the underlying structure for the business. “The big money comes when we get the network inventory. The two minutes an hour is not going to make it a big business. The $30billion comes as soon as you start switching to network addressable,” Harvey concluded.

“It is at the beginning of the game,” Arrix noted. “We see two paths right now. There is the true addressable path where you are breaking up the linear spot into impressions and you end up having the 80/20 rule with the 20% as the target and the 80% is the underlying impressions that you have to figure out how to monetize. That is how we operate now in our addressable business. The other initiative is creative versioning where you are not breaking up the linear spot but you are using deterministic data to deliver the right creative to the right household.”

But the stakes are high and the future is not assured if we all can’t come together as an industry to create standards and work together. “My fear is that unless we do that, we will be relegated to … the weakest player within television,” Jenckes warned. “And if that’s the case, we can all start the clock right now for the full and predictive demise of TV folks have been talking about for a long time. The good news is that because of the progress we’ve had, I don’t think that is going happen. There is a path and it requires collaboration.”

When it comes to business during the pandemic, “is business a bit little softer than usual? Yeah. But I don’t think COVD has a major effect on this,” Powers stated, “The same problems that existed before COVID, exist now. One thing that has happened is that there are more eyeballs watching the television and we know that we will pass the threshold (of 50%) at the end of this year from linear to non-linear viewing. Data is the only thing that is going to win in this marketplace.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Optimizing Reach with DISH Media's Reach Booster. Jim D'Antoni on Media Innovation.

The world is changing at a rapid pace and the uncertainty of the market has forced many advertisers to change their strategies and welcome more data-backed approaches. More than ever, dollars can't be wasted on campaigns that do not yield incremental growth and prove out ROI. According to DISH Media, addressable is a key way to ensure advertisers get the most out of their investments.

Although addressable has been around for years, its importance and value as an advertising method has increased with the advent of advanced technology. "Over time addressable has matured," noted Jim D'Antoni (pictured below), Director of National Media Ad Sales, DISH Media. "It has proven its ability to provide more sophisticated frontend targeting and true attribution on the backend, making it a key component of an advertiser's video mix." The main goal of addressable is to eliminate the waste, focusing only on the homes that are predisposed to hear your message.

Across the industry, more Upfront buys are having addressable deals built into them. The Myers Report estimates 2019 advertiser investments in addressable and VOD TV advertising at $1.8 billion and forecasts 17% average annual growth to $4.6 billion in 2025. The Myers Report also projects addressable and VOD as one of the few media categories that will increase in 2020 and 2021 as brands scale back dramatically on marketing budgets.

Even in the best of media times, it has been challenging for advertisers to maximize reach and minimize over-frequency for heavy viewing households with just a linear buy. "The linear television buy that got you 90% household reach five years ago only gets you about 60% reach now," mentioned D'Antoni. "Then within that 60%, reach for a demographic is often at 30% to 40%. And if a brand wants to expand their reach, they will have to keep spending more to see minimal growth."

He cited one case where a home improvement advertiser spent $90 million to have their campaign reach 70% of households and had to spend another $90 million to get to 75% households. "Financially and strategically it doesn't make sense for brands to continue down this road. The use of addressable technology is the best solution."

To help linear buyers bridge the addressable/linear divide, DISH Media recently launched a solution called Reach Booster. Using first-party deterministic data and a 12.4 million national footprint that captures all aspects of the American experience, from county size to DMA to region, Reach Booster gives advertisers the ability to maximize their reach and manage frequency. "With fragmentation of television growing, reach beyond 50% of any age or gender demographic is a pervasive issue. It is one of the limiting factors of linear television," D'Antoni explained.

A Solution to Building Reach
Reach Booster is DISH Media's proprietary ad product that was beta tested in 2019. It uses first-party data to build reach off a linear plan and addressable technology in a broad-based manner. "We use our first-party deterministic data and do a look-back window of at least three weeks of a recent national linear buy, and then determine how that campaign performed in reach and frequency for a specific gender and age target," D'Antoni elaborated. DISH Media can then efficiently target those unexposed homes within the chosen demographic for further messaging. "For a three or four week buy, we can see their campaign's reach go from 40% up to 70% or even 80%, and only within households relevant to our client," he stated. One example cited by D'Antoni is an insurance company who wanted to expand their reach amongst men aged 25 to 54. Reach Booster delivered, bringing the advertiser from a plateaued 45% reach to an overall 87% reach within the DISH footprint. "Beta after beta, we've seen these results. After 12 beta campaigns across various categories we are confident that this can be a very effective tool to boost reach," he added.

Managing for Frequency in Addition to Reach
But how does one solve for over-saturated frequency when trying to increase reach? D'Antoni noted that Reach Booster is not just a reach tool. "We've had some success managing frequency as a secondary non-guaranteed KPI." He cited an auto advertiser who wanted to lower the frequency for those who were seeing the ads 25+ times in a 30-day period. Campaign results show that Reach Booster was able to shift frequency into the lower frequency buckets while also helping the advertiser extend their reach. According to D'Antoni, it is all about maximizing efficiency for what the client wants. "Their main goal was reach, and we had that covered, but when they mentioned their frequency, we endeavored and delivered."

However, these results are not unique to this one campaign. DISH Media has seen a number of successful beta campaigns across demographics and categories. "From auto to insurance to CPG, we've seen consistent success with stabilizing frequency and building reach," D'Antoni added.

The Current and Future Marketplace
This pandemic has caused a rupture in the advertising marketplace. Brands and advertisers are struggling to pivot their advertising strategies, some pulling back entirely to conserve cost at a time when sales are down. According to D'Antoni, the goal for marketers should be "smarter, not silent." "The time for addressable is now. Many companies can't afford to waste money on tactics that may or may not work," D'Antoni stated. "They need to bet on strategies and tools that will bring them directly to the consumers that will be interested in their products, and that's where addressable and Reach Booster succeed. We've proven that over multiple categories and multiple demos."

There is more in store for Reach Booster. Future enhancements could include multiple look backs, better optimization and enhanced frequency management all with the intention of becoming more efficient and cost-effective for marketers to reach their target audiences. "Time will tell, but DISH Media has its finger on the pulse to assist our partners through this. Effective reach is more imperative than ever in this new environment, and we know Reach Booster will play an important role in achieving it for our clients."

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Empowering Women Within the Company and Throughout the Industry. An Interview with Dish’s Alexis Rosenberg

Alexis Rosenberg always knew she wanted to go into sales. "It fits with my personality," says Rosenberg, senior manager, premium services, at DISH Media. Her ability to successfully pursue a career in sales is not only a professional accomplishment, but also has led to a personal mission of helping other women succeed and thrive in the media sales world.

Historically, sales has been more male dominated, but DISH is working to encourage diversity, both within the organization and in the greater media ecosystem. Rosenberg is among those working to drive that change. She devotes time and effort to the DISH Women's Network (DWN), a resource group that focuses on gender empowerment, mentoring, and advancement within the company.

DISH Women's Network
For the past four years, Rosenberg has led the DWN efforts in the Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York media offices. "It's a great way to help promote women into higher-level positions, as well as provide some leadership opportunities and resources to women and men in the office," she says. "It's also important for us to see a range of women in leadership roles and learn how they got started and how they're navigating their career journey." The DWN is part of a larger effort from DISH corporate headquarters, based out of Denver, on behalf of female employees.

The DWN hosts events every month within the company — some events feature business-focused speakers or group discussions, while other events include activities to raise money for charitable organizations or organize group initiatives to support causes such as breast cancer awareness and heart health awareness. "I think it's important to enjoy where you work and not just what you do," Rosenberg says. "So, having a supportive environment is vital." The DWN also helps inform DISH Media's industry presence. At the recent RampUp 2020, for example, DISH Media sponsored a luncheon that brought women across the industry together to network and share their personal and professional experiences.

The proof of the initiative's success is how the women who participate in the DWN feel about the company overall and its commitment to gender equality. "Sixty-one percent of the women in the DISH Women's Network say that it's one of their reasons for staying at DISH," Rosenberg confides. Retention and the feeling of being supported are two notable accomplishments of the initiative.

Direct Response Sales Women Network
Rosenberg is an active and avid promoter of female empowerment, both within and outside DISH. She runs a Direct Response Sales Women group that is dedicated to empowering women across the media industry in the sales space. "I do an annual event that is open to all women at all levels in direct response in the industry, and I've been doing that for the past seven years," she noted.
Direct response (DR) — called Performance within DISH Media — has gone through a great transformation in the digital age. Once restricted to immediate viewer response, this type of marketing now also includes what Rosenberg terms "hybrid DR based on cost per thousand and ratings in verticals such as insurance and telecommunications."

As much as it has evolved, the fundamentals of DR have stayed the same. "DR has always been about attribution," she says, "like cost-per-call monitoring and web visits to see how campaigns are working. Addressable is the next step — knowing that you are targeting the right people and then getting back to that attribution. We can measure it better on the backend." In many respects, addressable advertising has power-charged DR because of its hyper-targeting capabilities, making this facet of marketing more compelling and integrated into the overall marketing funnel.

"I am really proud of the work I've been doing [with Direct Response Sales Women] because it gets people together from all different network groups," Rosenberg says. It also helps women looking for new roles. Rosenberg makes an effort to invite women who have recently been laid off to the annual event so they can network. "The direct response industry is a close-knit industry. We all know each other. These are my friends and I want to help them," she adds.

Rosenberg offers sage advice for women who want to advance in their career, whether within DISH or with the industry at large. "Having a mentor is very important," she says. "I've had a lot of mentors in my career — unofficial mentors both here at DISH and at my previous jobs. Just having someone who you can ask for advice is so important and gets rid of that feeling of being alone in the industry." To me, Rosenberg herself is a mentor and a force for equality in the industry.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

DISH Media Expands Cross-Platform Addressable With Best-in-Class Technology and Consultative Sales

To be successful in sales, one must monitor where the market is going while being flexible enough to respond. For Dave Antonelli, DISH Media's director for Sling TV, that includes taking a holistic view of all the services that DISH Media has to offer, from live OTT to traditional linear; programmatic to addressable.

DISH Media not only offers all of these services, but also generates its own first-party deterministic data to better measure all sales outcomes.

Antonelli's breadth of experience — from large companies such as Viacom (now ViacomCBS) to smaller start-ups such as Cognitiv (programmatic A.I.) and SessionM (mobile) — enables him to easily size up the media landscape and respond quickly to client considerations.

Responding to the Marketplace
Antonelli sees the current media market as fluid, open, and flexible, offering greater opportunity to companies such as DISH Media that can deliver across platforms. Clients, he explains, "are interested in impressions-based, one-to-one targeting or linear. The pipes by which those experiences are delivered are not as crucial as a distinction. It can come in over the internet or a satellite or over cable. It doesn't matter because it is still [the same] video spot reaching consumers, whether in a targeted or traditional linear fashion."

DISH Media technologies play a pivotal role in meeting these advertiser expectations. "Sling TV and DISH have the same overall goal of delivering video, but they are on different pipes," he says. "One is over satellite and the other is over the Internet. It is essentially the same content and a similar experience." How advertisers target or use inventory can vary, but the experience remains the same for the consumer.

Addressable Capabilities
With DISH Media's first-party data, privacy-compliant processes enable impressions-based targeting on a household level. "That is one of the beauties of online advertising, especially for Sling TV, which has a registered subscriber base," he says, adding that both Sling TV and DISH have "deterministic matches, which [are a] great way of targeting people with relevant ads that are more effective for advertisers."

Addressable is a huge part of DISH Media's business for both DISH and Sling TV. "It's a core function of what we do," Antonelli says. "We have the best technology that enables addressable advertising." Its addressable sales span every major vertical, such as automotive, pharma, financial, and retail. "We can match our deterministic dataset through privacy-safe crosswalks with a variety of data vendors that are focused on specific KPIs, such as Polk for Auto," he adds. This includes data such as foot traffic and sales lift for attribution assessments.

A notable advantage in DISH Media's sales arsenal is the ability to launch simultaneous addressable campaigns cross-platform. Antonelli explains that DISH was the first to market this capability. "We can run cross-platform addressable campaigns with targeting and reporting across platforms," he says.

Reach Booster
Another valuable asset in DISH Media sales is the newly launched Reach Booster. "Reach Booster," Antonelli explains, "helps turn a traditional linear campaign into one that is positively impacted by an addressable campaign. We look at reach and frequency from a national schedule for a particular advertiser and a creative unit. We are able to determine the reach and frequency across the entire national linear schedule for that spot and then pair it with our deterministic dataset to determine the actual reach and frequency within our subscriber base."
So, if a particular household has not been reached by the linear national ad to the degree that the advertiser would like, they can then be fed an addressable ad to attain that unduplicated reach and that desired frequency. Though only launched in January, Reach Booster's results are showing substantial increases in reach and frequency stabilization.

The Team is Everything
To succeed in media sales, "You have to be someone who is curious, and you have to understand a lot of complexity," Antonelli says, adding that this is where his team excels. Selling a static product isn't an option due to the ever-changing nature of today's landscape. "You have to keep learning and asking questions, know your product, and understand the landscape."
His advice for those seeking a place in today's media sales ecosystem is to strive to be someone who is "curious, thoughtful, and has a consultative approach, who works with agencies as a resource to navigate all of the change." Good advice for other media departments today, as well.

This article first appeared in MediaVillage.com