Cadent Network's Great Upfront "Debate"

I believe there is always room for an energetic discussion in the media business, even when it is billed as a “debate” and both sides essentially agree on the matter at hand. There was just such a “debate” presented this week by Cadent as part of its Upfront event. It consisted of two panels designed to answer the question: What can we expect from this Upfront and future Upfronts when data moves to center stage and content needs to further adapt to multiple platforms?

"We are exploring the pros and cons of audience versus content today,” said Jim Tricarico, CRO of Cadent. “There have been many changes in the media ecosystem in the past two years and today is a coming out party for Cadent. We have rebranded for a new heritage and a new vision, repositioned and totally reinvented the service backend with technology, data, analytics and automation."

This is certainly a media market in flux. But many look at it as an opportunity. “The marketplace has never been more exciting and challenging,” Tricarico explained. “The market is changing fast with programmatic, addressable and advanced TV. While the TV landscape changes and evolves, prices continue to go up and ratings are down. There is fragmentation in viewership and shrinkage in ratings.”

With lower ratings and reduced ad loads, networks can be selective on what types of business they decide to take. Right now it looks like they may make room for higher priced scatter. Cadent’s promise is that they deliver across a full national footprint comprised of more than 200 partners, 210 DMAs and 80 million homes. The company is focusing time and resources on technology development, automation and data analytics and has just built an inventory management system for more effective media planning.
Nick Troiano, Cadent’s new CEO, revealed the company’s future plans. “I came to Cadent through their acquisition of BlackArrow, which we then rebranded for Cadent,” he said. “We are able to do dynamic ad insertions through VOD, OTT and DVR and even deliver targeted ads in live TV. TV is changing. The living room is changing. We are uniquely qualified to transition advertising into this new TV world.”

Agency Perspective
In moderating the debate between content and audience, Jack Myers, Media Ecologist and Chairman of MyersBizNet, asked the first panel of agency executives where they thought the market was going. Erica Schmidt, Executive Vice President and Managing Director North America, Cadreon, responded with a data-centric perspective. “From the data viewpoint, we are in an interesting time in the industry and are thinking differently about TV buying,” she said. “There are the issues of pricing and harder to find audiences. This gives us an opportunity to think differently and we are basing our decisions on audience and data. There are huge pressures on CPMs but we continue to push the envelope.”

“So are we moving away from the golden age of programming?” Myers asked. Rino Scanzoni, Chief Investment Officer, GroupM, responded in the affirmative. “We have used content as a surrogate to identify audiences for years,” he explained. “The TV business is going away from looking at content to find audiences to using data to do so. We are moving to an audience-based transactional system.”

Catherine Warburton, Chief Investment Officer, Assembly added, “We have always been buying content and audience, so the idea of content versus audience is not new. You have to balance super premium content for a client. We are looking beyond TV for audiences. We look across all screens. There are places other than actual TV to get these audiences.”

Client Perspective
Turning to clients in the second panel, Myers asked Tim Sullivan, former Vice President, Media at The Wendy's Company and Andy Jung, Director of Marketing and Communications at The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company whether they, like the agencies, had business silos. “You are dealing with silos even on the client side,” Sullivan responded. “We are currently in an evolution as to how to move money to different forms of advertising. TV is trying to learn about new solutions and we clients need to be willing to change.”
“Silos are a huge reality of the business,” Jung added. “I need to sell a certain amount of grass seeds within this year and we rely heavily on big box stores. But we also see changes with new home ownership and the new entry points. We are looking at technology. Weather is a big data factor for us and we need to reach audiences in an abbreviated time period.”

“Is the business becoming more adversarial with the use of data intelligence?” Myers asked.  “Definitely,” Sullivan replied. “Everyone is leveraging different types of data. It will be interesting to see if we can work together or if there will be turf battles. We want solutions so that everyone understands that we are trying to build our business in the most effective way with the highest results.”

Conclusion
The debate of content versus audiences may not be settled during this Upfront but if we as an industry can all work together to find the right balance of creative and quantification, we will be able to move the entire media ecosystem a big step forward.  As Myers summed it up, “It is a changing game and we need to remain flexible.”

Advanced Advertising - Automation, Measurement and Stewardship, OH MY!

There is a lot of activity brewing in the advanced advertising sector and the recent Multichannel Advanced Advertising conference in NYC brought many of us up to date. The conclusion of the conference was, as we prepare for the upfront TV season, advanced advertising will not only be a bigger player, it may even shift dollars. And, according to most of the panels, when we say Advanced Advertising we are also saying TV Programmatic in the same breath.

Granted, most of us think of advanced advertising as local time now but it is fast moving into national applications. Fox recently announced the appointment of Joe Marchese to President-advanced advertising products, a new position overseeing all non-linear TV advertising products and services inside Fox.  According to Louis Hillelson, Group Publisher B&C / Multichannel News, “It is only March 2015 and we have already seen movement in this space.” 

Unifying content offerings and getting credit for all of the audience delivered is the Holy Grail. This requires accurate cross platform metrics, the ability to steward all of the different units and an effective and automated platform to drive the sales process from proposal to completion. 

Automation

Even in this technological age, there are still a number of inefficient manual processes in the television buying and selling process. There is a great hunger among many of the buyers and sellers to automate and streamline processes. Todd Gorden, EVP Magna Global , explained, “Traditional television still has manual processes - Faxes, retyping of plans. We want to automate. Free up more time for conversations that help each business. (TV Programmatic) offers quality data to define target, a tech platform to facilitate business and inventory that can take advantage to where technology takes us.”

Measurement

It all comes down to measurement and the ability to match disparate datasets accurately to gain insight into true consumer behaviors.  “Measurement is a key component,” according to Comcast Executive Director, Dan Carella.  Chris Monteferrante, VP AT&T, explained how his company handles measurement. “We retrieve second by second data from every set top box and developed an algorithm that takes all STB data, culls it down and produces an optimized media plan. The science solid, the research is solid and the output is solid.” Dan Sinagoga, VP Comcast Spotlight concurred, “It is all about the data - household level data against your key segments.”

With the ability to match to segments, we are seeing “real insights into the customer” according to EVP Cadreen, Erica Schmidt, “and the best available source of media usage behavior to match it to.“ But we have a way to go. James Rooke GM Freewheel admited that there is “undervalued inventory because of measurement challenges out there.”

Stewardship

Ultimately, it is the need for seamless de’siloing systems that make the entire buy sell process fully trackable.  Monteferrante noted that, “Systems will bring it all together. What are the standards of that system? How can we tie it all together?”  Some agencies have successfully established a planning protocol. Mike Bologna, President MODI Media, sees advanced advertising commanding 20-30% of a budget at this time. He said, “Hyper segments defined for advertisers can determine how TV content indexes against segments. (We) can do a beautifully balanced TV plan for an advertiser, down to the individual household. We take advantage of all the data and technology and balance between core and future customers.”

The Future?

Though there is a lot of talk about Programmatic TV in the upcoming upfront, this does not portend the end of traditional TV. In fact the two processes can go hand in hand. Gorden explains, “Comparing traditional TV to Programmatic TV is apples to oranges. Traditional TV is a more effective way to get up reach curve. But then it levels out. Then a dollar spent via programmatic can deliver more incremental reach.”

There are many national networks starting to explore the potential, and build out their Programmatic TV strategy. Attendee Hanna Gryncwajg, SVP Sales for RLTV, sees an opportunity, “I see programmatic (automated) selling as a benefit for all national networks.  Long tail cable networks have rich audience compositions and will likely find a CPM benefit from their current undervalued impressions.  Under appreciated audiences such as Boomers (Adults 50+) will be welcome when data shows they are the ones buying certain products and services.”

This article first appeared in www.MeediaBizBloggers.com