Putting the Viewer First - A Look at Freewheel’s Viewer Experience Lab

The secret to compelling advertising is an ongoing project but, thanks to advanced research techniques, it is possible to more fully understand which ad experiences best engage viewers.

 FreeWheel has developed such a technique using MediaScience, a company that mines insights to improve the quality of ad experiences through FreeWheel’s Viewer Experience Lab.

Launched in 2023, this initiative is designed to help address, as Chris Glover, FreeWheel’s Vice President of Marketing explained, “an incredibly complicated industry. We're focused on very minute aspects of advertising technology but when we go home and watch TV we get annoyed, just like every other consumer.” Some of the biggest annoyances, he noted, include ad repetition, latency and, “unnatural creative breaks” that interfere with the content narrative. Such annoyances diminish not only the enjoyment of the programming but also the engagement of the advertising.

Although it is called a Viewer Experience Lab, it is not a lab per se. Rather it is more of a research approach. “We've partnered MediaScience which is an expert in neuro-marketing audience research and technology,” he explained. This includes viewing sessions where they can control the variables such as pod duration, latency and repetition both in home and at a mini lab facility. Testing includes, “Neuro metrics like heart rate, eye tracking, facial coding to truly understand how viewers are experiencing, how viewers are feeling when they view advertisements,” he stated. From there, insights are gleaned such as viewer sentiment on ads and branding KPIs, for example.

The results so far have led to both micro and macro insights according to Glover. On a micro level, with ad pods, for example, “we found that when ad pods were built with ads all of the same lengths, either 15s or 30s, viewers found the ad breaks shorter,” he shared. “So if they saw a pod with four 30s for a total of two minutes or they saw one with a 30 then a 15 and then another 15, the inconsistent pod would have felt longer to them.”  The finding that pod consistency across ad formats leads to better viewer experience can be immediately applied in the field and should deliver better results.

On macro level, Glover has found that while advertising in general, “gets a bad rap,” it's not totally true. “Advertising has traditionally been thought of an annoyance and no one likes advertising breaks but we found there's actually a lot of positive sentiment for advertising particularly when the ads are relevant to the consumer.”

The ultimate takeaway upends a media shibboleth. “The ads themselves don't hurt program enjoyment. It's the bad ad experience. Our study found there was no change to program liking among viewers when there were ads present versus when there are no ads present and that alone is a very interesting data point,” Glover concluded.

So it’s not the ads that are the problem, it is actually the experience that gets in the way of ad enjoyment. “It's the ad repetition, the latency, the blank slate that viewers sometimes see. Those are the real problems of the industry and that's what we're shining a light on,” he noted.

Ultimately, the Viewer Lab has been designed to improve three major areas of advertising – Quality of ads, Quantity of ads and Relevancy of ads. For each of these important pillars of research, FreeWheel has designed whitepapers, the last of which, Relevancy, is due out soon.

The goal through all of this research effort is to help guide advertisers and content providers as to the most effective and engaging ad delivery methods. “We're never going to be prescriptive to a publisher, saying, ‘Hey, you should do it exactly like this.’ It's more insights to help them as they look at their own ad strategies,” he explained and added, “What are some things they can do, such as creative diversity, remain really, really important. But any light that we can shine to provide best practices about how they're ultimately delivering advertising to consumers and planning and selling their advertising, we think is very valuable.”

For Glover, “Advertisers have a lot of choices and they can buy advertising in a lot of different environments. I would advise them to not lose sight of putting themselves in the viewers’ shoes. We advise advertisers to work with trusted partners who are putting this issue first.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

 

Revealing Video Martketplace Trends in the Freewheel 1Q23 Report

For the past thirteen years, FreeWheel’s Video Marketplace Report has provided the advertising industry with core assessments of an ever evolving national and global digital video marketplace. Released twice a year, the report includes an analysis of the advertising marketplace, current audience usage habits and an assessment of the programmatic marketplace.

According to Bridget Greaney, Consultant at Comcast FreeWheel, the basis of the analysis was derived from the rich anonymized first party data set culled from the FreeWheel platform on premium video for 1Q23, compared to 1Q22. This yielded key takeaways for the industry. According to Greaney, “We're seeing a shift toward more ad supported tiers with the convergence of publishers and consumers. The publishers are looking for a more financially sustainable approach to streaming often with subscription streaming sites.”

From the consumer side of the business, she indicated that, “Consumers are looking for a more a way to manage their costs as it was with original traditional television. We now see more ad supported premium video content which has resulted in overall ad view growth at 9% across the U.S and EU compared to the same time last year.”

Unsurprisingly, viewer experience is becoming an important factor in ad optimization. “There is the increasing importance of the viewer experience because there is so much more premium video relying on supported content that optimizing the viewer experience becomes vital,” she asserted. “It's always been important,” she averred, “but it's becoming even more so. We think of three different buckets of quantity, quality and relevancy of the ads for the audience and have found that audiences do not mind watching advertisements as long as it doesn't disrupt their overall content viewing experience.” In addition to ad relevancy, viewer experience is impacted by other factors such as device type and screen size. “How does that factor into what publishers may consider when it comes to the viewer experience?” she queried.

Comparing global to U.S. data, she explained that, “one very interesting point is how the distribution platform breaks down. TV everywhere is most prominent in both the U.S. and the EU. But that's where the similarities for distribution platform end. There's a significantly larger use of operator authentication platforms in the EU than in the U.S. and a lot more OTT in the U.S. and that's in part because Europe has a much stronger use of set top boxes whereas in the U.S., FAST channels that are direct to consumer through OTT platforms are more prominent. It is interesting to see that while the majority platform still is the same in both worlds once you start digging in, different regions function a bit differently.” She saw from the data that, “Content curation opportunities vary by platform. Longer form content may be accessed on a larger screen, for example and you can do longer and more mid-roles which enable greater ad loads.” But according to Greaney , oftentimes the threshold for those number of commercials can become disruptive for a viewer. “They have a low threshold. So you have to be more particular.”

In terms of trends, Programmatic is one area which has experienced dramatic growth over the years. “We saw 21% growth in the U.S. in programmatic distribution. It is current 35% of the ad views in the U.S. and 19% in the EU in the first half of this year. It is a growing area of the industry,” she noted.

Finally, when you compare audience targeting to behavioral targeting, the U.S. is more committed to audience targeting while the EU relies more heavily towards behavioral targeting.

Looking ahead, Greaney believes that, “The video marketplace will have more content being ad supported and premium video,” within a hybrid model of video on demand subscription services and FAST channel growth. “This is becoming more of a trend,” she explained, “Evolution has always been the nature of the industry. Think about traditional television and commercial breaks. We're just seeing more and more of that happen across the board. The other piece of this is the importance of viewer experience, especially as the market becomes more saturated for consumers.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Julia Zangwill Shares the Results From the 10th Annual FreeWheel’s Video Marketplace Report

This year marks the 10^th anniversary of FreeWheel’s Video Marketplace Report, a seminal study on the state and future of premium video. The study is a valuable track of the emergence and growing popularity of premium video in the marketplace.

Methodology

“The report started in 2010,” explained Julia Zangwill, Director of Advisory Services at FreeWheel, “and we saw the need to highlight the trends in the premium ecosystem.” Over time it went from three pages to thirty pages and from just the U.S. market to the U.S. and the EU. The basis of the analysis is derived from the rich data set culled from the FreeWheel platform on premium video. “It’s all aggregated and anonymized and it is ad views data as well as video views data,” she explained.

Premium video is a term that can be loosely defined nowadays. For Zangwill, “It is a bit of a hot potato. The way we define it is around professionally produced, mostly long-form video, that has monetization rights. Those are MVPDs, Distributors as well as Programmers. It is the traditional television players that we focus on.”

Keeping it Fresh

In order to keep the study up-to-date, accurate and relevant in a highly changing and evolving ecosystem, changes were made in the analytical structure of the study. “We re-architected the way we analyze the world’s largest dataset of premium video ad impressions to reflect the changes we’ve seen in the market over the last ten years,” she noted and added, “This year, we see a long pattern of fragmentation across systems, content, and operations move towards integration, with notable examples of content aggregation, system simplification, and operational consolidation.” To that end, FreeWheel readjusted the way the database and queries were structured. “We took last year’s study, broke it apart and put it back together so we have a lot more flexibility going forward.”

Study Takeaways

Zangwill reflected that, “Overall, the past ten years we saw incredible growth. Technology was always one step ahead of consumers. When TV Everywhere services were first introduced in 2011 there was a lot of confusion on ‘how do I log in?’ and ‘on what devices does it work?’ and ‘what content is available inside or outside the home?’ But fast forward to the past year, we reached an inflection point where the technology and the content and the operations are starting to simplify.” In 2020, TVE made up 40% of ad views, but ad supported streaming services were 38% of ad views and continue to accelerate. With all of the device fragmentation, “Connected TV has emerged as #1, with close to 75% of device consumption” she stated.

What has facilitated CTV adoption, according to Zangwill, was the rich choice of high quality content especially in 2013. She referred to it as “the Golden Age of TV comprised of high caliber, scripted shows including AMC’s Breaking Bad and FX’s The Shield,” that consumers wanted to view on the larger screen. This timing, aligned with advanced technology like Roku boxes and Firesticks, accelerated CTV adoption. “Back then it was 2% of ad views and it more than doubled the next year. Seven years later, CTV makes up 62% of ad views proving CTV is here to stay,” she concluded.

The study also confirmed the Power of Live Sports. “Five years ago, the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil led consumers to watch more live sports on digital platforms than ever before.  In 2020 live content made up 55% of content consumption, and we expect the 2021 Tokyo Olympics will set new records later this year,” she noted.

Another takeaway is the rise of Programmatic. “It is another new data cut that we can now track moving forward. It was in its infancy in the past decade, specifically around video. But it has been in a mature state now for a long time. In 2015, header bidding made the transition from display to video. Today 24% of impressions are executed programmatically,” she explained, “We expect to see that accelerate and continue in the next few years.”

The pandemic, according to Zangwill, created decision fatigue which led viewers to passively stream content throughout the day to fill the time. This trend could continue with live sports coming back.

Next Steps

Looking to the future, “There is a lot of competition out there when it comes to ad supported services and there are going to be organizations to opt-in for a low cost value proposition. There will also be other players who are going to be more premium and have a higher price point that offers a different ad experience or different content. The value proposition will become very important,” she predicted.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Comcast’s Look Back at 2020 and Look Ahead to 2021

This has been an unusually challenging time for prognostication. The once-in-a-generation pandemic and the current political environment have upended expectations and has created what some believe is a “new normal.” 

How are the advertising and publishing spheres of media looking back and looking forward? Comcast FreeWheel offers a look back at 2020 while Comcast Advertising looks ahead to 2021.

Programmers 2020 Look Back

2020 was a year of major changes from the global pandemic to the Black Lives Matter movement to the U.S. Elections and aftermath. But the first look at the year 2020 began with a push forward on addressability with Comcast FreeWheel’s initiative on enabling addressability.

 

The full force of the global pandemic hit the market in March, changing viewing patterns across dayparts, devices and platforms. According to Comcast FreeWheel, in the first half of 2020, premium video views increase 17% year-over-year and premium video ad views increase by 32% in the U.S. Europe saw a significant increase in TV viewership as well with average daily viewing per household up to 6 hours and 25 minutes per day on average from 90 minutes. Tent pole events had mixed performances with the Superbowl achieving a five year ratings high while the Oscars slumped and the Olympics in Japan were postponed.

Certain advertising categories benefited from consumers sheltering at home, such as Food, while other categories such as Travel held more optimism for an eventual recovery in 2020 than actually happened. Sports returned by the start of summer, registering huge increases in viewership especially for Baseball, Hockey and Basketball. Notably, by the fall, more sports resumed including Tennis, Cycling and Rugby. Programmers, anxious to offer more viewing options to content starved consumers, launched a range of streaming services including Peacock from NBCU.

Certainly the impact of Black Lives Matter in the summer brought into the forefront the malignant and enduring impact of structural racism which expanded beyond the U.S. into the global zeitgeist, forcing the media world to lean in to be part of the change.

As the year progressed, Upfront was proving to be very different from prior years with smaller-than-normal and delayed events. Adding to this was the uncertainty of TV schedules with delays in production due to the pandemic and advertisers buying closer to program airings because of the uncertainty.

As 2020 wound down, the world braced for a COVID-19 resurgence and further lockdowns. But there are signs of optimism and hope for 2021. A FreeWheel survey of 500 European Marketers reveals that when it comes to advanced TV budgets, 84% expect spend to grow in the next 12 months.

Agencies 2021 Look Forward

For agencies, 2020 has been a year of adversity, complexity and, yes, opportunity. According to Comcast Advertising, Measurement has risen to the top of priorities for both the buy side and sell side of the business. Comcast has found that, “the whole industry is looking for workable solutions,” in an area that has historically lagged behind in innovation, relying on legacy data sets.

But 2021 looks to be a very different measurement environment. For Michael Law, President Amplifi USA, “As consumers have clearly shown they are in control of their experiences with brands and with media, it’s imperative our industry works collectively to evolve to a consumer-centric, cross channel and platform measurement solution, that can be used universally as a future trading currency and benchmark for the efficiency and effectiveness of all brand communications efforts.”

Programmatic is projected to be another hot growth area for agencies and as media converges, it is accelerating adoption of this advertising format. As Hayley Diamond, EVP, US Digital Investment and Partnerships, Publicis Medi, noted, “Two factors are driving new investment behavior in the TV space: increased buying automation and utilizing data for enhanced targeting. We see increased programmatic interest and activity, directly driven by a need to drive efficiency, the higher volume of options in terms of supply and investment options, and the unique dynamics of 2020 and into 2021.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted what has always been an important issue among agencies – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. There can be no more delay in implementing policies and actions that foster substantive change in this area. “This has to be a key objective for our industry, it’s not ok to sit on the side-lines and hope someone else will do it. As leaders of businesses we have to be better educated in recognizing that we don’t know what we don’t know, learning more and learning how to actively make those opportunities available to all,” warned Stephanie Marks, Managing Director, Havas U.

A major area of change that might lead to a new normal for viewership is streaming which is now 25% of total video consumption, fostering further fragmentation. Agencies realize that Unification is necessary for the healthy future of television that can be bought at scale more holistically.

“OTT and CTV’s scale and maturity have placed it on an even playing field with linear TV in terms of quality and engagement and offers incremental audiences via advanced targeting capabilities. Holistic planning across all flavors of TV will be key to take full advantage of these platforms so that marketers can maximize unduplicated reach and use the strengths of each platform to deliver the right advertising message,” stated Marissa Jimenez, President, MODI Media.

Fueling this need for convergence is Addressable which, for agencies, is the necessary next step in television’s growth and relevancy to marketers. Comcast Advertising noted that in June 2020, nine programmers began addressable trials for project OAR (Open, Addressable, Ready) and AMC was the first to join Comcast Advertising’s On Addressability in the U.S. This is expected to expand in 2021.

For Jason Han, Senior Vice President of Addressable Innovation for Matterkind, “Addressable TV is taking significant steps in its evolution as programmers are opening up their national inventory and new solutions are being tested. 2021 promises to unlock new levels of scale for advertisers looking to reach specific desired audiences in a premium environment that clients value.”

Will 2021 hearken in a “new normal” for our business? There is every indication that the seeds planted in 2020 from measurement to addressability to programmatic to inclusion will blossom into a stronger, more viable media ecosystem that is, indeed, a new, robust normal.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

 

The State of the U.S. Video Marketplace. An Interview with FreeWheel’s David Dworin

The media marketplace has not only transformed over the past eight years, it has also offered advertisers and programmers a wealth of information from premium video content data. 

Discerning the trends has been especially important to FreeWheel which has been using its data since 2012 to help inform the industry. “We wanted to get a sense of size and the pace of growth of the market. And it’s really grown,” explained David Dworin, Vice President Advisory Services, FreeWheel.

The most recent wave of their U.S. Video Marketplace Report, fielded during the pandemic, offers a fascinating overview of the market in flux.

Methodology

Using FreeWheel data offers a, “comprehensive look into ad supported premium video because we see it across all of the different devices, across all of the major movie companies, the major television companies, the different platforms, the different apps, which offers a holistic view,” he noted.  The methodology has been refined over the years including the terminology they use and the data set has also expanded over time. The data is powered by Free Wheel for dynamic advertising, “anywhere where two different people may get a different ad versus scheduled advertising in traditional advertising,” he explained.  The data consists of digital, set top box VOD and some addressable television.

Study Takeaways

“We’ve been saying for years that the power of premium digital video is that you weren’t constrained by watching it on a cable box. You could watch whenever you wanted, wherever you wanted, whatever you wanted regardless of when something was traditionally programmed or what device it was for,”Dworin began. “The wherever has changed,” he continued, “because everyone was watching stuck at home in the first half of the year,” because of the pandemic. This has resulted in impressive growth in the number of video views and ad views. “What is really interesting is that we are seeing these double digit increases every year but they are increasing off an ever growing base, up 30% in ad views.”

Another takeaway is that, “nearly three quarters of viewing is happening on the big screen, on a traditional television, about half of it is happening though a connected TV device and about a quarter of it is happening through set top box VOD,” he stated. Compared to 2012 when the study was launched, “it was almost all happening on desktop, with a little bit happening on tablets.”

Finally, “we have seen the content mix that people watch be fairly stable over the years,” he explained, “But this year because of pandemic, we’ve seen sudden shocks to it. Traditionally we see a steady share of entertainment, news, sports but we’ve seen it shift. Entertainment stayed high. But we saw in March a spike around news with a turn to digital channels for their source for news.”

Is this a temporary result of the pandemic? Dworin doesn’t think so. “This is a year of accelerated change,” he explained. “What we are seeing happening in our data and anecdotally is that this is not a blip in 2020. All of these trends that we have been talking about for years, this year was the catalyst that really started to transform the industry and push so many of these things forward faster.”

What the Data Revealed

FreeWheel focused in on a specific week in March that was peak pandemic, to answer the question, “Are people shifting when they decide to watch TV now that they are home all the time? We saw almost a 15% bump in the amount of time people spent watching between noon and 6pm. Then another bump in the late afternoon and then bumps in the morning, almost 10%, and in primetime,” he revealed.

When you examine the data by platform, Dworin noted that, “the biggest differences by platform occurred in the first half (of the pandemic). But when we looked at the full first half, the biggest thing we see is continued explosive growth around connected TV, growing over 40% year to year, and it is now about half of the digital viewing.”

With the lack of live sports at this time, “advertisers have had to use data in more sophisticated ways in order to find those audiences in other places. We will see a return to sports by viewers and advertisers as well as seeing advertisers adopt new tactics that they had to employ without sports there,” he stated.

As far as frequency is concerned, “the technology is there to reduce the amount of repetition of creative so in 98% of on demand sessions, creative repeats either zero or one time,” he said, although, “it is difficult to frequency cap today across different publishers. If you watch something on one app at one point and then on a different app, you may not get frequency cap across all of them.” But he noted that there are some initiatives out there to address this issue. Instead of the term incremental reach, Dworin prefers to call it “unique reach which is people that you are not able to reach on traditional linear television. This is a way that you can do it in a less cluttered environment.”

Next Steps for Advertisers

According to Dworin, advertisers are still playing catch up. “The amount of advertising dollars is not necessarily proportionally up to the amount of viewing that’s happening in what is still a fairly constrained supply environment,” because there is less inventory in connected TV. He advises advertisers to consider their cross screen video strategy and, “how to best incorporate data, how to incorporate programmatic and addressable advertising and accessing this inventory long term in a way that gives them access to really differentiated and important inventory while also making sure that publishers are able to keep it brand safe and compliant - everything everybody loves about traditional advertising.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Unlocking The Addressable Future

According to eMarketer, Addressable TV ad spend is on a tear, increasing from $760million in 2016 and projected to rise to $3.49billion by 2021. The advantages that addressable offers both buyers and sellers also benefits consumers who can now receive messaging that is tailored to their interests and needs. Many companies believe that there is an even greater opportunity for growth in the next few years and are willing to place more dollars against it in the next sales cycle. 

Advertising Week’s panel titled, Unlocking the Addressable Future brought Discovery, Xander, FreeWheel and Omnicom together to discuss how they will ‘unlock’ these opportunities. The potential is great. “First, the infrastructure exists,” stated, David Algranati, Chief Product Officer, Comscore, there is, “the ability to version ads at the household level at scale.” And with national addressable, “If the networks, in conjunction with the MVPDs were to version the inventory that the networks own, the scale or available inventory for addressable advertising would dramatically increase creating a whole new set of opportunities for advertisers.” 

Where is Addressable Today?

For Dan Rosenfeld, Vice President Data Strategy, Xandr, addressable offers relevant advertising delivered one-to-one directly to the consumer or a household through TV distribution or digital. Keith Kazerman, Executive Vice President, Digital Sales, Advanced Advertising and Research, Discovery, essentially agreed, adding that the ads are dynamically inserted.

On the agency side, Matt Kramer, Managing Director, Advanced Advertising, Omnicom, suggested that companies consider the levels of delivery. “At the top you have data driven linear, using first and third party data to better select what networks, dayparts and programs to buy,” he explained, “Layer number two is getting down to the household level and finally you have the IPTV space which is built upon connected devices at the access point and the OTT apps you are trying to sponsor,” which is at the programmatic level.

For Claudio Marcus, General Manager, Data Platform, FreeWheel, addressable identifies segments of consumers who share common attributes and is not necessarily one-to-one marketing.  “This is not,” he assured, “targeting people on a single individual basis.” This is an important distinction, coming at a time of GDPR in the E.U. and state level privacy legislation such as CCPA in the US. He added that addressable offers not only target-ability but is also ubiquitously measureable. “The measurement component of addressability extends beyond the households that don’t support targeting today,” he stated, meaning that an advertiser can deliver a linear ad and still understand which household received that ad. 

Where is Addressable going?

So today, Addressable can be used in a myriad of ways to capture consumers by segment and to measure against traditional targeting and delivery. But where is it headed? For Marcus, looking ahead three years from now will bring profound applications. "Three years from now, the definition of addressable TV advertising will be ads that are targeted to anonymous, likeminded segments of consumers who are reached via TV and premium video content, regardless of the type of delivery or device. Addressable TV ads will be seamlessly enabled across National, Local and premium digital video, and will considerably easier to plan, buy, execute and measure," he predicted.

For Zazerman, the stakes are high and collaboration is pivotal. “If national programmer addressability is not available at scale in 3 years, everyone on this stage should be held accountable. Collaboration is key to bringing this opportunity to market for our collective clients,” he concluded.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

FreeWheel’s James Rothwell on the Potent Combination of Linear TV and Digital

James Rothwell, Vice President, Global Agency, Brand & Industry Relations at Comcast Advertising, can be considered a television evangelist. 

He currently handles responsibilities across FreeWheel and Spotlight, which means he manages both the sell and buy side of the business.  “Four years ago, I actually wrote my own job description, pitching to the FreeWheel CEO at the time that we needed to push our thought leadership out there, sharing the story about premium video and why TV is important to buyers,” he explained.  "It was a time when digital video was gaining a lot of traction in the marketplace.”

FreeWheel Council for Premium Video
It is vitally important to Rothwell (pictured at top) to support clients by “banging the drum” to highlight TV’s unique contributions to the advertising mix.  This philosophy resulted in the creation of the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video.  The group advocates on behalf of all FreeWheel clients on the publishing side -- meeting on a regular basis to discuss important topics of the day, including how to move the industry forward and research, data and thought leadership on the value of premium video, especially targeted at the buy side.

Since the council started, and three years into his leadership, Rothwell reflected that, at the time, “digital was the new kid on the block, getting all of the headlines and gaining the mindshare of advertisers and the press.”  But the landscape is shifting.  “Over the years, we have seen brand safety challenges and issues that have been happening on the digital side that have called the value proposition into question," he said.  "We have been trying to focus our efforts on making sure that message is not lost.  The TV ecosystem is superior in terms of the value it can generate for marketers with none of the risk.”

Fragmentation and Its Impact
But, let’s face it, TV audiences have been fragmenting and this is causing a shift in advertiser perceptions and in the marketplace in general.  I asked Rothwell how this TV viewership fragmentation is impacting advertisers’ ability to reach their target audience.  He conceded that “people are watching TV wherever and whenever they want on whatever device they choose.  As a result, companies have had to adapt and change their outlook, as well as the way they manage their businesses and the value propositions and solutions they offer to advertisers.”  The goal is to make it as easy as possible to transact and ultimately re-aggregate those audiences.  Rothwell focuses on that convergence and the idea that linear TV and digital needs to be as seamless as possible from offering to execution to measurement.

To Rothwell, with the fragmenting media landscape, advertisers are now trying to “find unique audiences and unique individuals within those audiences, as well as be able to manage the exposure of their advertising message across all of these different environments.”  In planning, he noted that there is an understanding of where that audience is.  But from a buying, executing and measurement perspective, there is a challenge because each of those different environments treats the delivery of those audiences separately.  This becomes cumbersome for advertisers to get a true sense of the total audience and manage the way they expose messages.  Synergies need to be established to move the business forward.

Measurement continues to be an issue and “has not caught up to audiences yet,” Rothwell noted.  "[Although we are] chipping away at it every year, it still has a long way to go.”  And as audiences are split across different screens, the advertising experience, “which isn’t consistent across those screens, is something that continues to be refined.”  He pointed out that there is a lot of testing going on in the industry, from ad length to formats, ensuring that the consumer gets the best experience and advertisers get the best value.

Challenges In Optimal Reach
For Rothwell, in addition to fragmentation, another challenge that prevents advertisers from attaining optimal reach is audience duplication.  “If we think about those audiences across television and digital screens, they are not mutually exclusive and many heavy streamers still consume hours of linear TV across multiple publishers," he said.  "I watch linear and OTT, and on my mobile device.”  He added that many heavy streamers also consume hours of linear TV across multiple publishers.
Complete audience de-duplication is also a challenge.  “Today, programmers and operators are increasingly able to de-duplicate their own audiences, but an advertiser needs to be able to manage reach across all channels, platforms and publishers," he asserted.  "It’s a big challenge."  This is important for monitoring ad exposures and fatigue.  “While TV viewers are scattered across the multitude of channels, digital video is even more fragmented than linear is with different streaming services, platforms and devices,” which adds to the complexity, he said.  Finally, up to a certain point, “linear TV can be very efficient in terms of target reach, but beyond that the cost of incremental reach percentage points climbs exponentially.”

Achieving Optimal Reach
Citing an example of incremental reach in the marketplace, Rothwell took a look at some of the Comcast data and FreeWheel campaigns running on their platform and saw what the audience overlap looked like when the campaigns ran on both digital and linear.  “What was really interesting was when we had large linear TV buys, the incremental reach opportunity on digital was good but didn’t blow us away," he said.  "When the buys were more evenly spread across linear and digital, digital was able to drive a huge amount of incremental reach and incremental audience for that particular brand.  That was interesting to us to see how digital can support linear, especially when investment in linear was lower.”  They also conducted research on reaching the right audiences with the right number of exposures across a combination of both linear and digital, introducing the concept of effective incremental reach, including optimal frequency.

“This is a huge opportunity for the TV business to create reach efficiencies across the different channels and across the different consumption patterns," he explained.  "It is a very complex problem to solve, but as data becomes more sophisticated and is liberated from its legacy silos, the promise of incremental reach will become a reality.  The value for a brand to be able to understand and control that messaging to different audiences in different engaging environments is phenomenal.”

For a more in-depth look at the FreeWheel Council’s work on incremental reach, click here.

This article first appeared in WWW.MediaVillage.com