Don’t Stop Advertising During a Pandemic. An Interview with Hanna Gryncwajg of TVSquared

Recent events from the pandemic to the protests have not only changed the ways we live with each other but also the processes by which we interact. Looking specifically at our industry and the way we transact business, it is clear that the old processes need to be updated to reflect the new realities. 

For those is the media sales sector, what was once hands-on and meeting-in-person has, by necessity, changed. TVSquared’s Vice President of Enterprise Accounts, Hanna Gryncwajg is a media expert with experience that spans linear and advanced TV, OTT, digital, and programmatic sales. For her, the pandemic, “has put an even stronger spotlight on the importance of speed and agility for advertisers. Those that react quickly – in smart, strategic ways – survive and thrive.”

Here are her thoughts about where we are and where we are going:

Charlene Weisler: How has your job changed pre and during the pandemic?

Hanna Gryncwajg: At TVSquared, my job is primarily working with MVPDs and media owners, providing them with attribution and measurement tools for their advertisers. While the sell-side was certainly in the midst of change, moving toward more transparency, accountability and outcomes, the pandemic has accelerated it. They are even more hyper-focused on providing their advertisers with proof of performance and the data-backed insights needed to reach audiences whose viewing habits and patterns are changing constantly. Brands want to be able to dynamically manage and optimize linear and OTT campaigns (like they do with digital), and MVPDs and media owners are adapting to that demand quickly.  

  

Weisler: What are the greatest challenges for sales today?

Gryncwajg: For sales across all parts of the advertising ecosystem, two challenges stand out. The first is staying on top of the rapidly evolving industry, which is no easy feat. Our space is changing by the day, with automation, data and technology moving us forward. It’s so critical for sales to be able to articulate these changes and trends clearly and in context of clients’ needs and challenges.

Second, the shift away from “traditional” metrics to ones that are more business-specific, has created a disconnect in the market. Don’t get me wrong, outcomes- and performance-based metrics, and being able to measure TV’s direct impact on them, are very good things. But in the case of agencies and sell-side sales, they are still being “graded” on delivering GRPs. That is a disconnect that is tough to balance, but we’re seeing the divide lessen.

Weisler: What are the greatest opportunities?

Gryncwajg: There are so many opportunities, but most have one thing in common: they benefit the advertiser. At the end of the day, we’re all serving the advertiser – whether you’re a DSP, agency, an enterprise seller, you name it. The end user has the money and they want to leverage TV to move products. They are not interested in GRPs. They want flexibility and transparency into what’s working and what’s not, and the data-backed insights to inform continuous optimizations.

In the case of streaming services, at the very moment (that’s how quickly we are evolving) it’s all about incremental reach, proving out how OTT extends reach over linear campaigns. OTT providers are seeing an influx of ad spend.  Some of it is clearly due to increased viewing during the pandemic, but much of it is about the content, not where or on what device it is being viewed.   OTT providers want to make sure they are finally given the credit of viewers they deserve, and to keep those additional dollars flowing. The time is now to prove what incremental reach can do for a brand – to measure it and also to attribute response to it. TVSquared plays a critical role here because we measure TV everywhere, across linear, data-driven linear and digital. We provide this critical piece of information to our partners as well as brands directly.

Weisler: What are you able to tell advertisers and clients regarding their flights during the pandemic?

Gryncwajg: TVSquared is a single, unified platform that measures outcomes, impressions, reach, frequency and reach extension across linear and digital TV anywhere in the world. We currently have clients in 76 countries and counting. We’re not in the business of attribution studies, which provide findings six weeks or more after a campaign. We are always-on, so you get real-time insights on the business impact of your campaigns. During the pandemic or not, we’re able to tell our clients optimal campaign delivery, reach and frequency. They get granular performance analytics by creative, day, daypart, channel, program and genres – with insights down to the DMA an ZIP code levels. They understand the immediate, longer-term and household-level impact of TV, and can uncover unique reach across OTT, as well as incremental reach vs. linear.

Weisler: In those industries where product sells itself like hand sanitizer, why should advertisers continue to advertise? What is the right mix during these times?  

Gryncwajg: It’s about adapting your creatives to be situationally aware and then testing and learning. There are products that are much more in-demand now than ever before. But there’s still competition and consumers have many options. At the start of lockdown, we saw many clients go off-air for a week to adapt their creatives to address the pandemic in some form or another. They then were right back on a few days later.

The right mix is 100% dependent on the brand. What works for one, isn’t necessarily going to work for another. Once a brand is on-air, it’s so critical to test and learn – see how new buys, timeslots, OTT/linear mixes, etc. are impacting the bottom line. And then use everything you learned to inform your next flight. Viewing patterns and audiences are always going to be shifting, so constant measurement and then acting fast to make those learnings actionable are very important.  

Weisler: For those categories that are hurting like Hospitality, should they continue to advertise? 

Gryncwajg: One of our biggest pieces of advice for advertisers is to not go dark. The damage we’ve seen from brands going off air, and essentially relinquishing their share of voice to competitors, is hard to come back from. It’s about finding the right messaging and staying on-air. Consumers are not necessarily buying cars or booking vacations at the moment, but you still see auto and travel brands on-air to maintain brand awareness. Their creatives aren’t about direct selling at the moment, but they are still staying in front of consumers so when the time comes to purchase a new car and book a holiday, they are top of mind. 

Weisler: As states open up, are you seeing a shift in the business? Are KPIs changing?  

Gryncwajg: The KPIs we measure for our thousands of advertisers are unique to each advertiser, so it’s hard to generalize. I will say that some of the brands that were on-air to maintain awareness have been slowly shifting back to more performance-based KPIs as things get back to normal (or as normal as things can be now). We’re also seeing verticals like travel, real estate and auto start to increase their presence across linear and OTT. While they never went dark, they are starting to show patterns of returning to pre-COVID schedules.

Weisler: What types of platforms are working best overall at this time for advertisers and why?

Gryncwajg: TVSquared has been growing steadily since its start, but the last few months have been extremely busy. Advertisers need to know that every dollar in their ad budgets are working, so cross-platform attribution that generates real-time insights has climbed to the top of many priority lists. Our platform was built to be data agnostic, it is versatile and flexible to serve a global community with different datasets and media needs. For an advertiser to be agile, its partners have to be as well. We quickly ingest any type of dataset that a client wants to work with to provide immediate results. There is no need to wait weeks for reports. Instant gratification and results = impacting change towards efficiency.  

  

Give us an overview on a global level on the state of advertising - maybe comparing countries?

Gryncwajg: We work with global accounts every day. We are the only GDPR compliant attribution provider and the only one that measures both linear and OTT globally. We have hundreds of clients that run campaigns in 20 countries or more. In fact, I’m working with a global data partner right now and we are training their sales teams in US, Europe, Asia and Australia. Understanding each country’s culture and media nuances are key to communicating in a way that is respectful, engaging and will drive response.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Automated Ad Sales: Past, Present, and Future

Automated ad sales have been around longer than some might think. The first central ad server was actually introduced in 1995 for online advertising, according to Clearcode.

Over the course of the past few years, media companies have realized the value of automated ad sales beyond digital, and it’s currently expanding into a range of platforms.

Early Days of Advertising

Ad buying started as human to human interaction. Research departments would track performance trends and create estimates for sales. Agency planners would find the best fit for their client’s target consumer. Then, agency buyers and media sellers would meet to negotiate price, delivery expectations, and contract guarantees that would be executed over the broadcast or calendar year.

Transitioning to Automated Advertising

With the rollout of the internet and digital platforms came the ability to more easily capture data at various points in the consumer experience. More data-driven systems entered the marketplace and, as a result, merged the planning and buying processes. Digital, with its real-time capabilities, enabled a seamless planning to execution process, with buys electronically moving from the spreadsheet or database to ad server.

For those with a deep history in media sales like Arlene Manos, president emeritus of advertising sales at AMC Networks, data has been the game-changer.

In an interview with Manos, she noted that “Selling is now more applicable to specialized projects, which go beyond running a straight ad, such as sponsorship of events and integrated marketing.”
Direct response sales departments, in particular, aren’t needed if proper automation is in place. Sales digitization through automated advertising enables sales executives to forgo the elemental aspects of sales and apply their talents more strategically.

The Television Marketplace

Today, digital supply and demand marketplaces streamline processes by instantaneously calculating availability, negotiating price and CPM, delivering the units, and solving the problem of under-delivery closer to real-time. And, because the process removes human fallibility, there is also greater transparency and control for both buyer and seller, delivering greater value to both sides of the transaction.

But for some, the movement to a data-centric automated ad sales market has resulted in a stand-off. “Agencies, media companies, and independent tech companies are all building proprietary platforms,” said Hanna Gryncwajg, VP of enterprise accounts at TVSquared. Agencies believe they should have the process control because “they know their client’s marketing goals and needs” while media companies that have invested heavily in platforms and processes “don’t want to give up the ability to optimize their content, data, and platforms across their asset portfolio.”

The struggle for control is still being played out, but it’s clear that automated ad sales’ ability to streamline processes and provide transparency across the selling-buying ecosystem delivers value for content owners and distributors while also maximizing ad targetability. “Content is no longer king,” Gryncwajg asserted. “It is audiences that are king and finding an audience match that provides ROI to a marketer via automation always wins.”

This article first appeared on the Videa blog.

Designated Market Areas: The Swiss Army Knife of Media Buys

Designated market areas were created in the mid-1950s specifically for use in national TV spot buying. 

Each designated market area (or DMA) covers an area where viewers have access to the same television options, according to The Balance. “Advertisers wanted to tailor their buys to the specific areas of the country where sales were concentrated . . . [DMAs] facilitated this marketplace,” explains media historian Tim Brooks.

Are DMAs a concept that has come and gone? “No, but they need to come into the 21st century,” says Patti Gold, managing partner and chief media officer at The Shipyard. “DMAs work in a way that other definitions—like metro areas—don’t, because they include virtually everyone in the country. We need this kind of common denominator in order to cleanly value offline media and compare apples to apples between offline and online.”

Today, there are 210 designated market areas, according to Nielsen, representing 114,695,130 total TV homes in the U.S.

Read the full article  on the Videa site

Marketing Plan Tips: Sometimes It’s Better Not to Advertise

There is a time for action and there is a time to hold back. For some advertisers, premium inventory like the Super Bowl is a must-purchase. Others, like Frito-Lay, follow smart marketing plan tips and decide the cost and the presence aren’t worth it, as Variety explains.

Some advertisers consider frequency to be as important as reach; while for others, driving home a message a few times too many can mean risking viewer attention and engagement. What can smart marketing planning tell us about the right time to advertise and the right time to take a pass?

Know Your Peak Reach and Frequency
When has your message reached its viewer tolerance? Knowing your effective reach and frequency is pivotal to planning and implementing a successful advertising campaign. “We see this all of the time,” noted Hanna Gryncwajg, media consultant. “It is all about campaign management and knowing when you have hit your mark—at what point everyone who wanted to see your ad has already seen it and pinpointing when you’ve reached your maximum reach and frequency.”

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Media Sellers: Craft and Refine Your Sales Pitches

How can a seller best refine their sales pitches so that their content is optimally showcased and valued? Even in this changing media environment, sales rules for optimal valuation are evergreen. Media sellers need to be innovative and creative to keep up.

According to Hanna Gryncwajg, SVP advertising sales at RLTV, “Over the past decade the process of working on advertiser’s brand initiatives has unified the ad sales and marketing teams. The most successful sales executives are not just media savvy, they also need to be creative and marketing-centric.”

Focus on the Client
The number one rule according to senior sales executives is to find out what the client wants and needs. What are their goals? Then, discover other attributes that will help a sales presentation be as relevant and targeted as possible. Research not only the client but also their competitive sets, any market or category challenges, opportunities, and brand messages.

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Saving the TV Business Model

As the upfront finishes up, we not only see flat and declining sales being registered, we also see how this impacts media stock values. While I am no longer a TV network executive, I am an informed advocate of the industry as well as an investor in many media companies. So I have a vested interest in the health of the business and in the success of those working hard to make their companies profitable.   

So I say this with the greatest respect to my friends in the industry - I can’t help but feel frustrated by the pace of change in implementing solutions to the changing media business environment. There are many reasons why this stagnation occurs. Internal office environments can sometimes foster fear of change, luddite-ism, risk-aversion and myopia.  Competitive external business forces can sometimes discourage collaboration across corporations. And so we tread water until we either swim or drown.

The current marketplace demands that we take more concrete action. Here are some suggestions as to what those actions might be to invigorate the business model:

Agree to Universal Program and Ad IDs

Measuring audiences across all possible platforms in a failsafe, accurate manner is pivotal to maximizing revenue. But it is taking far too long to reach a consensus on standard universal content recognition IDs for programs and ads. Once we can all agree and apply these codes we can truly maximize the value of all content across all possible and potential platforms.

Janice Finkel-Greene, EVP Buying Analytics, Initiative MAGNA and a strong advocate of universal codes says, “We need to make an honest and compelling case for what we need and stop accepting subpar workarounds as the best we can do. Systems that were once facilitators have become impediments but it’s a situation that goes largely unrecognized because it has evolved so slowly. Now it’s something we live with like a morning traffic jam.” But she warns, “The universal codes are only the first big step in the process.  Once they exist we will have to capture and report them by media outlet for verification and audience analysis.”

Stop Negotiating and Selling on Age and Gender Proxies

There is nothing more frustrating to me than the continued use of the current proxies of age and gender to transact on television. Not only are they arbitrary breaks, (who came up with Adults 18-49 anyway?) they hardly reflect actual spending habits (which are based on lifestyle more than age). They also terribly undervalue inventory by discrediting and ignoring some of the biggest spenders of certain consumer goods which are often Adults 50+. Networks that are compelled to sell on the value of younger demos lose inventory value. Agencies who buy on these breaks are often not effectively targeting the true consumers of their products and services. Yes, I know about perception of brand by younger up and coming consumers but today with the availability of more addressable opportunities, why not sell and post television on behavior and lifestyle?

On the front lines of this issue is Hanna Gryncwajg, SVP Sales for RLTV whose network targets Adults 50+ (which now includes the first wave of Gen Xers). She says, “It has been well documented that the A50+ audience has tremendous buying power.  Boomers (the largest piece of 50+) represent 70% total net worth in America and account for 40% of total consumer demand.  With CPG, older adults represent 50% of the purchase power but only 5% of the advertising revenue is targeted towards A35-64.  I believe audience based buying, driven through purchase and behavior data, would be a win-win for marketers and consumers.”

Compensating for Declines by Increasing the Ad Load Only Makes It Worse

How many times do we “solve” for under-delivery by increasing the ad load? While it might be a short term fix, it can soon become a vicious cycle that only denigrates content quality, encourages more ad skipping by viewers and further erodes overall delivery. There are probably many solutions to this problem. A few years ago, I advocated for pod curation: Higher performing ads could be rewarded with better pod position. Pod lengths could be calculated more scientifically – perhaps by program genre. Neuroscience precepts could be used to improve promo performance in the “A” position and rank ads more effectively. If we can do this it may even help slow ad skipping.  

Steve Sternberg, former SVP Research at ION Media, and author of The Sternberg Report has conducted extensive pod research. He says, "Part of the problem is that Nielsen's C3 measurement does not measure commercials, commercial pods, or DVR fast-forwarding. It is really a pretense at measuring commercials.  C3 was designed as a one-year band-aid until exact commercials or commercial pods could be measured by industry post-buy systems. That was eight years ago.  We know that the first minute in a pod over-delivers C3 by 20-30% while every other commercial minute within the pod under-delivers C3.  So adding additional commercials to a pod should result in further rating declines." 

It used to be easy to kick the can down the road and leave the solutions to the next generation of television executives. However, at this business tipping point, we need to courageously act now to insure that there is a successful next generation.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Data, Data Everywhere in the Upfront. An Overview - Part 4

This is the fourth part of a five part series examining many of the new data initiatives of major data companies. Parts 1 through 3 outlined the many data initiatives, their scalability and whether their services were gaining traction in the industry. Now in Part 4, we ask whether there should be a standard metric that helps to link all of these initiatives and if so, what should that metric be?

Bill Feininger, President, MassiveData at Fourthwall Media, is immersed in the data reportage aspect of set top box data. He says, “In my opinion, impressions and reach are the most meaningful in measuring ad target performance and delivery to specific audience segments.” But as you will see from the following media company quotes, while there is some consensus for delivery, there is also a growing interest in ROI, engagement, segmentation and a measurement metric that may vary from company to company.

My take: If there is to be a serious consideration for cross company data services scalability (as well as an industry accepted cross platform measurement), we need to agree on a standard metric. It could be delivery. It could be reach. It could even be a form of ROI, although that might be harder to standardize across advertising categories. But if we cannot agree to a common measurement metric, our ability to create an industry-wide measurement for the 21^st Century that is not based on “proxies” of age and gender is severely compromised. And if we continue to rely on age / gender, we will not realize the true value of big data in our media currency. 

Question 4: Do we need a standard metric with all of these data innovations? If so then what should it be?

David Poltrack (Chief Research Officer, CBS Corporation and President of CBS VISION): We need to be able to employ the new metrics across the full range of platform and programming options. However, the metrics used by each marketer are likely to vary considerably. This limits the benefits of standardization. 

Tom Ziangas (SVP Research and Insights, AMC Networks): I would prefer a “common” metric and they should be time spent, reach (duplicated and unduplicated) and gross average impressions.

Paul Haddad (SVP and General Manager Advanced Data Analytics, Cablevision Media Sales): Today, the advertisers demand for a standard metric has been increasing and we view the evolution to an audience impression measurement as a viable solution to accommodate the multi-screen aspect of media planning.  Census-level data provides more stability with audience segmentation – unlike sample-based methods that break down with audience fragmentation. There is a growing amount of data available however, it remains in silos and the industry would benefit from a more formalized structure to normalize the data. Once a connection is made for the disparate datasets we will have a complete, holistic view of consumption, and the ability to reach audiences based on how consumers consume.

Beth Rockwood (Senior Vice President, Market Resources, Discovery Communications): In order to have a marketplace, at least for the near term, it is important to have a standard metric.  This will continue to be age/sex demographics, as measured by Nielsen.  As advertisers and networks become more comfortable with new data sets, we will begin to place a greater priority on behavioral targets, and tip more towards these metrics, since they are closer to clients KPI’s.

Katie Larkin (EVP Advertising Sales Research and Strategy, NBCU): We are at a time in our industry where we need to move beyond age and gender. We can be more precise with consumer and behavioral targeting. Technology has changed the world by giving consumers more access and more choice. Reach and concentration of target audiences are key metrics for marketers to target today's audiences. Beyond that, we have the potential to provide ROI analytics which varies by client based on their KPI's.

Mike Rosen (Executive Vice President, Advertising Sales, NBCU): When any marketer is looking for a competitive advantage in their category, standardization doesn’t give you a competitive advantage. You need a unique way to measure against a unique strategy.

Geri Wang (President ABC Sales, ABC): We need to agree that the unit of trade will continue to be the impression and, as digital and linear TV evolve to similar addressable models, that we are counting impressions the same way. Today, TV ratings are based on average minute commercial ratings and digital inventory is based on ad-served impression counts with varying degrees of viewability and fraud factored in.  We need a common cross-platform impression definition so that addressable ads can be counted and managed equitably.  Additionally, we need to recognize that as data offerings “fragment” and become proprietary, it will be much more difficult for buyers and sellers to evaluate the marketplace on an apples-to-apples basis.  Some level of industry standardization around audience segmentation will be required for the marketplace to evolve in a scalable fashion.

Kern Schireson (EVP, Data Strategy and Consumer Intelligence, Viacom): With the many ways content is being consumed, we are focused on continuously evolving and innovating our data capture and proprietary predictive methods in order to bring advertisers precisely to the consumers they want to engage with meaningfully. The impact of engagement is more relevant than ever, and that’s a key area of focus for us.

Hanna Gryncwajg (SVP Sales, RLTV):  I'm not sure we can get to a fully standard metric considering all of the different data available today. That said, I do think the industry would move quicker to scalable metrics if there were some broad category standards and, within those categories, specific attributes that could be bundled together with an algorithmic application.  This would also enable small/independent networks and big media companies to be able to compete in the same format.

Part 5, to be published next week, gives the nod to Research and asks the question - What is the status of the Research department in your company? Has the data imperative changed the perceptions of your departments? If so, then how?

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com