The Coup D’etat in Media. Insights From the TV Data Summit

There has been a coup d’etat in media. Where Content used to be King, it has now been deposed and replaced by what Eric Shenk, Technical Director, Office of the CTO, Google Cloud Media noted at the recent TV Data Summit - “Audience is King.”

Why have audiences taken over the prime consideration in media? Part of the answer is the primacy of data in the consumer journey. With access to first, second and third party datasets, marketers and programmers can more easily and efficiently parse who is motivated, who is engaged and who is ready to transact. But how can we know which datasets are relevant, what might be missing and how to best analyze the results?

Here are some takeaways from the TV Data Summit:

The Impact of Data

The availability of data has led to a seismic philosophical change in the media pipeline. The focus used to be on delivering audiences to advertisers. But now, with audiences more in control of their viewing choices, companies need to consider what triggers their choice and attention.

For Radha Subramanyam, Chief Research and Analytics Officer, CBS, her company’s world class global content, brand championship in a safe environment with a passion for innovation is all tied together with cutting edge analytics supported by data. In looking at the ad marketplace today, she noted that data can be used by targeting demographics to gain mass reach and brand awareness, from data enabled TV to target optimization and in addressable for one to one messaging.

For Shenk, “Data is everything,” touching all aspects of the media business. But, currently, it is highly fragmented, residing in silos within companies and behind walled gardens with frenemy companies.  As best as one can, data needs to be collected, transformed, analyzed, visualized and then the best decisions must be made from the insights.

Consumers Are in Charge

Larry Allen, Vice President Ad Innovation and Programmatic, Turner, noted the shift in focus from the client to the consumer. “TV is under siege,” he warned, and said that while advertising strives to make the experience better for the client, “what if it is alienating the consumer?”  We need to “put them front and center.”

He explained that the current ad model is not working because there is too much frequency, not enough relevancy and too mass. “Really long ads can work depending what you are trying to achieve,” he noted and added, “We have new customer engagement metrics to improve our understanding of what is happening. We want to put ads in front of people that make sense. So they don't avoid them.” To that end, Turner embarked on consumer journey research to find out what builds affinity for content. Turner identified consumer content needs and the path they took to make decisions. “This can make things more contextually relevant in real time,” he stated, “and it can be leveraged. But it is hard to scale today and it is a long term horizon project.”

The Challenge of Measurement

The wide possibilities that data brings to the media business is offset by some of the challenges it creates. “Measurement to business outcomes has been challenging,” admitted Julie DeTraglia, Head of Research, Hulu. Tracking content across screens, calculating co-viewing on shared platforms and establishing an industry standard cross platform measurement are all worthy goals that require a joint industry effort between companies that often compete.

CIMM, now part of the ARF, has been focused on establishing a universal content labeling code to ads and programming. This initiative is beginning to gain traction. Jane Clarke, Managing Director and CEO, CIMM noted that there is, “a lot of support for data but sometimes data produces different results because there is no national dataset. We need to understand what is under the hood.”

Initiatives like OpenAP have enabled frenemy companies to work together to bind datasets together to segment audiences for sales.  For Haile Owusu, Senior Vice President, Analytics, Decisions and Data Sciences at Turner, the focus is on algorithmic output. “We forecast bulk audience flows and the ability to probe intra-show behavior, identifying components of the content for additional churn,” he explained. He is also working on the blending of linear and digital consumption by coupling Iinear TV viewing with viewing on devices and to messaging on the app.

Conclusion

Data and analytics, fueled by machine learning and artificial intelligence, will make the media business more efficient and targeted. If frenemy companies can work together, the opportunities offered by data will multiply and the challenges it presents will be subtracted. The TV Data Summit has put all of the innovative approaches out there. Now is the time for the industry to move forward.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Secret Society Update: Challenges (and Solutions) of Workflow Revealed!

After seeing the standing room only crowd at the Secret Society meeting at Turner Ignite in New York this past week, one can see that the secret is finally out.  Mitch Oscar, USIM Advanced Television Strategist, created the Secret Society “to talk about issues that affect the Advanced TV space,” and this particular session was filled with speakers on the subject.  The primary takeaways follow below.

Workflow
The subject of workflow looms largeTo those companies that are grappling with the evolution towards Advanced TV.  Just like the plumbing in a house, workflow is an unheralded but vital aspect of bringing data-driven targeting advertising to television viewers.  It is perhaps for that reason that it doesn’t get more coverage in the media.  But Oscar is focused on getting the industry to consider the challenges and solutions of changing workflow and chose presentations that highlighted the subject, from departmental transitions such as the changing role of research to cross-industry solutions such as OpenAP.

The Evolution of Research
Research’s role has ascended over the past few years with the advancement of data-driven solutions.  Tom Ziangas, Senior Vice President Research, AMC Networks, presented a compelling case for the expansion of Research Departments.  “The increasing complexity of the media landscape has transformed the workflow of the Research Department,” he said.  To that end, he noted that the requirements for a job in research have changed in the past few years from communications majors to data scientists and mathematicians.  In addition, research teams have become less hierarchical as the number and extent of internal client departments have become more formalized.  “Research counts nearly every department in the company as either a stakeholder seeking insights or partner required for measurement across growing data sources,” he explained.

But it’s not just hierarchy and headcount that has changed for research.  The massive influx of first and third-party datasets as part of the measurement process has placed research in the corporate epicenter with the demand for creative (and accurate) solutions.  “The number of data sources research is now digesting has grown ten times in the past ten years driven by digital platforms and deeper granularity into linear viewing,” Ziangas concluded.

Cooperation Across Competing Media Companies
It is becoming clear that traditional media companies will have to work together to establish the industry standard protocols that enable inter-business cross-platform sales processes.  Important first steps have been taken such as OpenAP, which is a partnership between Fox, Turner and Viacom.
Larry Allen, Vice President, Ad Innovation and Programmatic Solutions, Turner, and Noah Levine, Senior Vice President, Advertising Data and Technology Solutions, Fox Networks Group, gave an update to OpenAP.  Allen noted that the collaboration on OpenAP “sought to solve a couple of problems”  -- the need for a democratization of data and the need to taking friction out of buying television was apparent.  “We sought to free up the data so you can see it, build segments against it and see if clients want to buy against it,” he added.  Making it a cross-corporation effort avoided the problem of media entities grading their own homework.

In an update, Levine noted that OpenAP is currently in the process of recruiting national TV programmers to join in.  The challenges to data-driven adoption such as the lack of scale in on-boarding, inconsistent segments across companies and no third-party posts would be solved by joining it.  “We are focused on making it easy and simple with the ability to activate it across all national media companies at once," Levine said.  "OpenAP solves the problem of consistency in defining the targets."

OpenAP offers “an agency [the ability] to share a segment within itself,” Allen added.  For those who wish to explore the platform, OpenAP.tv just launched for linear TV only as phase one.

Conclusion

The media industry is being hit with many changes all at once from data flow to complex world of attribution modeling. But unless we get the workflow flowing and agree on new industry standards in both data usage and segmentation, the ability to maximize inventory value across devices and platforms will be limited.

 


This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

The Secret Society Presents the Multi-Uses of Data

The Secret Society may not be so secret anymore since Steve Lanzano, President and CEO, TVB, gave it a shout out at the recent TVB Advertising Week event.  But some mystery still remains - the latest Secret Society meeting at the Turner offices in NYC was held in a non-descript conference room behind an unmarked door.

This meeting, which included presentations from Viacom, Hulu, NBCU and Turner, collected around a theme of data, audience targeting, addressability and branding. “Consumer choices are changing,” stated Mitch Oscar USIM’s Director, Advanced Television, “1975 was the first year that broadcast networks guaranteed age and gender in the uprfonts. Prior it was household guarantees. Now we look at households with people of a specific age, gender and behavioral characteristics.”

Viacom – Enabling a Currency of Fandom

Bryson Gordon, EVP Data Strategy at Viacom, gave a stirring presentation on fandom through the lens of data and analytics. He is relatively new to media, starting his career at McAfee where he used audience insights and segmentations to move that business from box software to subscription. From there he moved to Microsoft to build up ecommerce services. The similarities these companies have with media companies, he posits, are the patterns of deconstruction and cultivation. When you examine the audience data, Gordon explained, “The pattern of deconstruction concentrates on sub communities within a homogenous base. The pattern of cultivation concentrates on a community who often doesn't transact or behave as a community yet. You don't know you are in the club yet. You share attributes and behaviors that can be targeted but don't yet share a common purpose.” He concluded, “TV doesn't participate in that today. Legacy approach in TV is failing to keep pace with the advancements within audience demographic traction and cultivation.”

His work in Viacom is to insure that all marketing efforts target the right audience. “The audience we believe we attract may not be our audience at all,” he added.  When Microsoft introduced their newest PC, they initially thought that hipsters who owned Apple devices would be their target. But using very advanced data science they found that the hipster focus was wrong. “Women who had two kids under the age of ten who lived in Midwest and who voted for Romney would be the target for this device,” he explained. “The good news,” he assured us, “is that data science is transforming TV. We can fuse data sets, the hygiene of the data is so much better than years ago and data science is way more sophisticated.” And the future for data in TV is bright. “There is a fundamental democratization of data science which allows us to take incredible sets of data and do precise analysis of fan segments,” he stated. At Viacom, he assured, “We plan with advertiser to understand custom target, inboard the data set, offer 17 predictive models and optimize on ongoing basis. We can do it without creating liability and we are transparent. This is leading to a new way of selling and a currency of fandom. TV can now be delivered in a variety of ways with both a custom audience and custom creative.”

Turner  - Data, Technology and Analytics Lead to Opportunities for Buyers

Major network groups like NBCU and Turner are focusing their efforts on data driven sales solutions. Larry Allen, VP Ad Innovation and Programmatic at Turner, presented an overview of two innovative approaches to buying media using technology and advanced data analytics - Turner Targeting Now and Turner Audience Now – through its Turner Ignite initiative.  

Part of the challenge of evolving to a more data driven approach is historical. “It is jarring to say you've been buying one way for 20 years and now you buy in a new way,” explained Allen. With Turner’s solutions the client can supply any custom data set they want. Dan Aversano, SVP Ad Innovation and Programmatic Solutions Turner, said, “We will use any dataset. We are data agnostic and can achieve consistency across solutions. We build a consistency of metrics without having a currency.”  “But seasonality is factor,” cautions Allen, “as is viewing between platforms and modality. Lots of touch points create a new dynamic. There is the issue of data freshness and audience changes for quarter to quarter. So we plan the impact quarter by quarter for plan optimization.”

The next step for Turner is Addressable which is a careful process. Aversano explained, “All of this has to work within our traffic system. It is a challenge for us because TV is a giant jigsaw puzzle and all of our inventory has to sit together from the traffic, deal and proposal systems.”

Secret Society Takeaway

The application of innovative data-driven solutions appears to be gaining traction among the major media companies. Through the efforts of the Secret Society and other industry initiatives, the sharing of initiative techniques and solutions will hopefully lead to a standardization of processes for the industry at large. Let’s continue to keep the conversation flowing.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com