Sinclair – Attracting Passionate Viewers Nationally

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of buying television nowadays is reaching an incredibly passionate audience efficiently. But Sinclair has a compelling proposition. In their footprint of 185 stations in 86 markets, plus some market partnerships, they collect an audience base of passionate, engaged fans that roll up into a national footprint. Sinclair’s Jon Spaet, Senior Vice President Network Sales and Rich Donnelly, Director of Sales, shared their long term strategy and the results.

“Sinclair always has been and is a an entrepreneurial creative results driven company,” Spaet began, “and one of the things that that chief operating officer and said to me, years ago, was we've got this huge footprint, (I actually went back and looked at the time - 177 stations in 79 markets), and we want to create a network. So I tell this little anecdote because we built this from the ground up.”

The components for such an effort include not only the need to collect the data but to also sell it to advertisers. As Donnelly explained, “Broadcast TV, even considering the erosion that's been going on for a while, is still the best way to reach a mass audience and for many advertisers it's still a big piece of their media plan.” But, he admitted, “The erosion does pose a problem. How do advertisers deal with eroding audiences while, at the same time, networks demand increases in pricing because the supply is going away? What we do is create rating points. We take local inventory and put it together making it into a national footprint and bring rating points to the marketplace.”

The Sinclair proposition is based on their ability to garner rating points on their broadcast affiliates with, “programming that everybody is familiar with and in a family friendly environment,” Donnelly noted, “and we bring it with efficiencies. It solves one problem that all the buyers have each year.” Sinclair coins this a, “boutique approach. We don't want to be everything to everybody. We're not going to be a big box store. We want to be the boutique on the corner that when you come in, they know your face, they know what you want, they know what you're looking to buy, they'll know exactly your sizes and things of that nature,” Donnelly added. This is all done among a limited group of advertisers because the inventory is limited and guaranteed. But, he stated, “We bring it to them with a level of stewardship and service that is unparalleled these days.”

“We have inventory that is essentially a diversified portfolio of broadcast assets that includes digital extensions to our linear platforms. We have an in-house agency called Compulsive that is standalone even though it was built from within Sinclair,” noted Spaet. And Sinclair is advancing into all types of digital access including the introduction of flow code which, according to Spaet, is like, “QR codes on steroids. It's a best in class custom designed data and science dynamic to redirect destination,” to “help quantify our viewership besides Nielsen ratings and into the posts.”

Between affiliate programming, local news and sports, there is ample opportunity for advertisers to reach any target consumer group they want, with a large proportion of viewers from a very desirable demographic with discretionary income. Donnelly noted that, “While being a broadcast entity, everybody tends to be a little bit on the older side. We're a strong adult 25 to 54 and 35+.” Spaet added that this group, has “the greatest concentration of wealth. That's where advertising should be focused on. 18 to 49 is a is a legacy leftover from the 1980s It's silly.” The most popular advertiser categories include Insurance, Travel, Health, Pharm, Fast Food and CPG.

Sinclair has expanded its regional sports offerings with Bally. Spaet explained that, “We were one of the few bidders when Disney, under government review, had to divest the regional sports networks - 45 teams – and we were one of the few bidders and were acquire it.”

And, when it comes to passionate viewers, look no further than local news. According to Spaet, “We're selling the local anchors in Austin, in Bakersfield and Green Bay and Washington and Cincinnati and West Palm. Local news anchors, as it has been proven time and time again, are the most trusted anchors in every market. People bond with them. We are aggregating those local news ratings and selling it as a network.”

Donnelly added that, “The way people use the local news is much different than what they look for from national services. It's about weather, traffic, how the local sports teams are doing, what's going on in the local mayor's races. The pandemic really heightened that with news of the spiking in parts of the country. It became more and more important and I think that that will continue.”

Local news is also a reach extender. According to Spaet, “We have research that shows that 60% of our local news audiences don't watch any of the cable network news networks because they're using it for a whole different reason. It's a much more trusted news environment.”

For Donnelly, the strategy for the upfront and beyond is to, “Lean into our message of delivering the broadcast impressions that people are always looking to buy. I don't see broadcast rating erosion slowing down anytime soon and I don't believe that the broadcast networks are going to stop charging more next year than they did the year before. So our positioning of having a full national footprint of broadcast impressions in a family friendly environment and with efficiencies will be important. It was important last year. It's going to become more important next year and I think in the foreseeable future. That's what we have found successful and that's why we have a really high 90 95% renewal rate every year. We expect that to continue.”

Spaet agreed and concluded, “For every upfront we've done, we've sold out a fixed percentage of inventory on our stations. We tend to sell out during the open period which has worked for us. But more importantly, it's worked for our partner clients as well.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Artwork by Charlene Weisler

Addressable’s Measurement Conundrum. An Interview with Comscore’s Prasad Jogulkar

Earlier in August, Mitch Oscar, USIM's advanced TV strategist, assembled and hosted a panel on addressable advertising for BIA which brought together Comscore's Prasad Joglekar, AMC's Tom Ziangas, Carat's T.S. Kelly and Comcast's Larry Allen to discuss the state of the format.

Following the panel, I interviewed individual panelists to delve further into the discussion, especially as how it will impact linear and remnant inventory measurement. 

For Prasad Jogulkar, GM, TV and Cross Platform Products, Comscore, Addressable TV advertising can mean different things based on who you ask, so he defined it for our discussion as, “Addressable TV advertising is the idea of replacing ads, in a live broadcast content or the VOD/DVR version of such content, such that each viewer of the stream could get a different, tailored advertisement.”

Charlene Weisler: I am interested in knowing your overall view of addressable and whether it has changed or evolved over the past few months.

Prasad Jogulkar: Addressable advertising has long held a promise that each impression in a piece of content is individually tailored to the audience watching it thereby providing maximum value to the advertiser and minimum disruption to the consumer. A part of this promise has been a reality with operators like Dish, DirecTV and Altice who are all running profitable addressable businesses on their local 2 minutes. However, the expansion of these capabilities to national cable and broadcast networks – like Viacom, NBCU etc. has been limited for a variety of technical and contractual reasons. 

Over the last 12 months or so – even before the pandemic – several advances happened. First, with the launch and rapid scaling of various DTC services like Peacock, HBO Max and Disney+, networks have video distribution platforms that are, at least notionally, fully digital and addressable and owned directly by them. Second, various CTV providers have announced addressable programs, though many are very much in their infancies. This is again an offering directed at networks. Third, while legacy MVPDs continue to lose subscribers, they have lost far fewer addressable homes. Finally, and perhaps because of the first three developments, many operators and networks have either completed or advanced carriage dialogs that include addressable enablement and delivery. 

All this has generated a renewed interest in the monetization potential of addressable at national scale. And to properly monetize inventory the marketplace needs requires accurate, trusted, fairly priced and conflict-of-interest-free measurement, which Comscore is striving to provide to all participants.

Weisler: The question of measurement looms large, especially in how we treat remnant inventory. 

Jogulkar: It does indeed. In the legacy panel-based measurement systems, overnight programming on many cable networks, will have no rating. A large MVPD – say with 20% of the market – will also have a zero coverage-rating (i.e. rating on the MVPD’s footprint) on a late-night daypart on even a mid-size network. And if you are a station owner in a smaller market, broad zero ratings from panels are a fact of life. A direct effect of this is that ad-inventory in these instances will also get a “0” rating. 

In these instances, are we to believe that not a single soul is watching? Of course not. Rather, it is that the panel-instrument used to measure is not sensitive enough to pick up the signal. How is an ad-buyer to justify paying non-zero dollars for a “0” metric? How can a carriage deal ever fairly value a network that has multiple asterisks? It is because of this conundrum that smaller networks get labeled as “long tail networks” and overnight dayparts become “remnant”. 

From a network’s perspective, units that are low risk to enable for addressable test are the ones with zero or low ratings. Increasing the yield on these is a great business idea. Comscore’s longstanding and pioneering use of census set-top-box based ratings measurement has brought transparency and insight to this content. MVPDs have long used their view of Comscore’s data to negotiate the appropriate carriage fee for networks big and small, equalizing them on a cost-per-second-viewed basis. Networks, local stations and MVPD ad-sales teams are also using this better data to demonstrate value and generate incremental sales.

Weisler: Same too, measurement of addressable in linear TV. 

Jogulkar: Absolutely true. When a spot is made addressable, some homes watching that spot will be targeted for addressable delivery in that instant. But the majority is not. On average, ~30% of the impressions in a spot will be targeted. So, ~70% of impressions are not targeted. This phenomenon is generally true for all addressable spots. 

Comscore calls these 30% of homes as “Addressed Homes” and the impressions, naturally, as “Addressable Impressions”. The other 70% of homes not targeted in that instant are called “Under Addressed” homes and those impressions “Under Addressable”. The “Under” comes from the fact that in many delivery systems, the Addressable creative is quite literally overwriting the linear impression. 

The Under Addressed impressions are seen as suspect or remnant. After all, if they were valuable, someone would have bought them addressably. The advertiser who bought the linear spot and is only getting the Under Addressed impressions, will naturally feel that they are being sold a broken product. Absent some convincing information, the only way to account for this is to place a very low bid on this Under Addressed spot. 

This value-loss problem is very real. It can only be solved by decorating the Addressed and Under Addressed impressions with useful, actionable audience attributes, across all operators and insertion platforms. Age and Gender is not an actionable audience. After all, if the Addressed Impressions took away all the 25 year olds and left behind all the 54 year olds in a spot, it would still be a valid A25-54 spot. Would a buyer consider that a fair A25-54 deal?  This is a measurement and transparency problem that Comscore is ahead in the marketplace with our thinking and solutions. 

Weisler: What do you envision as the best methodology to measure addressable, panel, hybrid or …?

Jogulkar: The lifecycle of an addressable campaign goes something like this: The advertiser or agency creates a list of household IDs (or device IDs) that represent the audience of interest. This list is matched to various operator or distribution footprints. Then the addressable impressions are delivered to only those households in that list. Typically, at the end of the campaign households that saw impressions are matched up to next-period sales to do some attribution.

This entire workflow is anchored around addressing each of millions of households that are of interest – from targeting, to impression delivery to attribution. It’s a little naïve to believe that anything other than census-scale measurement will provide accurate and trusted measurement for these workflows. 

Further, the things that make Addressable TV interesting - the "breaking" of the live spot, the delivery of multiple advertisements within the same unit etc. - are precisely the things that make it impossible to measure with a panel, or as a traditional age-gender rating as we discussed earlier. Trying to shove what is inherently an impression-based buy into a spot-based measurement scheme doesn't work. There’s very limited value panels bring to this equation.

Weisler: What are the other challenges that you see regarding data and measurement in this space?

Jogulkar: The one additional one that I haven’t mentioned earlier is this: For national addressability, a 30-sec unit must be individually enabled in 3-5 different operator and distribution platforms. Each operator's addressable insertion, pacing and reporting stack is unique. It is a hard and laborious process to measure each platform individually, and then combine the numbers to create a true national view.

Weisler: Where do you see measurement in this space next year at this time?

Jogulkar: I think the whole space will have evolved quite substantially. We’ll see many pilots and beta programs being launched and their success or failure will be very instructive to all the players in the marketplace. Some of the debates about panel vs. census vs. hybrid are like religion; you can never decisively convince a non-believer. Those will continue. Economics of national addressable – for instance what is the price for the Addressed audience vs. the Under Addressed Audience – will start to be concrete and will be benchmarked.

What Does Nielsen Voter Ratings Predict for the Primaries?

I have consulted the tarot cards and they say that Bernie Sanders will win the Iowa primary. But this prediction is not rooted in data so there is still time to target potential voters by using  Nielsen’s Voter Ratings solution which has just been released in an enhanced, cross-platform version this week. This syndicated solution enables buyers and sellers to tackle reach more strategically reach and understand media potential voters’ preferences.

Voter Ratings Enhancements

The main sources of data in the Voter Ratings arsenal include Nielsen National and Local TV, Audio, and Digital, as well as important secondary sources such as nationwide voter registration data. “Nielsen Voter Ratings combines advanced meter technology, big data, people-powered panels, and voter registration data to provide persons-level, monthly voter based insights,” noted Peter Bradbury, executive vice president, media, at Nielsen.

According to their recent announcement, Voter Ratings measurement capability has now expanded into all 208 TV DMAs by incorporating Code Reader and RPD+ markets, similar to and compatible with their standard Local TV measurement protocol. Further, Voter Ratings can make use of voter target segmentations available in Local Nielsen Media Impact for cross-media planning and optimization for political advertising.

Voter Ratings Mechanics

How does it work? It all starts with a media plan by the candidates designed to target key persuadable voter segments — whether Democrat, Republican, Independent, or unaffiliated — before they vote in any national or local election. What Voter Ratings offers is greater insight into what content the specific voter segments are consuming so advertisers can target their messages to the right audience at the right time.

"We're so excited to offer this enhanced solution that will give insights into voters’ media preferences and behaviors,” Bradbury explained. “Nielsen Voter Ratings integrates our TV and Audio panels with voter registration data to offer voter segments unique to Nielsen, a potential game-changer in today’s dynamic political climate. With the presidential primaries beginning in February, this timely solution will facilitate the ability to reach custom segments of key voters.”

Voter Ratings Advantages

Now that Voter Ratings includes every DMA, this Nielsen system can now boast scale, coverage, and a highly accurate representation of all voter types and their viewing styles, such as broadcast-only and over-the-top homes. It helps advertisers uncover unique programs, networks, stations, and digital properties that will reach and resonate with their key voters audiences.

“The Nielsen Political portfolio includes National TV Voter Ratings, as well as local TV, and audio voter ratings, local consumer and media insights from Nielsen Scarborough, and Nielsen Media Impact for local cross-platform planning and optimization for TV, radio and digital.” stated Bradbury. “Whatever the party affiliation, gender, or age of the voter, Nielsen Voter Ratings delivers persons-level granularity that provides greater insights and a deeper understanding of how the voting public consumes media.”

The value of being able to hyper target a specific voter segment cannot be understated. “According to Pew Research, only 7% of American voters are independents and non-leaners,” explained Erich Prince. “With such a polarized political landscape, the ability to target that small important segment of people is key. If you can do that effectively, that would be a sought after solution for political advertisers,” he concluded.

So, is Bernie Sanders a shoo-in in Iowa? Better ask Nielsen.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com