Working Together to Find Solutions … While Remaining Competitive. The Advanced Advertising Summit

At last week’s Advanced Advertising Summit in New York, Dan Aversano shared his version of an “ah ha” moment: the key to success for OpenAP will be building scale, consistency and simplicity. The Senior Vice President of Ad Innovation and Programmatic Solutions for Turner Ignite was just one of the speakers reporting on how data can best be used in advanced television advertising at the B&C/Multichannel News conference.   

Panels focused on a range of data, measurement and industry initiatives that highlighted the frenetic and changing landscape for marketers and media, each with a common theme of making data-driven targeted advertising more effective. 

Cross corporation partnerships is a significant step forward. In addition, the industry can benefit from monitoring data usage, creating industry standards and protocols and using data in an ethical manner. 

OpenAP – An Update

In talking about OpenAP, Aversano was joined by Noah Levine, Senior Vice President, Advertising Data and Technology Solutions, Fox and Gabe Bevilacqua, Senior Vice President, Product Management Advanced Advertising, Viacom. Aversano went on to say that media companies can work independently and reach their own, great solutions but they will all be different and difficult to merge. The ‘ah ha’ realization can take OpenAP from a custom solution to an industry standard.

“OpenAP focuses on linear TV,” added Levine, “and makes it easy to transact on the same ad across optimized linear.” It enables all types of advertisers, from short purchase cycle CPG to longer cycle Automotives, to better achieve their goals beyond adults 25-54. “We are bringing new types of advertisers to the table, which is critical to continued success of TV. Also, it allows us to improve the end user viewer experience. Long term goals include lowering the ad loads and offering different types of ad experiences,” he concluded.

The partnering of frenemy companies is both new and welcome. Bevilacqua noted, “We are extremely competitive and want to deliver the best results for our clients but we won't win by coming up with our own definitions. It doesn't scale this business for any of us. So we can agree and still have our lanes. There is a lot of land out there that is right spot for us to compete.” Currently OpenAp has 30 agencies on-boarded in time for this upfront.

Attribution

The best industry standard attribution model for media continues to be elusive, but there are many media experts focusing on the issue. Data+Math is a TV metrics company that focuses on TV attribution. John Hoctor, Co-founder and CEO, explained, “We take exposure data from Smart TVs and Set Top Boxes and connect exposure data anonymously to other datasets.” 

Adam Gaynor, Vice President, Advertising and Data Solutions Sales, AMC, found this data output useful, “Now we can help tie what brand is trying to do. And it adds extra elements of insights. TV works and now we are able to prove it.” But for Keith Kazerman, Group Senior Vice President, Client Solutions, Discovery, the question is, “How do we standardize measurement? Eighty percent of questions from clients are about how we can do better than yesterday. How can we measure outcomes?” Attribution is table stakes - not across categories, but by clients. “For example, financial clients demand attribution,” stated Kazerman.

The biggest untapped targets for this next TV Upfront are, according to Gaynor, measurement, technology and collaboration. “We need to work together as an industry to find solutions,” he added. For Kazerman, the target is “Standardization. Make it efficient.”

Optimism in the industry is high ... and focused on data and how it maps the consumer journey. “2018 is the year of audiences. And attribution is another tool that enables us to see what happens. It all gets us further down the funnel,” concluded Gaynor.

Conclusion

The core takeaway for me is that the media industry needs to exert both optimism and vigilance. “Optimism” that this continuous industry evolution is beneficial and creates opportunities to better serve consumers and improve the overall business model. “Vigilance” that the data we use is not only scientifically fact-based but also appropriate for the analysis and ethically obtained.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Working Together to Advance TV Advertising. Takeaways From NewBay Media’s Advanced Advertising Conference

Data and its use in advanced advertising targeting continue to be core topics of NewBay Media's Advanced Advertising Conferences. In today’s conference, the impact of data targeting efforts in linear TV spurred discussion about OpenAP, attribution and programmatic.

The major takeaways were as follows:

Legacy Data vs Newer Datasets

To some, legacy data is a paramount measurement tool, offering legitimacy and safety with established, industry accepted standards, quality and auditing. To others, legacy data is holding TV back. “Data is advancing more quickly than our ability to transact on it,” noted Mike Rosen, EVP Advanced Advertising and Platform Sales. “In TV there are so many legacy principles that have been around for decades. Data is happening so quickly that the industry has trouble figuring out how it fits,” he added.

So where does an established TV media company start? "Never start with age and gender," Rosen advised, "Everyone is 25-54 so 25-54 is not a target. What is your outcome for your campaign? Sales? Reach?" Mike Bologna, President of one2one Media, agreed, “If advertising has to be advanced, then the data has to be better than the past. We need different forms of data to best calculate.”

Business Infrastructure is Holding TV Back

Beyond data, it is the legacy infrastructure of the TV business that can impede its advanced advertising growth. Facebook and Google have put TV in a corner as a branding tool. “TV much more powerful than brand building and we tend to get trapped. We say, ‘That is what you do, so just keep doing it.’ But TV offers much more value beyond branding,” noted Rosen.

“We are dealing with a lot of legacy systems and they are not going anywhere. We are trying to reduce friction but it is hard and the least sexiest part of the business,” explained Doug Hurd, Co-Founder, EVP Business Development, clypd. However, Sarah Foss, Chief Product Officer, Advertising Management Systems, Imagine Communications, saw the TV model as more flexible, though it needed some creative re-adaptions. “The business model has always changed. We are multichannel now,” she stated, “We are selling TV to get to audience and devices in different ways. Most of our clients are selling impressions and macgyvering it back into the system.”

Cross Platform Measurement is a Team Sport

There is a lot of talk about "frenemy" companies working together to find solutions. OpenAP is a great example of three major media competitors working together for a common solution. Noah Levine, SVP Advertising Data, Technology Solutions, Fox, explained that OpenAP was designed to offer, “Consistency in audience definitions and sizing, consistency in sharing across sellers and facilitating a mechanism to provide posts from OpenAP data companies such as Nielsen and comScore.”

This collaborative effort might be the tipping point for more joint initiatives. "The industry is ready to work together" to move cross platform measurement forward, according to Jay Prasad, Chief Strategy Officer, VideoAmp. “It’s time to figure it out and to measure impressions,” he added, advocating measurement progress in three steps:

·         “Crawl” = getting an age and gender metric across linear and digital.

·         “Walk” = measuring advanced targets such as age and gender plus income across linear, addressable, and digital.

·         “Run” = Measure any digital target, even advertiser CRM based segments on all video playback formats including the above plus OTT plus VOD plus DVR over an entire flight of a campaign, and not just C3 or C7.

Prasad believes that the adoption of standards is close at hand. He forecast that in the next two years, “Advanced currencies backed by attribution data will replace GRPs and siloed digital measurement.”

Conclusion

Whatever the new technologies and datasets bring to TV and advanced advertising, it will be exciting and will require constant adaption to change. Some companies are getting out ahead of the change by partnering with competing companies. Others are creatively adapting legacy systems to the new normal. Whether we crawl, walk or run, the great takeaway of the day is that we need to do it together.

This article first appeared in CableFax.

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