Paul Haddad Explains How a4 Is Inventing the Way Advertising Works

Navigating the transition from collecting and mining data to actually applying it in addressable advertising is a talent that a4 President Paul Haddad (pictured at top) has in abundance. With an engineering background and extensive work in collecting data at the set-top box level from his tenure at Cablevision, he has a keen sense of how the addressable landscape looks and what the underpinnings of data and analytics need to be to ensure a seamless, real-time, targeted experience for both consumers and advertisers.

His evolution from entrepreneur to data geek (an epithet that we both agree is a source of pride) to president has been facilitated by his early work at Cablevision, the mentorship of then-department head Kim Norris (currently the division vice president), Spectrum Reach, the acquisition of Cablevision by Altice, Patrick Drahi’s support of disrupting status quos, Dexter Goei’s coaching on building growth-driven business and the recognition by the industry of the value and power of data and targeting.

A One-Stop Advertising Shop
Utilizing data culled from many sources and offers, a4 is "a one-stop shop for audience-driven, integrated, multi-screen advertising and end-to-end ROI analytics across the U.S.," Haddad said.  But as complete as that sounds, that is not all it is.  Owned by Altice, which purchased Cablevision in 2015, a4 is actually a large advertiser in its own right, representing Altice's $200 million budget as an in-house agency.  So, a4 not only offers capability in both the buying and selling aspects of advertising, it also manages and stewards small $250 campaigns to multi-million-dollar campaigns, as well as national and local accounts through an interface platform controlled by the advertiser.  a4 is helping to transition the media world by "inventing the way advertising works," and it has been very successful.  "We now have over $500 million in total media revenue, over 500 employees and the fastest growing business at Altice," Haddad noted.

Going from Local to National
Transitioning from local MVPD operation to a national footprint was not without some internal questions.  "What is an audience to us?" Haddad posited. "Is it market-driven or is it location-driven or is it size-driven?"  After two years of tests, he realized that "audience targeting has no location or specific size."  So, the conclusion was that "when it comes to audience, we do not see the world as local or national at all," he explained.  "We do not see the world as TV or digital.  We see the world as household targets.  We deliver a household-based audience targeted campaign across all screens anywhere in the U.S. at any time and at any size of segment."  In sum, a4 essentially removes the need to label anything other than audience at a household level -- and that appears to be the wave of the future.

Haddad said that those still operating under the legacy mindset of local versus national are "limiting" themselves and warned that his competitors who stick to the old parameters of measurement are "being held as techno-hostages."

Finding Intent in Targeting
a4 has access to a myriad of datasets at the MVPD set-top box level, at the device level, at various digital touch points and through third and first-party partnerships.  To ensure privacy and create effective reach pathways, "our datasets are focused on household targeting," he explained.  "To target a household, you need to understand and provide to our advertising clients the means to create a segment.  And the way to create the segment is to collect data that finds intent."
He noted that intent on a household level is based on:

• Viewing and content consumption (a4 currently covers 12.5 million homes at the set-top box level covering 210 DMAs)
• Spending patterns (such as luxury items or beauty products or tech-gadgets)
• Consumer profile data (totaling 300 million homes)
• Geo-location data (sports stadium visits or high-end store or auto dealership visits)
• IP targeted data with a platform deployed behind the firewall at most MVPDs in the U.S. (accessing 50 million household data on digital and mobile devices for in and out-of-home addressability.)

"When you put it all together you can use the data for audience creation on the front of a campaign," he explained.  "You can then use the 'same' segment to plan when and how to reach them.  Finally, you measure and report all the impressions for that 'same' segment across all their devices, and clearly analyze the effect and whether you reached these audiences or not and what was the ROI."
In addition, a4 gives the client an on-boarding, self-service, full stewardship platform where proprietary CRM data can be uploaded privately and safely and matched with all of a4's data free of charge and within hours, not days.  So, from audience creation to media planning to media activation across all screens (which includes linear and optimized TV, OTT, digital video and display, social media, mobile display and in-apps banner), "we provide the measurement at the household level, plus all of these screens for the campaign, from the exposure to the medium to how often, and then we post at the end of the campaign."

As far as privacy is concerned, Altice applies a strict and disciplined compliance approach to all its data operations and business use cases.   "Privacy is extremely important and serious to us," Haddad asserted.

Time for a "Datalution"
Giving the client full access and control over all aspects of a campaign by targeting the intent of households is something that few companies offer. Haddad shepherds his company in a new direction that is poised to change the business of advertising as we know it.  "The advertising world is broken into a fast lane of born-data companies and the slow lane of legacy processes," he said.  "The slow lane has no choice but to revolutionize the way they do business.  It's a question of time."

The clock is ticking.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Nationalizing STB Data Driven Sales – The Cablevision and Fourthwall Partnership

With all of the data initiatives out there, I am personally drawn to Cablevision’s whose STB data represents the largest and most diverse DMA in the country.  Currently weighing in at 2.6 million homes and 7.2 million STBs, it covers linear, live and VOD tuning. So it was with great interest that I sat down with Paul Haddad, SVP and GM, Advanced Data Analytics, Cablevision Media Sales and Bill Feininger, President, Fourthwall, to discuss their recent partnership and how Cablevision data insights could be incorporated into a more national footprint.

Cablevision has developed two types of portfolios using data. The first is for the advertising arm of Cablevision Media Sales to help sell audience for impressions based campaigns. The other is, according to Paul, “a standalone system for programmers who do business with Cablevision. This portfolio helps them with analytics services which include in-depth program analysis by specific segments, advanced research of the effectiveness and the health of their programming and campaigns they ran locally or nationally, and audience reach and frequency by relevant segments.” In the past this analysis would be solely in the Cablevision coverage area but now with the addition of Fourthwall data, it enables analysis beyond the footprint.

I was curious as to why Cablevision would choose Fourthwall as a partner. Paul explained, “We did an evaluation of different datasets and were seeking an unbiased party that was pure in its offering. Other datasets, such as those from other MVPDs and SmartTVs were biased, in our opinion, because they were from only one source. We too are considered a biased source being an MVPD. We wanted purity and neutrality of the data collection and quality and there was only one – Fourthwall – where we liked the representativeness of the Fourthwall markets given that it aligns well with where we want to go. We wanted markets across the country to analyze and understand the nuances of Television viewership across these markets. We also wanted Live and DVR data combined given that a lot of valuable insights can be provided by analyzing and understanding the shift of audiences between these two mediums. Other datasets have either Live and VOD, but not DVR.” 

The key applications for this partnership are:

          Audience Based Media Planning for brands or programmers with national media plans based on audiences with expanded attributes beyond age and gender. It is possible to create segmentations and receive plans that they can then execute. 

   Programming Conversion Analysis looking at the relationship between live and DVR viewing, reach and frequency, household that might have viewed last year versus this year and the conversion of the targeted audience after the campaign.

           Audience Analysis looking at loyal viewers and how their viewing has evolved in the current season. Did they move from linear to DVR, for example, and the programs audience analytics. 

                 National Advertising Analytics where campaigns are run with the use of extended datasets to measure conversion to specific audiences reached. 

From Fourthwall’s perspective, Bill explained that, “FourthWall Media serves the industry as a data provider and also provides the keys to link 1st and 3rd party data.  These patent-pending techniques allow our clients to go from traditional age/gender targeting to purchase behaviors, loyalty card members’ viewership, etc.  The intent is to be able to find very specific audience segments.  Our dataset and matching services make this happen.”

It is my personal hope that the industry moves from silo’ed proprietary data solutions to something that can be syndicate-able and delivers powerful insights and analytics. Paul agreed and said, “We are focused on building an open and advanced analytics platform using first party and census-level MVPD data to help evolve the legacy TV measurement methodologies. Such an offering is desperately needed by programmers and advertisers today so they can understand the dynamics that are impacting their marketing, programming, and ad sales initiatives, and to make better decisions that can help them compete with the analytics-savvy competitors. Our goal is to also help evolve the research function - that currently uses sample or hybrid data models - to a powerful analytics function using census level data sets and advance analytics platforms. By joining with Fourthwall, we are implementing our plan to do this at scale and we support bringing more companies into our model as we find additional quality data sets.”

I am personally optimistic.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

Data, Data Everywhere in the Upfront. An Overview - Part 5

This is the fifth and final part of a series examining many of the new data initiatives of major data companies. Parts 1 through 4 outlined the many data initiatives, their scalability, whether their services were gaining traction in the industry and the issue of a standard metric to link systems and platforms. Now in Part 5, we tackle the role of Research in an era of Data. Is its role changing? 

Is there a future of Research as we know it? The question addressed here in Part Five was precipitated by some major changes over the past year including the transitioning of one research department into a data specialist department, layoffs at some other research departments and the building of new, business intelligence departments working in tandem with traditional research departments but reporting to different managements. 

According to ARF CEO Gayle Fuguitt, “There's never been a better or harder time to be in research, insights and analytics, and there's never been a more important time. Data is just facts, without inherent insight.  The role of the new analytics leader is to develop growth ideas and quantity opportunities that bring consumers' needs and values to life and make an emotional connection.”

My Take: My concern about the future of Research is not some random paranoia. There is scuttle talk that even Sales, that sacrosanct area of perpetual expansion, might retrench with the advent of programmatic TV. With change there is transition and even upheaval. So why should Research, even in this age of data worship, not be negatively impacted as well? One would think that the focus on data would catapult Research’s role in C-Suite decision-making but I am of the opinion that the results so far are mixed. In fact, executive titles in Research are now tending to leave off the term “Research” while adding “Analytics”, “Insights” and “Strategy”.  When did “Research” become a title to be avoided?

Question 5: What is the status of the Research department in your company? Has the data imperative changed the perceptions of your departments? If so, how?

Beth Rockwood (Senior Vice President, Market Resources, Discovery Communications): The research group’s responsibilities are growing; we are in the fortunate position of being able to demonstrate the value of our inventory in new ways.  Collaboration with sales teams, agencies and clients, has always been important, but now is much more central to our role as researchers. 

David Poltrack (Chief Research Officer, CBS Corporation and President of CBS VISION): It hasn’t changed the perception of our department because we have been looking beyond the demos for many years. We have been working with our sales team on usage based data and metrics that are more definitive than age and sex to evaluate our media offerings vs the competition. The fact is that we have formalized the program and significantly increased our investment because more advertisers are beginning to embrace and talk about these new data sources and the quality and quantity of the data is much greater and more comprehensive today. More and better data and growing advertiser interest have moved research into a more operational part of the business.

Tom Ziangas (SVP Research and Insights, AMC Networks): The AMCN Research team under my leadership has managed a very simple mission statement which is, “WE MAKE EVERYONE SMARTER”.  Our data initiatives are a function the lack of movement by industry research partners. We need a holistic view into the world of media and how it is being consumed across platform & device, our data initiatives are exposing key stakeholders in Senior management, Ad-Sales, Programming, Marketing and Affiliate on how we can better target, segment, use 3rd party data and understand the behaviors’ of our consumers.

Geri Wang (President ABC Sales, ABC): Research continues to be a critical component of our ABC and larger TWDC organization, and, as the emergence of new types of data and use cases evolve, we are continuing to invest in new capabilities and people across our organization.  We’ve hired a number of data scientists to work specifically on data modeling and targeting initiatives, and have in the past year created a new group within the NY Sales organization responsible for all data-driven and programmatic sales strategy and implementation.  We expect those investments in people and capabilities to continue.

Katie Larkin (EVP Advertising Sales Research and Strategy, NBCU): All of advertising sales research came together under one roof last year. We are focused on our clients’ needs and bringing comprehensive data-driven capabilities to the marketplace. We added a dedicated analytics team and we are pushing forward to find new metrics in order to give clients better insights. Our move to Cogent Reports for CNBC’s Business Day is an example of needing to go beyond Nielsen because their measurement of out of home viewers and highly affluent audience is inadequate. Our research and insights continue to evolve as we drive and lead in this space of data and analytics.

Paul Haddad (SVP and General Manager Advanced Data Analytics, Cablevision Media Sales): With the availability of census level set-top box data the concept of research and reporting evolves to accurate and accountable measurement that leads to advanced insights and analytics. We see data as glue across all platforms. Without it, there would be no realizing the full value in new advanced advertising techniques. Data is plugged into every platform and every step of our work flow, and comprehensive census-level data is crucial for more accurate measurement in general.

Kern Schireson (EVP, Data Strategy and Consumer Intelligence, Viacom): Research has long been an essential aspect of our business, but we no longer separate data from research. Data and research work in unison at Viacom, and both continue to broaden and evolve at our company ever-rapidly to stay ahead of the pace at which our consumers’ consumption behaviors change as they engage with our brands and stories across an expanding array of platforms and experiences.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.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

Data, Data Everywhere in the Upfront. An Overview - Part 3

This is the third in a series of articles examining and comparing all of the data initiative announcements taking place this upfront. Part One was a two sentence description of each initiative. 

 Part Two asked participants whether their data offering was gaining traction and impacting their business. Now, in Part Three, the question is whether these initiatives are scalable and if so, how.

There is a bit of skepticism in the industry regarding true scalability of these initiatives which, for many, means adoptable across the industry. As Liz Janneman, EVP Ad Sales at Ovation TV, said, “From a marketer’s perspective, how can they aggregate all of this data from (different networks) and all other partners if the data is propitiatory and therefore can’t be aggregated across their entire media buy?”   How indeed? But for others, scalability means the ability to grow the data service more deeply within a company and across one’s owned media properties. 

My Take: At this point I am not sure that many of these data initiatives are truly scalable outside the walls of the company. For a variety of reasons, I do not expect any of these initiatives to expand and integrate into general industry use anytime soon. They are generally proprietary services, some with a “secret sauce” of datasets and algorithms. Just like the agency optimizer models of yesteryear, today’s data initiatives seem to serve as a marketable point of difference for networks. I believe that it is the combination of quality content, deliverability of targeted audiences within the currency and sales service backing up all transactions that will be ultimate arbiter of business success. But offering a way to accentuate ROI through the data chain is a nice added bonus that may tip a sales decision in a network’s favor .

CW: Is your data initiative scalable? If so how?

Katie Larkin (EVP Advertising Sales Research and Strategy, NBCU): Yes – NBCUniversal’s broadcast, cable, Hispanic, news and sports programming are all included IN ATP. We are offering this to select clients but broadly across all categories.

Mike Rosen (Executive Vice President, Advertising Sales, NBCU): Our offering, by its nature, is the most scalable of anything in the marketplace because NBCUniversal’s portfolio of assets has the most scale of anyone out there. We reach 93% of all US adults every single month. The essence of optimization is to build effective reach of a specific audience segments.

Stephano Kim (Chief Data Strategist, Turner): Turner Data Cloud will now become Turner’s central repository of data, spanning digital and linear ecosystems. Advertisers and their agencies can now transact in any format they prefer, with any data source they choose, including their own first party data.

Beth Rockwood (Senior Vice President, Market Resources, Discovery Communications): We are working with several systems that will make our initiatives scalable.  Discovery is working with Lake5 for data analytics, and with clypd for audience optimization and a higher level of automation.  Systems are essential, however, good targeting work is customized, requires a higher touch approach and direct collaboration with clients. 

Paul Haddad (SVP and General Manager Advanced Data Analytics, Cablevision Media Sales): Our data-related initiatives continue to grow, and we are now introducing automation. Just a couple of weeks ago we introduced Total Audience Application - an advanced, data-driven platform that leverages the power of first party data sources to automate the audience and media planning of addressable and optimized linear television campaigns.  The platform reduces the media planning process from weeks to just minutes and evolves the traditional, spot-based ad-buying model to one that is audience and impression-based.

David Poltrack (Chief Research Officer, CBS Corporation and President of CBS VISION): Yes, it is definitely scalable. From a pure research perspective we are the best equipped network to add analytics for optimal targeting. To underscore this, we recently released data showing that consumers across all major buying categories watch more CBS programming than any other network. By delivering our clients a base audience rich in consumers we are able to layer on analytics to target more efficiently and effectively than our competitors. 

Geri Wang (President ABC Sales, ABC): Our TWDC digital portfolio offering provides marketers with the largest premium video audience marketplace opportunity.  No other media company producing premium original content reaches more people, for more time, with more ad supported video.  Our linear TV offering is rooted in ABC Primetime – this season’s #1 A18-49 Entertainment Primetime lineup.  There’s no better place to find scale.

Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, EVP Ad Sales Strategy, Viacom:  Viacom Vantage is scalable not only because we can offer it across our robust portfolio of networks, but also because we can efficiently handle the A-to-Z process, from analytics to creative integrations to operational and inventory management. 

Tom Ziangas (SVP Research and Insights, AMC Networks): Too early to tell at this juncture, but I believe it will be. Developing our own DMP and Business Analytics Research Tool (BART) that encompasses: Nielsen AMRLD, TVE data, VOD data, Online website data, EST, OTT will make it scalable.

Part 4, to be published next week, asks the question - Do we need a standard metric with all of these data innovations? If so, then what should it be?

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com