Finding the Way Forward: Brands on TV

Has the bloom faded on digital advertising? There are more brands on TV, showing increased TV ad spending over previous years. According to AdAge, Chipotle is running TV ads for the first time since 2012 in select local markets. The company has been increasing its promotional and marketing spending in the face of declining sales, with second-quarter spending at 4.3 percent of sales in 2016, up from 2.3 percent a year earlier. The recent presidential election is also a testament to the power of television. According to TheStreet, TV political ad spending in 2016 has broken all previous records. And BIA/Kelsey has been forecasting a general return to TV for ad spend.

But in a digitally hyped media atmosphere, one might still be tempted to ask: Why advertise brands on TV? The answer is simple: Among those working in the television marketplace, there’s arguably no stronger media platform for brands in terms of reach, accountability, measurability, and engagement than television.

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Applying Digital Data to Broadcast. Sinclair’s Creative Data Initiatives Revealed at the Secret Society

Mitch Oscar USIM’s Director, Advanced Television is all about collaboration and sharing of great ideas. His ever expanding Secret Society was created to forward the discussion of data driven solutions by media companies. The June 2016 meeting, held at comScore / Rentrak offices, highlighted those data initiatives that pushed the uses of digital data sets and their insights into traditional media platforms.  

The four presenters were:

       1.       Sinclair Broadcasting used programmatic techniques to insure the delivery of its primary audience guarantee and concurrently improve the aggregation of its client’s equally important secondary target.

       2.       iHeartRadio stressed the emergence of its capability to apply the precision, data and insights of digital and social to broadcast.

       3.       4Cinsights socialization provided Coca-Cola with a better understanding of how it could reach its unique target.

       4.       Roku demonstrated the value of the exploitation of timely registration information of its OTT/ cord cutting/ cord-nevers growing subscription population.

Sinclair – Applying Digital Insights to Buy Broadcast

Sinclair Broadcast is one of the largest broadcasting companies in the country, with 172 stations in 81 markets. Besides being the largest owner/operator of TV Stations, the company also owns The Tennis Channel cable network, American Sports Network and Ring of Honor Wrestling. Its network ad sales team worked with Russell Zingale, USIM Eastern President, and a client to provide a roadmap to buy a footprint by utilizing programmatic tactics.

Their initiative, called “Equitable Distribution versus Equitable Optimization” referenced the usage of data to place commercial spots every week in breaks that maintain the delivery of the primary demo (Adults 25-54) while also providing lift via a secondary demo ( less than $30k HH income).  To do this, Sinclair combined their footprint with Tribune to get nationalized distribution (+75%) for the USIM client (who was not revealed in the presentation). The two station groups together were then able to capture network allocated budgets and the deal was guaranteed on comScore/Rentrak deliveries, “the first time comScore/Rentrak data was used as the primary currency for a national broadcast campaign,” according to Oscar.

Stephen Spencer provided a more detailed summary of the management of the schedule and the results. He explained, “To achieve a schedule and a guarantee, it’s common to do an impartial but otherwise arbitrary rotation. We referred to as equitable distribution which is based on rotation of commercials within a program pod as well as pods within a program applying the precision, data, and insights of digital and social to broadcast. This time, we did a rotation that was still impartial on the underlying age-and-gender-based primary demo, but within that, we cherry-picked on the secondary demo, which in this case was based on income. It took some doing on the math, and this is just an experiment with only directional results, but it looks good. We thought the cherry-picking would raise our index from basically flat to as much as 15 or 25 percent, it actually ended up around 30 percent on average.”

Conclusion

The boundaries of what we can discover by using data creatively are now being pushed by new troves of first party data. The future, according to Zingale and Oscar, is very exciting. “During the Secret Society clandestine gathering, we were able to bring together for presentation purposes four distinct platforms that demonstrated a unique utilization of data,” Oscar explained. “Those were first party, third party, social and registration coupled with viewing and listening measurement,” he added.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com
 

Sinclair Reveals National Capabilities and Data Insights

Sinclair Broadcast Group recently completed a groundbreaking study as part of a US International Media’s Secret Society initiative pairing Sinclair and Tribune stations and using Nielsen and comScore/Rentrak measurements. This study had a clear purpose - Sinclair wanted the ability to attract more national dollars into local and, by using data, enhance the value of their inventory for these national clients.

The project, presided over by USIM’s Director, Advanced Television, Mitch Oscar, convened as a “Data-ist” subgroup this past week to explore the initiative. “We always want to fly visibly under the radar and find the next trends,” posited Mitch. The results, presented by Stephen Spencer, Sr. Financial Analyst, Sinclair Broadcast Group, proved that not only was it possibly to roll up a programmatic buy into a nationalized footprint, it was also possible to measure it, with de-duped data, at a level that offers greater granularity, larger, more stable population sizes for niche targets and less data volatility.

Russell Zingale, President, Eastern Region, USIM, outlined the approach, “We were able to put two stations groups together with Sinclair’s help and take national money and move it more efficiently into local impact. Further, we wanted to be able to use a comScore/Rentrak guarantee to see what we could learn vis a vis Nielsen. This was helpful for our clients and a learning experience for the industry. We wanted to maintain our impression guarantee on our primary demo age and gender but also utilize the behavioral aspects of the consumer target to deliver more in the secondary target without hurting the primary target.”

Going National Programmatic

The first step in a national campaign is to be able to advertise to a national footprint. USIM was interested in working with Sinclair, whose footprint is not quite as national as what was needed - 40% of the country. But in partnership with Tribune stations, the usable footprint expanded to 80% of the country, about the reach of most cable networks. With a nationalized footprint having been achieved and a target audience of downscale Adults 25-54 identified, the next step was to examine the potential results of a campaign using comScore/Rentrak data and Nielsen data.

Maximizing Panel Size

Data has become central to the new technological sales process but the Secret Society has revealed challenges with the data that have previously not been discussed publically. One is the large issue of data duplication that was presented in the previous meeting . For this data sub-group meeting, data stability and volatility was explored. 

Stephen outlined the reasoning for comparing Nielsen to comScore/Rentrak, “We compared panel size for both Nielsen and comScore/Rentrak to establish a baseline to examine stability and granularity of the reported viewing. In the three markets we selected, panel size difference was meaningful: Washington (165,000 homes/comScore vs. 800/Nielsen), Cincinnati (41,200/ comScore vs. 500/Nielsen) and Little Rock (91,700 comScore/ 300/Nielsen). In our opinion the larger the panel penetration in the market correlated to the more stable the reported viewing. We saw less hills and valleys on programs that aired during the same time period across the week.” 

Increasing Data Stability

The three markets in the January 2016 buy represented the three different Nielsen data collection methods. Washington is measured by people meter, Cincinnati is measured by household meter and Little Rock is measured by diary. Campaign deliveries from these three markets with their three different Nielsen collection methods were compared to each market’s STB data, collected from comScore/Remtrak.   The target was a25-54 with incomes below $30k. As Jonathan Spaet, VP Network Sales and Development, Sinclair, explained, “Our retail client wanted to use adults 25-54 in early morning, daytime and fringe in an equitable distribution and equitable rotation. We came up with a schedule and ran the exact same ads on Sinclair and Tribune and analyzed the first week of the schedule using both data sets.”

The results - In the larger markets there was less difference in delivery between the two measurement services but as Nielsen measurement sample size decreased, there was more volatility and bounce, resulting in larger differences in delivery compared to the STB data. The concerns of the agency were flow stability, consistency and granularity (which included how to best combine the three data collections of Nielsen people meter, household meter and diary) and the fair comparison to comScore/Rentrak STB data. This was all achieved. “The biggest issue we have is post buys and stewardship” stated Steve Lanzano, President of the TVB.

Conclusion

Russell concluded, “We need a standard that we can plan against. Agencies have limited resources and we can post on many different metrics. There has to be one way to test and see how it goes and track calls we are getting for our client. We decided to measure our buy on comScore / Rentrak grps which for us had more stability, to see how it drove the business.”

For Steve Pruett, Chief Operating Officer, Sinclair TV Group, this initiative was an excellent first step. “As a result of this project, Sinclair and Tribune will continue to work together to expand our relationship in order to pursue network and programmatic dollars," he stated.


This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

TV Programmatic – A Big Game of Hot Potato

US International Media was the host of the second meeting of the Secret Society on TV Programmatic held just before Thanksgiving. Mitch Oscar presided over the cohort, which included representatives from 4C Insights, AT&T/DirecTV, BIA/Kelsey, Cablevision, Epsilon, Experian, Horizon, Media Kitchen, Prohaska Group, Rentrak, Rovi, Sintec, TiVo, USIM, and Videa.

As part of the secretiveness of the meeting, all wore masks…just for the group photograph. Then the masks and gloves were off.  The areas of lively contention were De-duping datasets, the cost of data and Data-gaps.

My Take: The Secret Society was formed to take a deep, objective dive into the issues of TV Programmatic. In a media storm of pronouncements and self-promotions by various companies, it is difficult for many of us to make sense of the real challenges in rolling out programmatic into TV, especially national TV. For example, while I was aware of the need to de-dupe data, I never considered the challenge of STB household data overlap when one begins to collect STB data from several suppliers. I assumed that the PII (Personally Identifiable Information) would solve for that problem. With this issue, as with the others outlined in this article, the question of responsibility loomed large. The data-ists at the table thought the responsibility of de-duped audiences resided with the ad agencies and programmers; the ad agencies and programmers vehemently suggested the reverse. From what I see so far, TV Programmatic is becoming one big game of hot potato.

At the first meeting of the Secret Society, a few months ago, programmatic local TV platform Videa discussed the need for the media community, buyers and sellers, to have access to multiple data sources to drive programmatic market transparency. They said that they were in discussion with a variety of data companies - 4C Insights, Cardlytics, Civis, FourthWall, Nieslen, Rentrak and TiVo – to obtain data sets from each in order to comprehend how they could be utilized to better serve their constituencies.

Data Overlap

For a marketer cobbling a national campaign using the full set of data suppliers from Rentrak to Nielsen, TiVo to Fourthwall, to AT&T/DreicTV to individual MVPDs, there is the issue of de-duping these standardized but overlapping industry datasets. No one is doing this now. All concurred. Videa’s Bret Adamczyk, VP Business Development & Strategy, led the discussion. “Here is part of my problem, I’m paying, or will be paying, millions of dollars to license datasets from the majority of people that are on that side of the business and a lot of those people are licensing the same data from the same people that are on that side.”

Data De-Duping

The question raised was: Are the buyers of data getting the same data over and over again? How can the players in the space that are utilizing the data de-dupe it so we can be sure that we are not using the same homes several times when we only need to use them once? “When I try to do my targeting on a program level basis, we (Videa) are pulling information from our station partners’ traffic warehouses that we have four years of history down to the spot level: what ran, what the price was, what the rating was… What we need to be able to do is overlay data from an audience targeting perspective so we can index those attributes against every program that is on the schedule,” Bret explained.

Dayparts

Mitch Oscar, the Secret Society organizer, said, “In terms of national programmatic TV, advertisers do not know the specific TV network programs that they purchase. We only know networks and the total number of impressions purchased by the individual network. No dayparts. At the conclusion of the campaign the post analysis consists of total impressions broken down by individual network, daypart breakdown by total schedule (all networks) and if requested an As Run report.” In terms of the As Run report, Mitch quipped: “the As Run report for one of our campaigns, which cost $150,000, consisted of over 163,000 lines of reportage detail spread of 3,500 pages.”

Addressability

The discussion then jumped to the topic of data and TV addressability. The group agreed that local broadcasters, at this juncture, do not have addressable capabilities. An advertiser can buy the DMA, which is tough to target audiences. A debate ensued about what type of data intelligence could be brought to local other than the generic DMA buy or the more granular zip level. Frank Foster, SVP, GM TiVo stated, “The CEO of Walmart says that programmatic TV doesn’t do what he wants for Walmart. He may want to drive people to the store from 12n-5pm so they need to see the message from 10am-12n. We therefore need first party foot traffic and be able to show the differences in campaigns for both local and non-local.”

Next Steps

As the meet concluded, a task was presented to different members: Videa was directed to put together a list of 10 data points that they would want the data providers to help answer; TiVo, 4C Insights, Rentrak and Epsilon were tasked with coming up with 10 data points that individually they think Videa should be requesting; and USIM, Horizon and The Media Kitchen would compare notes and present findings.

The challenges seem formidable. Even the creation of a JIC (Joint Industry Committee) to facilitate the standardization of edit rules or duplication of datasets is fraught with business conflict. If, for example, it is decided that one data company has a large duplication with other data companies, how would the market respond? Would the highly duplicated company lose business? Something that ultimately could help the many could potentially be deadly for a few. But not findings ways to address data concerns is also problematic.

As Russell Zingale, President of USIM, noted, “Every data company should be purchased by everyone in the food chain, whether it is a content creator, content distributor like the MVPDs or an agency. That is a lot of data for each of these groups to license – though it would be wonderful for the data companies to have such a lucrative business.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

Welcome to the Secret Society of TV Programmatic

For many of us in the television space, the prospect of programmatic TV is at once both fascinating and a bit confusing. Exactly how would it work? Would it enable cherry picking of programs? Would it lower CPMs on top inventory? Can it be executed nationally? Does this displace direct response? What is “premium” inventory anyway?

US International Media (USIM), an independent, diversified, and fully-integrated media agency, has launched an ambitious initiative to more intensely explore the world of Programmatic TV buying and selling with the help of futurist and televisual expert Mitch Oscar.  Dubbed a “TV Programmatic Secret Society,” its intent is to create a series of meetings that take attendees through concrete examples of programmatic TV execution to open up a "dialogue about programmatic space without politics," according to Oscar.

The first “secret society” meeting was held on October 5 at Rentrak and was attended by over 40 executives from media companies as diverse as USIM, Clypd, Dish, Experian, Comcast, RLTV, Reelz, Fox, Horizon, OMD, Placemedia, Rentrak, The Trade Desk, TubeMogul, Videa, Sintec, Nexstar, Mediakitchen, BIA/Kelsey AT&T, Yashi, NAB and TIVO.  Everyone was given a mask, which few used, and name tags, which all used. So much for secrecy.

It is not easy to execute Programmatic TV for a variety of reasons. Any yet, the positive impact for an advertiser is evident in the results of campaigns. Some takeaways from this first meeting were as follows:

TV Programmatic Works …

Russel Zingale President, Eastern Region USIM presented a recent campaign for Aruba tourism which got the advertiser back on a television buy. The agency launched an addressable campaign with New York Cablevision and DirectTV targeting family with kids and empty nesters. The result was that in the first week in September in NY delivery in was up 31% and NY based travel to Aruba dramatically improved.

… But There Are Challenges
According to Mitch Oscar, programmatic TV is “an odyssey of process” which doesn’t allow for integration. There are not only National and Local addressable DSPs, you need to take into account the range of measurement possibilities – whether national, addressable, local and ad supported video on demand – and measurement subsets like daypart, age and gender, impressions and targets across networks. All of the proposals offered in the USIM example had different definitions of what the daypart includes.  From a posting standpoint, the inventory schedule opaque and lacks standardized definition.

A Black Box of Algorithms

Obviously you can get different proposal solutions to a campaign based on the dataset, the target and the distribution. However even with common attributes, suggested networks and programming can vary widely. In this case, one proposal included a range of sports network “because the algorithm said so,” according to Zingale. What does that really mean? In some cases, the algorithms reveal that prime time is not always prime time. If addressable indicates late night, should I be planning on late night instead of prime?

Siloes of Results

How do you combine targets? In this case it was a combination of A25-54, Upscale Families which resulted in three different indices with different sources. How do you proportionate? In addition there is limited compatibility with traditional buying results – how can you merge the two together to get a fuller picture of how a campaign delivered as a complete valuation (TV stations, cable Networks, MVPD, ad supported, etc)? And if successful, you cannot replicate the campaign. 

So What Does this Really Cost?

There are many different versions of fees in a Programmatic TV buy. Is the package cost net or gross? What does each term really mean? Is there a transaction fee? Are there guarantees? Is it by age and gender and individual TV impressions or daypart impressions? Is there a day of the week ratio?

Bringing it All Together

Brad Smith, SVP, Revenue and Operations of Videa noted that, “TV is evolving differently than online. Digital started RTB and supply outstripped demand. That is different from television where supply is more limited.” He continued, “But there is a consistent rise in quality integration.” He spoke of the Wild West atmosphere surrounding data toady and called for the data to become “a bridge that allows you to translate between different data source. The question is - How do you make data fungible?” One way, he postied, was to get away from Walled Gardens.

My opinion is that these are tall orders at a time where everyone is elbowing for market position. But who knows? The advance of technology and the ease with which we begin to harness, integrate and algorithmically merge datasets (getting easier every day…) may force the marketplace players to form a more perfect union… or at least a working industry group to help form policy and standards.

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com