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.
