How Clypd Accelerates Xandr's Position in Advanced TV

Demonstrating its commitment to TV advertising, Xandr acquired clypd, a data-driven sell-side TV platform of choice for more than 100 broadcast and cable networks that also boasts both a private and an open marketplace.  Clypd will complement Xandr’s recent product launches, including Xandr Monetize and its premium marketplace, Community.  This will help accelerate converged buying across addressable, digital, data-driven linear and OTT.

The clypd acquisition allows Xandr to significantly expand its inventory for Community through a new agreement with SpotX, which will act as its exclusive third-party supply-side platform for 2020.  The move will permit advertisers working with Community to tap directly into the SpotX platform.
The net result of this acquisition is that clypd adds broadcast and cable TV network inventory tracking to Xandr's digital and addressable footprint, effectively enabling greater convergence of cross-platform media.

Synergies and Connections
Clypd integrated Nielsen television ratings data into its platform in 2016.  There were two key benefits: Agencies could execute on custom audience segmentations and clypd could scale and streamline advanced TV audience contracts through the full lifecycle of a TV buy.

Now, with clypd's integration into Xandr's platform, there will be greater convergence within the full sales cycle between addressable TV, data-driven linear TV, mobile and over-the-top channels on streaming video services.  This will also streamline messaging to consumers to ensure that they are receiving relevant, seamless and, therefore, more compelling advertising.  This is in addition to Xandr's own first-party viewership insights.

This all feeds nicely into Community's premium marketplace, which is powered by Xandr, and includes inventory from a range of top networks: WarnerMedia's CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, B/R Live, Otter Media and Warner Bros., as well as A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Bloomberg, Cheddar, Vudu, VICE, Hearst Magazines, Newsy, Philo, Tubi and Xumo.  Marketers can use clypd's self-serve platform to define campaign targets, discover available inventory and measure campaign performance, which will complement Xandr Monetize on the publisher side.

Expansion and Authority
In its purchase of clypd, Xandr also gets the brain trust that has been focused on data-driven buying and selling for years.  Chief relationship officer Mark Mitchell, for example, has been building relationships with TV networks.  "When we started clypd, a ton of effort went into convincing sales leaders that the industry needed to begin to change," Mitchell says.  "We're now at the point where everyone sees the benefit of selling advanced audiences and market adoption is underway."

Chief research officer Pete Doe, in addition to his work at clypd, also chairs the ATSG (Advanced Target Standards Group), a consortium of TV networks, agencies and organizations that share their expertise to accelerate the use of advanced targets in the buying and selling of TV advertising.  The group forms guidelines to help buyers and sellers manage advanced audience deals and first-party data, and has established a set of calculation principles.  This ensures consistent and transparent advanced audience protocols, establishes advanced audience definitions and offers perspectives on data quality for advanced TV data sets and attribution.

Brands, agencies and media companies alike have to be agile to keep pace with emerging media trends today.  Xandr's acquisition of clypd not only helps to keep Xandr nimble, but it also enables the company to better consolidate its marketplace strengths for the future, whether through data, improving the buy/sell cycle, or contributing insight on industry guidelines.  Stay tuned for what's next.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Championing Television Targeting Through the ATSG

Sometimes the best way to advance initiatives is to band together a group of frenemies and form a consortium. In the case of ATSG, (Advanced Target Standards Group), Discovery, ESPN, Fox, Turner and Viacom shared their expertise to accelerate the use of advanced targets in the buying and selling of TV advertising.

The group was formed in 2016 when data -driven linear deals were fairly new. At the time, “all the participants recognized that there was a need for standard approaches and consistency in defining and measuring advanced audiences,” explained Pete Doe, Chief Research Officer, clypd who also leads the ATSG. “Since then we’ve grown to include representation from more media owners, agencies and CIMM.”

Since their inception, the group has deliverables in the following areas –

• Guidelines to help buyers and sellers manage advanced audience deals and first party data.
• Calculation Principles ensuring consistent and transparent advanced audience definitions and calculations.
• Pre-defined Advanced Audience Definitions.
• Perspectives on data quality for advanced TV data sets and Attribution.

The need for such a group is evident when you compare linear TV to digital. “Linear inventory is finite while digital is effectively infinite, so that leads to very different demand and supply and monetization,” noted Doe. But another key difference is measurement where linear TV with its human-based panel is a counterpoint to digital which is device driven with inferences about humans being drawn from observed online activity and big data matching.

“Typically, the assumption is that a served digital ad is seen by one person, but with television, co-viewing is common. As OTT continues to grow, measurement needs to reflect that more than one person is watching the IP-delivered content on the big screen. The best of both worlds has to be a hybrid measurement of big data sources reflecting device activity, informed by representative panel measurements of people,” concluded Doe.

The next steps for ATSG are to expand their membership to include other parts of the media ecosystem while continuing to work on cross-platform target definition consistency and guidelines on the reliability of advanced audience campaign delivery.

This article first appeared in Cynopsis.

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.

Nielsen and clypd Collaborate to Advance Audience-Based Buying

At the recent TVB Forward conference, Steve Hasker, Global President and Chief Operating Officer, Nielsen, noted that more transparency and accountability was needed in measurement. With Nielsen’s recent announcement of a collaboration with clypd, a leading audience-based sales platform to network television ad sales organizations, there is now a greater ability according to the press release to, “enable buyers to seamlessly share their media plans and the audience segments created via Nielsen’s planning software… with sellers through the clypd platform.”

What this means is that Nielsen is integrating its television ratings data into the clypd platform enabling advertising agencies to more efficiently execute on media plans based on custom audience segmentations. To enable advertisers to define custom segments, Nielsen is offering a range of proprietary consumer profile data, including Nielsen Catalina Solutions, MarketBreaks, Nielsen Buyer Insights, and Nielsen TV MRI Fusion. They are planning to offer services to estimate custom audience performance (for pricing and yield management) and fully steward sales contracts on these segments.

For clypd, this collaboration with Nielsen will scale and streamline advanced advertising contracts from beginning to end of a buy. Jason Burke, Vice President Strategic Development, clypd explained, “The clypd platform (is) activating Nielsen data across the entire media workflow including planning, media buying and measurement of linear TV advertising.“

I was curious to know how this all worked and asked Kelly Abcarian, Senior Vice President Watch Product Leadership for Nielsen, the following questions:

Charlene Weisler: Is this initiative for both local and national markets?

Kelly Abcarian: We will initially focus on national cable and broadcast networks but are assessing demand for a similar solution in Local markets. Nielsen already has plans to launch our Nielsen Media Impact (NMI) planning suite for Local television in early 2018. 

Weisler: Are buys fully stewarded through the sales process?

Abcarian: Yes through the clypd platform which now provides both Nielsen demographic and advanced audience delivery reporting and posting throughout the campaign lifecycle. This should allow media owners and agencies to steward buys to deliver upon audience guarantees. 

Weisler: Is this something that will be integrated into Adviews?

Abcarian: We are working are in the process of integrating the advanced segmentation performance data across our entire portfolio of offerings. We will continue to update the marketplace on our latest plans and roadmap.

Weisler: How many segments? Are they standardized? Can segments be customized and proprietary?

Abcarian: You can create an unlimited number of audience segmentations using combinations of attributes from Nielsen-collected, 3rd party and advertiser 1st party behavioral data. Through NMI, agencies can compose audience definitions using segments from a number of Nielsen data products, including Nielsen TV MRI Fusion, Nielsen Buyer Insights credit card spend data, MarketBreaks and Nielsen Catalina Solutions in-store loyalty data. With the integration built between clypd and Nielsen Marketing Cloud, digital segments can be activated on TV as well. Finally, marketers can use this client behavioral data for forecasting and optimization.

Weisler: Can you bring in other data sets such as first party data or other syndicated datasets?

Abcarian: Yes. clypd’s platform enables the use of any data sets – beyond Nielsen’s - for forecasting, measurement, optimization, and stewardship/posting of advertising activity on television. Marketers are clamoring to activate their data within TV, but the process has been proven to be slow and painful, limiting the scale of this valuable data strategy.  Through this collaboration, we are streamlining this process to allow for leveraging various data segments including offline CRM data and digital behavioral data which can be matched against Nielsen TV viewership data as a foundation.  This unique workflow makes it possible to create advanced segments born from person level matches as opposed to household matches, common with STB or Smart TV data. 

Weisler: Is this or can this become cross platform?

Abcarian: This is a first step towards cross-screen advertising based on custom audience segmentations. With these pieces in place, clypd's forecasting and optimization and Nielsen's digital and TV measurement products will enable end-to-end advertising across screens as a subsequent offering for the market

Weisler: What is the basic metric used to post? delivery? Live +1? c3? All or any of these or others?

Abcarian: Audience posting and campaign performance is supported across any rating stream agreed upon by media owner and agency and for which the underlying data source includes measurement.

Weisler: Are the solutions from clypd & Nielsen focused on a particular type of client?

Abcarian: All of the product initiatives benefit both media company and media buyer by streamlining the buying process and enabling both sides to benefit from data-driven decisioning to improve their advertising efforts. The forecasting and posting services will open up tools for the buyers and sellers ecosystem, but also with incremental stakeholder groups like external advertising platforms, industry analysts and finance groups, by providing tools to best understand and manage their media and advertising efforts with advanced data sources.

Weisler: How does this collaboration break new ground?

Abcarian: The ramping activity in the past two upfront calendar years has positioned the market to be in a place to increase investments. For these investments to continue their upward trends, the market requires tools for empowering clients and media companies to fuel these industry shifts.  clypd and Nielsen’s collaboration streamlines integrations between the existing optimization tools and datasets being used  and creates new product offerings to help move the industry forward. These innovations bring advanced audience forecasting, pricing and stewardship/posting to the wider advertising ecosystem for the purposes of planning, executing and managing advanced audience deals, ultimately playing a key role in helping to accelerate the market adoption of these shifts.

How Nimble and Innovate TV Can and Needs To Be. Interview with clypd’s Mark Mitchell

Mark Mitchell started his career as a TV buyer at Y&R before entering broadcast television at ABC in sales and then venturing into a series of start-ups. Now, as Chief Relationship Officer, clypd, he is on the cutting edge of audience-based advertising.  Clypd, which recently entered into an agreement with Nielsen, is a software and services provider to network television ad sales organizations. 

Charlene Weisler:  What is your current job responsibility? 

Mark Mitchell: I establish and manage our partnerships with the TV Networks for clypd.  Four years ago when we started the company, a ton of effort went into convincing sales leaders that the industry needed to begin to change.   Those early days of "programmatic TV" were all about educating, building trust and testing new transaction models.  We're now at the point where everyone sees the benefit of selling advanced audiences, and market adoption is underway.  

Weisler:  What is your definition of programmatic TV?

Mitchell: The application of rich audience data for targeting to improve television advertising outcomes, with underlying technology that allows this to happen in an efficient, streamlined fashion.

Weisler: What are the advantages of an Open Marketplace, of a Private Marketplace and what are the challenges in each?

Mitchell: The private marketplace (PMP) model puts clypd's advance audience forecasting and optimization capabilities into the hands of the Network teams for execution of Advanced TV sales strategies.  They are able to operationalize any advanced audience data, create optimized proposals and then manage those deals through their existing sales systems.  

The clypd open marketplace (OMP) was initially developed to provide non-traditional buyers, DSPs and digital agencies, the means to purchase linear TV inventory, where conventional relationships with TV sales orgs may not have exist.  At the same time, it gave TV media owners access to new sources of demand.  While a robust marketplace, OMP's managed service approach falls short of the hands-on control that traditional TV buyers need.  For that reason, we are launching a self-service OMP application that will allow holding companies to transact across all of our partner networks, in a semi-private environment.  Networks will use clypd's software to manage agency/advertiser-specific deal terms, just as they would in an offline sale today.  Think of it as a convenient Amazon-esqe experience for buying and selling linear TV advertising.  

In both cases, the biggest challenge is changing legacy behaviors and beliefs.  Some people embrace it, while others need a bit more convincing and support.  

Weisler:  What is your definition of television?  

Mitchell: Wow.  Harder to define every day.  Having grown up in this business, I still see it as the viewing experience of programming supplied by a media owner who operates linear channels.  Distribution and consumption of that content has and will continue to change in ways that best serve the consumer, with business models evolving to support it.

Weisler:  What is the biggest challenge for an agency / advertiser in buying television through a platform?  

Mitchell: Transparency, trust and costs.  How direct is the access to the inventory and the audiences that am I getting, and what impact is it having on the cost of media.

Weisler:  Where do you see television in general and television sales in the next three years? 

Mitchell: The TV advertising industry is going through a renaissance, which is essential for it to compete with the likes of Google, FB and eventually Amazon.   The sales side of network television has always attracted some of the brightest people in the industry.  Many get a bad rap for holding onto old ways of doing business.  But those "old ways" drove some amazing profits.  Now you will begin go see just how nimble and innovative this community can really be. 

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com