Posts for 'Perspectives'

As TV and digital advertising converge, it’s become even more evident how different the ways of buying and selling media are in each ecosystem. This reality has created some key challenges for both brands and media owners who seek to operate across platforms, and these challenges will only inhibit the free flow of money if they persist.

Advertisers generally want to deliver targeted impressions across a mix of programming, irrespective of whether that content is delivered on a set-top box or an IP-connected device. However, each of these environments offer vastly different capabilities and operates on different protocols. The resulting asymmetry, as you might imagine, often leads to frustrations and hurdles.

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Given the current regulatory climate around consumer privacy, many ad industry observers are anticipating a broad move away from audience-based targeting in the digital space, with contextual targeting increasingly being presented as the primary alternative. While this shift might seem logical on the surface, the binary thinking represented in the audience-versus-contextual debate is problematic, particularly as the thinking expands out to emerging channels like Convergent TV.

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Content quality is widely viewed as one of the most important variables for driving performance in advertising. Many brands and agencies divide their efforts between premium media advertising and cost effective media advertising. Buying premium content and video is often utilized to build brand awareness and generate exposure, while cost effective media advertising focuses on conversion points and total reach. Bridging the two practices through software for value and decisioning gives advertisers unreached efficiencies. This will be extremely important as the move to cross screen advertising begins to scale.

But what is the formula for automating the process to determine what is to be considered premium content?

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2014 was the year during which the "Big Game" became the "Really Big Game." From the Super Bowl and Sochi Olympics kicking off the year, to the college football Bowl Season closing it out. One could hardly turn around in 2014 without hearing of another programmer boasting cutting-edge streaming coverage of tent-pole sporting events or unprecedented depth of exposure for previously hard-to-find games.

Live sports serve a dual function for programmers trying to expand their digital footprint. In addition to bringing significant numbers of viewers to ultra-premium, high-CPM ad inventory, live sports have also been deployed as an entry point - hooking new adopters and indoctrinating digital viewing habits.

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In 2014 I cut the cord. We live in Toronto, Canada, are not a sports family, and watch mostly drama. The kids watch only Netflix, so for them, cutting the cord really had no impact. We made the conscious decision to buy whatever we wanted to watch, as I suspected we would never come close to the monthly cable bill we had just shed.  But the truth is always more complicated, and in a surprising turn of events, I find myself back with Bell Canada’s Fibe TV a year later. 

A look back at our purchases and motivations is quite revealing, considering the disruption going on in the video industry.

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Discussion about programmatic buying is plentiful these days, with many calling it "the hottest sector of advertising right now." As brands and agencies continue testing programmatic options across different types of media, questions - and many opinions - remain about how digital and TV can play together in the programmatic space.
 
The reality is that both digital and TV could stand to take some cues from one another to improve efficiencies. It's critical to take a realistic perspective on how these media could best converge, easing the buying and selling processes and advancing the entire ad industry. Adopting such an approach will help marketers execute and measure cross-platform campaigns that, as Unilever's CMO Keith Weed remarked at Cannes, will allow them to "lead with brands and not channels."
 
How can TV buying and planning enhance digital, and vice versa?

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