Advertising industry leaders from across the ecosystem convened in New York City for Go Addressable, an event aimed at continuing efforts to advance addressable television. The consortium of the same name remains focused on helping the television industry adopt addressability at scale. Here are the highlights from the leaders in attendance:
Calming the Media Storm
“Disruption is the operating system of our ecosystem”—a memorable sentiment from self-proclaimed media universe cartographer and event keynote speaker, Evan Shapiro. While the line didn’t derail the topic of the day, it did serve to underpin just how volatile the landscape of advertising is, despite the industry’s best efforts to tame it.
And that’s what addressable advertising attempts to provide – order to chaos, a shortened path from brand to a desired consumer. But as far as calming the tempest, while addressable advertising is making great strides, there is still a ways to go.
That’s also precisely why it’s so very important to continue focusing on keeping up the pace of addressable advertising. If change is the constant, addressable can be the rudder for brands to steer messaging to consumers while the landscape morphs.
Delivering on TV’s Impact
Shaprio went on to point out that “the distance between impression and transaction is important.” The good news is that people are flocking to TV. “In the last couple of years, video impressions in the home have stampeded away from the small screen, towards the big screen. In the home, the best screen wins.”
This is where the premium content of television can shine for brands. Kelly Metz, Managing Director of Advanced TV Activation for Omnicom Media Group, calls out the “scale and availability,” of impressions in the addressable space now, “which is why you’re seeing the money move.” She credits the research teams at the large brands, who know exactly who their targets are and why she expects to see the addressability space “explode.”
Horizon Media’s Samantha Rose points out that getting advertisers in and proving the value of addressable will be key. Delivering results will “give learnings to expand and grow… we can talk about optimal frequency and what we want to accomplish.” GroupM’s Jen Soch explains that “this is a great way to prove out the merits of what we saw in broadband, in digital.” The analogy is relevant today, as prudent agency media managers make media investments work harder.
Addressable’s Key Value is Multifaceted
Addressable has been cited as a way for brands to reach light TV viewers and incrementally reach more audiences. Rose says that “what [agencies] really want is redistribution of frequency toward those light TV viewers.”
For consumers, the invisible impact delivered by addressable is that it creates a more relevant advertising experience for them. More precise targeting reduces the number of “nuisance” ads with better managed frequency, even across platforms. For advertisers, this further reduces wasted dollars associated with inefficient targeting. Adding, “we bring in the analytics team from day one now [and] we have benchmarks now.” According to Metz, “the full capabilities of television are about to be unleashed — at scale.” “If we can’t measure it, we don’t want to buy it, because we have nothing we can prove,” she says.
Measurement is a critical component. According to Helen Katz of Publicis, the industry is on the right path. Ross McCray of VideoAmp calls properly measuring addressable investments “table stakes.”
In essence, addressable is “target layering,” pulling together linear, CTV, FAST, etc. But multiple currencies need to work together, getting the data in line to see what you’re executing against and what you measure on the back end.
What’s important to remember is that every client has their own customizable data, so being nimble is key.
Solving Transaction & Data-Focused Challenges
Addressable has come a tremendous distance, but it’s a complex process, especially with programmatic in the mix. It’s not a silo anymore, it’s about tying the pieces together as a holistic solution for agencies and their brands. Open AP’s Joanna Thissen suggested that “we need to have an understanding of how we can bridge all of those universes together so we can see where the overlap is…so that an agency can see or a national programmer can understand what the frequency is or what the deduplication of reach is across all the different platforms. It does get confusing when you look at it on an IO basis, rather than holistically.” Noah Levine of Warner Bros. Discovery illustrated her point, comparing addressable to “playing three-dimensional chess.”
It’s also a way to help define attribution across all of the endpoints, not just at the top of the funnel. But as they say, good data in, good data out. Addressable audience fidelity depends upon getting accurate data, all working in concert. Seema Patel of TelevisaUnivision calls it “connecting all of the data pipes.”
Data was clearly the recurring theme of the day.
What’s on the Roadmap?
53 billion minutes of addressable advertising is available to buy each month, across multiple distribution channels. The scale and inventory is now available for brands to make a significant investment in addressable advertising.
So with all that advertising time available, what will be the focus for addressable in 2023? For the Go Addressable thought leaders, there are four key things to look for:
1. Solve for planning and measurement,
2. Accelerate convergence,
3. Engage stakeholders,
4. Deepen education.
The industry is continuing to embrace and champion the technology of addressability. In his closing comments, Kevin Arrix of DISH Media pledged that “we will move beyond just access to data. Go Addressable will take specific actions to work with measurement and other systems providers, to solve for the lack of holistic video planning and measurement tools for the buy and sell side. If we can accomplish this, that will be a massive step forward for our industry.”
With such a commitment to improved measurement, better and robust data, and increased investment from advertisers, the conversation around addressable can change from what addressable could do to the added value addressable will bring to advertisers. Addressable is well on its way to providing an improved roadmap to connecting brands to their customers amid the disruptive operating system.