In the first edition of our new video series ‘Unscripted with Comcast Advertising’ we asked our leaders to share their advice and predictions on the future of advertising. They discuss everything from the economy to partnerships and technology, and everything in between.
Here are some key takeaways:
• James Rooke, President, Comcast Advertising: The opportunity for us is as the boils of traditional TV and streaming can come together, how do we make television more attributable? How do we better demonstrate the value of premium TV to be competitive relative to other places that marketers can spend their dollars? Data is already playing out and will continue to play out and therefore I think there’s a bright future for television advertising in all forms.
• Melanie Hamilton, SVP of Enterprise Sales, Effectv: The real win for all of us is going to be the collaboration with the buy side to continue to move away from the transactional nature that this business was from a legacy perspective and move towards the innovation. Some of the trends that we’re seeing from the buy side for Effectv and Comcast Advertising are around the exponential growth of addressable advertising and how addressable advertising can truly fit into their media mix and shouldn’t be standalone in a silo. As we lean into our set top box data, and as advertisers are asking to be more specific and precise, we believe that we have the right narratives to steer them into a more optimal medium mix. And addressable is one pillar of that.
• Soo Jin Oh, Chief Strategy Officer, FreeWheel: I think TV advertising and OTT advertising are going be one and the same. I think it’s going to be about how do people consume video in their big screen, and how do advertisers reach them in a very efficient way.? I think things like linear addressable will become table stakes. Applying data to reach your audiences and measuring them is going to become table stakes. I get really excited about things like AI and machine learning. There’s talks about it being the fourth industrial revolution. The power of technology where we’re able to take machines and data, stored on the cloud, and enable more of that artificial intelligence is kind of the new wave. Not just for TV advertising, but advertising in our ecosystem and totality.
• Thomas Bremond, Chief Revenue Officer, FreeWheel International: A lot of people are speaking about creating a parallel universe a.k.a. the metaverse. I don’t necessarily think that’s the next big thing, or maybe it will be in the next 10 to 15 years. I think what’s right ahead of us is embracing new formats. We all have new ways of commuting; we all have new ways of interacting with one another. I think the way we are consuming content, video, and formats is going to drastically change over the next few years.
• Ying Wang, VP of Strategic Initiatives, Comcast Advertising: We’re heading into some uncertain times and a lot of marketers think about cutting their advertising budgets as one of the first things when there are signs of uncertainty. But in some of the work that we’ve done with clients, we’ve seen that in times of uncertainty, if you can double down on your marketing investment, you could get better returns because other people are scaling back. This idea of having greater share of voice and marketing really matters. My advice is that if you can continue to invest, to think about smarter ways of using your advertising budget – especially when other people are thinking of reducing that spend – then you’re able to probably get more and be prepared coming out of the times of uncertainty.