As the 2023 upfronts get underway, advertisers are once again faced with the challenge of reaching consumers and achieving optimal business results while balancing the growing array of television distribution formats in their media plans. With premium video content being consumed across various screens and fragmentation increasing, advertisers are looking to leverage data insights to target viewers with precision while maintaining the reach of traditional TV, using aggregated viewership insights, and with a commitment to protecting personal information. Addressable TV has reached critical mass, offering an effective solution that allows advertisers to reach specific audiences at scale with unprecedented precision. According to research commissioned with Advertiser Perceptions, 90% of agencies and marketers agree that Addressable TV is critical to the future of television advertising.

Despite the growing adoption of addressable advertising, many advertisers might not fully understand its benefits or use cases. But with media and marketing dollars under increased scrutiny, advertisers should consider the following four ways to incorporate addressable TV advertising into their upfront plans.

1. Complement Traditional TV Buys

Traditional TV still plays a pivotal role in many advertisers’ media strategies, and this is unlikely to change. Addressable TV advertising is a strategic tactic that can enhance linear TV campaigns by bridging gaps and providing better viewer experiences through more effective targeting and ad frequency management per household. By coupling the two, advertisers can extend the reach of their traditional linear TV strategy and drive incremental reach to consumers who may not have been exposed to their messaging. Incorporating addressable TV advertising into upfront planning in this way can help ensure valuable return on ad spend.

2. Unify Streaming and Linear Audiences

Addressability is not limited to linear TV advertising; it also can be used to serve targeted ads across set-top boxes, streaming platforms, or CTV devices. By using addressable, advertisers can improve audience targeting and measure reach across both linear and digital channels, which historically has been difficult. Addressable TV offers the opportunity to unify the two, creating a more audience-based approach and a better understanding of ROI.

3. Engage High-Intent Consumers with Relevant Messages

One of the most valuable applications of addressable TV advertising is its ability to identify and reach in-market households with a high likelihood of purchasing a specific product or service. Addressable TV provides privacy-focused ways to reach a specific audience using aggregated data. By using addressable TV advertising, advertisers can target specific creative or messaging to in-market households, which can drive conversion and enhance the customer experience. By incorporating addressable TV advertising into upfront planning, advertisers can engage with customers as they move through the consumer purchase funnel.

4. Close the Loop Between Media Exposure and Consumer Action

Addressable TV advertising can help close the loop between media exposure and consumer action with deterministic attribution and measurement. In a privacy-focused way, advertisers can target specific audience segments and limit the exposure of ads to households outside of those segments, reducing wasted impressions. With accurate attribution, advertisers can better plan and measure the impact of their TV investments.

Addressable TV is Ready to Go for the 2023 Upfronts

As advertisers’ needs continue to evolve, addressable TV advertising is playing a major role in the new TV landscape by providing improved targeting, measurement, and attribution capabilities. The tools and technology are available, and advertisers should take advantage of them by incorporating addressable into their overall TV strategy. The 2023 upfronts provide a massive opportunity for advertisers to embrace addressable TV advertising and achieve optimal results.

Resources for Going Addressable

Go Addressable has put together resources to accelerate adoption and help educate and enable advertisers wherever they are in their addressable TV journey. Visit the Content Hub to access the playbook, glossary, blogs, and other timely insights.

Today, audiences are consuming content everywhere and, on every device, causing viewership fragmentation and numerous choices for marketers. As marketers build their media plans, they are faced with determining the best way to reach their target audience. Online digital advertising has made a compelling case for reaching audiences but faces several challenges for marketers including lack of scale, reach and premium content. Addressable TV arguably provides the best of all worlds, utilizing aggregated and de-identified first party data, advertisers now have the ability to serve ads directly to the households they want to reach next to today’s most sought-after premium content at scale. As part of an ongoing series, we will be discussing the benefits of addressable TV and its positive impact on marketer’s media mix. First, we’ll examine how addressable TV offers precision audience targeting at scale in a safe, privacy-compliant way and why addressable TV is the best of all worlds.

The Connection To The Consumer

Video distribution platforms and today’s smart devices are a direct connection to the home, and therefore the consumer. This allows marketers to match specific approved viewership segments or custom target lists, through a trusted third party, with first party de-identified data. From a targeting perspective, that is incredibly powerful. It means an addressable enhanced TV campaign will have the reach and scale of television with the HH targeting capabilities.

With the death of cookies not far off, advertisers will be looking for ways to fill the void; addressable TV can be a big part of how that void gets filled. TV distributors provide marketers with a direct conduit to their best potential customer without reliance on cookies, MAIDs or other less-reliable identifiers.

The direct connection to all screens in the home at scale, in a privacy compliant way, is the backbone of TV distributor’s ability to provide addressable advertising using accurate data, methodology and delivery mechanisms.

Spectrum Reach’s Commitment to Customers

At Spectrum Reach we continue our commitment of advancing the addressable television landscape by evolving our technical infrastructure, improving workflows, and advancing census-based measurement solutions for our partners and media sales clients. Additionally, Spectrum Reach has made investments to help scale the addressable marketplace including Blockgraph, an identity solutions company, and, Comscore, who provided census-based measurement and analytics for the media industry. Finally, through Ampersand we are scaling the access to local addressable TV for advertisers… These and other investments have helped establish Spectrum Reach as one of the leaders in addressable advertising. Our participation in Go Addressable has highlighted the need for teamwork in the space and is helping to advance TV addressable by driving education and addressing issues facing the industry. Our commitment to addressable advertising is strong. Charter’s customer privacy policies exceed industry standards and are aligned with a promise to protect customer’s personal information.

Addressable TV offers truly unprecedented precision in audience targeting. By matching aggregated and de-identified first-party data sets with consumer data, distributors can generate census-level, privacy-compliant household data, providing unmatched targeting capabilities for marketers. With addressable TV, distributors can help brands deliver greater accuracy and increased reach through proven and scalable distribution platforms. Said another way, brands can finally take the best content on the planet and use it to Go Addressable.

The world of TV advertising is undergoing a seismic change. As the use of data continues to fundamentally shift the way marketers reach and measure their audiences, brands are looking for ways to ensure TV advertising is offering capabilities as precise as digital, but with the reach of traditional TV.

Against this backdrop, addressable TV has emerged, representing one of the most significant shifts in advertising to date. Addressable TV advertising offers an effective, accountable, and optimizable ad experience for all players in the media ecosystem, and therefore is a topic of great importance to advertisers and publishers alike. With excitement and interest building, advertisers are seeking resources and education while demanding options for executing addressable TV at scale.

This is exactly why Go Addressable was launched.

Founded in June 2021, the Go Addressable initiative includes – a group of industry leaders with the goal of accelerating the growth of addressable TV advertising and making it easier for advertisers to incorporate addressable TV into their advertising campaigns.

Why is this so important? Because TV buying is rapidly shifting to a data driven, impression-based model, and advertisers are asking for it.

According to a new study commissioned with Advertiser Perceptions, 88% of agencies and marketers agree addressability is important to the future of television advertising. Additionally, over 3/4 of marketers and agencies say that linear addressable is the key to solving their marketing objectives in a fragmented media world. Because of this, One in four advertisers not currently spending in addressable TV report that they plan to start in 2022.

Not surprisingly, spend for addressable TV is expected to grow in 2022. In fact, 1 in 3 addressable TV advertisers surveyed say they will spend more in 2022 – which is in line with eMarketer’s prediction that linear TV addressable ad spending will grow 33% this year.

So is addressability a key part of TV’s future? You bet. The interest is there and the spend is growing. But data suggests there is work to be done to improve on the opportunity.

According to the Ad Perceptions study, slightly more than half of the advertisers surveyed (all media brand decision-makers) are currently using addressable advertising. Moreover, only one in ten advertisers are very satisfied with current addressable TV options. In our eyes, this spells opportunity! More education and more industry-wide solutions are necessary to realize the full potential of this game-changing medium.
This is where Go Addressable comes in.

The mission is to accelerate the growth of addressable TV advertising by focusing on three key pillars:

• SIMPLIFY. Help simplify the process of buying and managing addressable TV campaigns, proposing solutions aimed at reducing inefficiencies and driving value for advertisers.
• SOCIALIZE. Provide advocacy, education, actionable insights, use cases and technical updates on a regular basis to keep the industry informed and engaged with addressable TV.
• SCALE. Help facilitate seamless distribution, ease of planning, standardization, flawless execution and unified measurement for addressable TV – combining the scale of traditional television with the precision of digital media.

Today, Go Addressable held its first annual industry summit, titled “Go Addressable 2021: Advancing the Future of Television.” At this event, leaders from companies spanning ViacomCBS, AMC Networks, DISH Media, WarnerMedia, Blockgraph and Invidi shared insights and best practices on how to master the addressable TV marketplace now and in the future. If you missed the summit, you can watch the full event here.

Go Addressable also introduced a new Content Hub that provides visitors deep and timely insights into addressable TV – we hope you’ll take a look around and come back often. This Content Hub includes blogs, videos, infographics, industry guides and more, created to keep industry players informed and up-to-speed on the latest addressable TV advertising news and insights.

Addressable TV is here, and the goal is to take it to the next level with this groundbreaking multi-company initiative. Wherever you stand in your journey towards addressable advertising, we hope you’ll benefit from our commitment to the growth and evolution of TV advertising. In this industry, rising tide lifts all boats, and we should all commit to building the future of addressable TV together. It’s time to go addressable.