With the explosion of CTV and OTT inventory, marketer concern about digital ads showing up adjacent to unsuitable content has a new focus: content that makes it to the TV screen. Traditionally TV advertising was deemed brand safe as long as the inventory was on shows that suited the brand and reach goals of the advertiser.

Despite progress in fighting fraud and on safety issues on both the buy and sell sides, the industry is still searching for effective tools that allow advertisers to reach audiences in brand safe, premium environments. Ultimately, there are high stakes involved: a bad user experience such as ad placement within dubious content or contacting a consumer when they’ve opted-out can negatively impact brand sentiment. It’s imperative that advertisers maximize the use of the media and platforms that can deliver and better guarantee brand safety.

Addressable TV¹ advertising, as defined by Go Addressable, offers a higher level of brand safety thanks to the inventory pool of premium TV content across screens and solutions described below. Additionally, recent tech advancements made it easier than ever to activate on both traditional and streaming / connected TV. Go Addressable believes advertisers should prioritize authenticated inventory and technology, like addressable TV, that ensures their ads reach the intended audiences in an environment that aligns with their brand.

Let’s take a deep dive into ways addressable TV is providing brand safety for advertisers.

1. Addressable TV Complies with Content Adjacency Requirements:

While brand safety isn’t only about content adjacency, it is an essential part as different brands have unique interpretations of what is considered “safe.” Addressable TV allows advertisers and agencies to determine if the ad placement complies with their policies for appropriate content.

2. Addressable TV is Virtually Fraud Free and Offers Full Transparency in Reporting and Measurement:

Fraud continues to be exposed as a serious issue in the non-addressable OTT and CTV inventory. Many advertisers are seeking more transparency from their media partners to see exactly where their ads are running in addition to understanding how their ads performed. In the pre-campaign planning stage, addressable TV employs subscriber authentication using insights from first-party data. This ensures accurate household matching, cuts down on bot traffic and increases the efficacy of inventory for brands. Upon campaign execution and completion, addressable TV offers post-campaign reporting transparency, which shows exactly where ads have run, and highlights where a client’s target audience was exposed across a portfolio of premium video inventory. These ad exposure logs can be matched to attribution events (a purchase, a website, in-store visit, etc.) reliably based on the authenticated household identity. All of this provides highly accurate and transparent performance metrics for a campaign.

3. Addressable TV Respects the Viewer Experience:

Amidst growing concerns of poor experience across TV viewership, buyers and sellers have been focused on how best to ensure that their ads are relevant and non-intrusive. Addressable TV considers and respects the voice of the consumer. For instance, the authentication services that addressable impressions are delivered by (e.g., MVPDs, vMVPDs, D2C services, etc.) capture consumers’ choices as part of their registration process. They can also update their choices or preferences when they want and how they want. This also means that consumers’ decisions, choices, and privacy preferences are cared for and respected during the audience activation process of every campaign.

4. Addressable TV Upholds Consumer Commitments Around Sensitive Audience Data:

Another benefit of addressable TV regarding brand safety is that providers do thorough audits of the audience attributes in advertising segments. This audit is done to ensure that audience segments are not used inappropriately in order to safeguard the reputation of the provider and their direct relationship with the consumer.

Addressable TV Should be Front and Center for Marketers’ Buys When Brand Safety is a Concern

The concept of brand safety has become vastly more complex, going well beyond viewability and content adjacency. In the digital and CTV landscape there is still concern from advertisers about the quality and control of inventory they are buying. So, in a time when reaching audiences in a premium and brand safe environment is more important than ever, advertisers need to understand which channels can really ensure brand safety.

Addressable TV offers the industry a solution ensuring advertisers have brand safety built in, using audience-targeted capabilities to deliver relevant messages to receptive consumers at the household level on the big screen across linear and connected TV.

This content has been modified from the original article published here on 614 Group.

Check out our latest report, Guidelines for Planning & Buying Addressable TV Advertising, where we explore buy-side issues like brand safety and demonstrate how addressable TV is a powerful tactic for advertisers to help make their media dollars work harder.

Sources

1. Go Addressable defines Addressable TV as: “The ability to serve targeted ads to specific households based on deterministic identifiers, allowing brands to define and serve their message to the desired audience, wherever and whenever they’re watching content on TV/CTV/STB. Those targeted households can be matched to 1st, 2nd or 3rd party data sets or modeled by behavioral, demographic and/or geographic factors from 1st, 2nd or 3rd party data sets.”
2. Ad Exchanger: Adalytics Exposes An Alleged $10.5 Billion Black Hole In The Google Search Partners Program, November 2023
3. Go Addressable defines non-addressable as: “Inventory that does not have the ability for advertisers to serve targeted ads to specific households or users based on deterministic identifiers.”

It’s not news that the TV landscape is evolving and becoming more fragmented and complex. TV has expanded across screens and platforms, to include live programs, original streaming content, and VOD programming. Viewers are seamlessly switching between linear and streaming content, jumping across apps, and ultimately consuming TV whenever, wherever, and however they want.

While this explosion of content is great for consumers, it has become more difficult for advertisers to try to capture attention and manage reach. And while many advertisers are turning to CTV to try to reach audiences, the truth is that not all of that content is ad supported. According to Nielsen, streaming accounts for 38.4% of monthly TV viewing in the U.S., but when you look at ad-supported streaming platforms, that ends up accounting for ~18% of total TV viewing.

So, how can advertisers reach audiences across all forms of TV without inundating them with the same ads repeatedly? They need a convergent solution, across linear and streaming, powered by deterministic data, delivered in premium brand safe environments.

That’s where addressable TV advertising comes in.

At a recent TV Upfronts event, Go Addressable broke down five essential strategies for success when it comes to addressable advertising and why advertisers should allocate 10% to 20% of their TV to this medium. Here are five key things advertisers should keep in mind as they plan out their TV buys for the year ahead to ensure they are driving results.

1. A convergent TV solution is crucial

It’s clear that finding viewers where they are watching TV is more important than ever. Advertisers need a convergent TV solution that allows them to reach audiences across linear and streaming so they can manage campaigns holistically and see the true impact of their media.

The good news is that addressable, while originally rooted in linear TV, has evolved into a cross-platform solution where reach and frequency can be managed and can be used to streamline goals across platforms. And, because addressable is rooted in inventory from MVPDs, it gives advertisers scale across the most premium TV content in the market. In fact, there are 68 billion available addressable impressions within brand safe, premium environments across the Go Addressable footprint that advertisers can tap into.

2. Deterministic data is King (or Queen)

Data is the main building block for identifying the right audience, and amid increasing signal loss, the value of accurate, reliable data is more important than ever to advertisers. Starting with quality deterministic data is what allows advertisers to reach their high-value audiences, because not all data or identity solutions are created equal.

In a recent study with CIMM on the reliability of IP addresses as an identity solution, it was found that the ability for a campaign to attain reach and scale was impacted by the data used for targeting. The research showed that addressable match rates, which are fueled by audiences authenticated against MVPD subscriber data from MVPDs, start with a 95% initial match rate and maintain consistent match after the quarter. Campaigns that utilize IP addresses alone start at a 60% initial match rate and can drop to as low as 24% after 90 days.

3. Tech matters

While data should be at the core of any TV campaign, incredible technology is still needed to power those campaigns. Because at the end of the day, advertisers need the ability to precisely deliver against their most valuable audiences, cross-platform, with increased efficiency to limit waste and understand the impact of their media.

They also need to manage reach and frequency so they can ensure they aren’t over or underexposing viewers. To solve for this challenge, advertisers can utilize addressable tech to manage heavy TV viewers and create segments of light-TV viewers and make sure households are being delivered the ad the optimal number of times.

These are amazing tactics fueled by powerful tech that allows advertisers to look at their TV buys more holistically and increase campaign reach among certain audiences.

4. Young adults are watching linear and streaming

There is a misconception that young adults don’t watch linear TV anymore and can only be reached via streaming. That’s just not true.

Research shows that the majority of adults 18-49 watch TV across linear and streaming. That means, if advertisers are relying solely on CTV to reach them, they could miss a significant portion. Addressable data and technology can help brands find their audience even if that is a younger audience or an audience that doesn’t watch as much TV.

5. Actions over metrics

Today, advertisers are held accountable for media metrics, and business outcomes and results. It’s not enough to just reach audiences, advertising needs to drive the right action. With addressable and its deterministic data used for measurement, brands can better understand the connection between accurately reported exposures and outcomes across the purchase funnel, whether that be awareness, a website visit, an in-store visit or even sales lift. Further, brands get a better understanding of the performance and what is driving action so that they can better optimize for future campaigns.

Addressable TV is a key component in the changing TV landscape

While the definition of TV may be changing, the truth is TV is still the cornerstone of advertising because it works. So, while premium linear TV has evolved, it has done so in an effective way; it has converged, across platforms, and technology like addressable allows advertisers to buy it more closely aligned to how they might buy impression-based digital with all the additional controls.

The benefit of this is advertisers can now rely on technology and deterministic data in order to deliver the most efficient TV campaigns, based on their most valuable audiences in top quality and brand-safe content. Regardless of the size or duration of a campaign and whether targeted broadly or narrowly, addressable is a powerful tool that should be used as an integrated tactic for overall TV buys to make that budget go further and obtain the best results throughout the entire funnel.

Go Addressable’s third-annual summit this year focused on discussing some of the biggest topics of addressable TV advertising; how the medium has progressed, what is needed from the industry for total convergence, the importance of authenticated identity, and where the future is headed.

Addressable TV advertising has been growing steadily in usage as advertisers better understand its capabilities and potential. In fact, during her opening remarks Amy Leifer, Chief Advertising Sales Officer at DIRECTV Advertising, shared custom research from Go Addressable and Advertiser Perceptions on how advertiser intent to spend on addressable has grown consistently over the last three years from 34% in 2021 to 40% today! Next year, 2 out of 5 advertisers say they will spend more on addressable than they did this year.

One thing was clear though, as the industry moves towards building a better ecosystem for buyers, sellers, and consumers we must continue to keep focused on the future if we really want to Go Addressable. As the event’s keynote speaker Rishad Tobaccowala shared, the future cannot exist in the containers of the past so the time for the industry to act is now.

It’s All Coming Together: The New (and Improved) Addressable Buying Landscape

Speakers: Jason Brown, Spectrum Reach (Moderator), Cullen Deady, PMX Lift, Lisa Giacosa, Spark Foundry, Jean-Mark Papin, Horizon, and Brad Stockton, Dentsu

Our first panel featured executives across four major agencies, providing a temperature check on the state of addressable adoption and what, if any, barriers still remain. The good news: there has been steady growth in addressable TV advertising, with an increased acknowledgement of its effectiveness and relative cost efficiency. All panelists seemed to agree that one of the most important actions needed is to debunk the myths that marketers might believe about addressable’s effectiveness. Education is needed to help brand marketers understand the true eCPM of addressable. It can actually make media dollars go further since it is more effective and can help manage frequency and drive incremental reach. The truth is that addressable offers more in terms of reaching more targeted audiences and helping to avoid wasted impressions. Being able to help prove the real effectiveness of addressable TV advertising will help push it forward.

Another important factor is making it easier for buyers to transact across sellers. The ultimate goal is a holistic approach to planning, buying, and measurement that truly reflects the way that consumers are now viewing premium video content, moving beyond legacy media modeling.

There is so much opportunity for advertisers when it comes to addressable TV. A key area of focus for Go Addressable is to knock down the perceived barriers for marketers through research and education. In fact, based on a recent survey, the number of advertisers who are satisfied with addressable TV has increased steadily in the past three years. With dedicated work that number should continue to improve.

Convergence in Action: Where Addressable TV Fits In

Speakers: Kevin Arrix, DISH Media (Moderator), Stephanie Foster, Yahoo!, Angela Girardin, Nielsen One Ads, Andrea Remoundos, GroupM, and Sara Wallace, FreeWheel

The second panel of the day tackled the convergence of addressable that we are seeing in an increasingly complex world with different models and buying types across various video types. Like the marketer panel, they agreed that the industry needs better uniformity to ensure that advertisers can buy and manage addressable campaigns and use it successfully in their media strategies.

The real solution for full-fledged convergence is making it easier for advertisers to have a cohesive view of their video investments. Despite all the progress, silos remain; we are still seeing that many companies are organized in a way where the CTV and Linear TV teams sit separately. There is work being done to encourage the two to come together so that these channels can sit alongside one another. Allowing for more programmatic buying of addressable will also provide more flexibility, transparency, and uniformity so clients can better optimize.

Enabling more inventory to be programmatically bought will help bring the teams together and improving measurement for addressable TV will drive it forward and allow us to understand the impact addressable TV has more holistically.

Go Addressable is committed to helping improve measurement and help provide better proof of ROI in order to encourage advertiser adoption. Currently, the organization works with the top 20 attribution vendors in the market as a way to develop better offerings. As a result, 59% of advertisers report seeing an improvement in measurement in addressable TV.

Data: Addressable’s Superpower and How to Maximize It

Speakers: Larry Allen, Comcast Advertising (Moderator), Kimberly Gilberti, Experian, Bill Harvey, RMT Inc., Emily Kistner, Adstra, and Jason Manningham, Blockgraph

When it comes to addressable TV, data is really the fuel that powers it, so it is critical that advertisers start with the best data input in order to get the best output. As Bill Harvey said, addressable is a very powerful tool that research has found delivers a higher ROI than linear alone given its precise targeting, reinforcing its value as a tactic in effective media plans.

The industry is working to provide interoperability across data and identity partners so that advertisers can have an accurate view of their audiences across the entire campaign lifecycle from planning, to buying, to finally measuring. Data accuracy is an imperative to allow advertisers to leverage data in the best ways and to make meaningful connections with their consumers.

Looking ahead to 2024

Go Addressable is helping marketers and agencies understand the power of addressable TV advertising so they can truly harness it and use it to its fullest extent. During the event’s Fireside chat with Joe Keating from Hill’s Pet Nutrition, he shared how he has really leaned into addressable to help build the brand, better understand consumers, and reach the right audiences. He pointed out that more convergence will make it easier for other brands to see the value of addressable in their own strategies.

As Travis Scoles, SVP of Advanced Advertising at Paramount pointed out, waste is the enemy of addressable TV. Once buyers have a better grasp of its capabilities and how to use it in a full funnel marketing plan, the channel will be unstoppable. There are three key things that the industry must do for this to happen, and these are the areas that Go Addressable will be focused on in the next 12 months:

1. Provide clarity on the best practices of addressable to make it easier to engage and transact at every step.
2. Foster industry collaboration to drive addressable implementation.
3. Utilize research insights and case studies to showcase the merits of addressable advertising.

Thank you to all that joined us for Go Addressable Summit 2023: Building the Converged Addressable Future. Your participation and collaboration help us educate the industry and push the medium forward. To keep up to date with all the latest work we are doing, visit Insights – Go Addressable.

To watch the replay of the event, visit Go Addressable Summit 2023.

We’ll see you next year!

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.