Author: Hannie Waldron

2023 Upfronts: The Addressable TV Opportunity

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.

Go Addressable 2022:
Event Recap & Replay

Our second annual Go Addressable event, Go Addressable 2022: Advancing The Future of Television on November 16th hosted a full house at Convene NYC and many more virtually, proving that interest is strong and the industry is excited to Go Addressable.

Key takeaways from each of our sessions below, and links to view the on demand experience. Please continue to follow us on LinkedIn and GoAddressable.com for additional insights into how we can collectively create a more addressable future.

Welcome and Opening Remarks

Opening Remarks

Matt Van Houten, SVP, Product, Business Development, and Sales Operations for DIRECTV Advertising set the stage by highlighting several key announcements reinforcing why 2022 was a big year for addressable TV:

  • A joint study with Advertiser Perceptions finds 81% of advertisers are satisfied with addressable TV advertising (up from 72% y/y), while 41% of marketers not currently using addressable plan to start next year (up from 25% y/y)
  • Go Addressable 2022 Accomplishments:
    • Drove Momentum & Scale: the Go Addressable group surveyed its participating companies, confirming they’ve helped enable a monthly average of 53 billion linear advertising minutes since its inception in June 2021. (For context, there are more than 1.2 trillion minutes per month in linear advertising per minute, according to Nielsen.) All participants also indicated that inventory can grow with additional demand.
    • Simplified: Established a simplified framework for addressable terms & guidelines across programmer & distributor inventories; Actively engaged measurement vendors like VideoAmp, iSpot and Comscore for comprehensive addressable measurement alternatives
    • Engaged: Created 2 advisory councils to better align with our agency and programming partners

Keynote: The Media Ecosystem

Keynote: The Media Ecosystem

Evan Shapiro, Media Universe Cartographer, provided a lively and unfiltered look at the ever-changing media ecosystem and where we’re all headed. Here’s just some of what he shared.

“The rate of change, has changed. The last two years accelerated the rate of change to a constant state. Change is no longer something you can schedule once a year at Go Addressable conference, it’s not something you can put into your offsite every quarter. It is now a constant rate of change. Disruption is the operating system of our ecosystem. There’s a number of different reasons for that.”

Addressable In Action: Buyer Perspectives

Panel speaking about Addressable In Action: Buyer Perspectives

Kerry Flynn, Media Deals Reporter, Axios Pro, moderated our first panel, focused on agency leaders discussing the benefits of addressable, and where they see it going forward. Panelists included: Kelly Metz, Managing Director, Advanced TV Activation, OMG; Samantha Rose, EVP, Strategic Investment Lead, Horizon Media; Jen Soch, Executive Director, Channel Solutions, GroupM.

Key senior executives across the largest agencies and holding companies shared their thoughts and perceptions about buying addressable TV advertising today. Highlights include:

  • Scale in the addressable space is growing with more impressions available and speed to market, a hurdle in the past, much improved
  • Addressable isn’t just used for precision targeting any more, marketers are now using it to reach light TV viewers, increase unduplicated reach and even out impression delivery & exposure amongst audiences
  • There is still education needed throughout the ecosystem in how addressable can help drive value for brands, but there has never been a more important time than now to make the dollar work harder
  • Expect to see an explosion of programmatic addressable that will improve time to market & provide flexibility for the buy-side

The Future of Addressable Measurement: Solving for Cross-Platform Solutions

Panel speaking about The Future of Addressable Measurement: Solving for Cross-Platform Solutions

Howard Shimmel, President, Janus Strategy & Insights and datafuelX, sat down with key agency and data leaders to share their predictions of what the future of measurement will look like, offer best practices for marketers when evaluating measurement platforms, and discuss challenges & solutions in modern TV measurement. He was joined by: Lizzy Daly, VP, Head of Currency, Comscore; Helen Katz, EVP, Research, Publicis Media; Ross McCray, Founder & CEO, VideoAmp; Brad Stockton, SVP, US National Video Innovation, Dentsu.

Measurement is top of mind for everyone this year. In this lively conversation, senior measurement, data and agency executives discuss recent developments and share predictions of what’s ahead for the future of measurement.

  • It’s important to set expectations at the front of the campaign on what is being measured & align measurement with targeting, execution and creative
  • Understanding holistic reach & frequency across channels continues to be a pain point; continued interoperability and willingness to share data can help
  • While there is heavy growth amongst FAST channels, without deterministic registration data, accurate segmentation & targeting can be limited
  • Impressions don’t move product: as an industry, we should consider an outcome value mindset to measure success

Easy to Buy, Easy to Execute: Enter Interoperability & Automation

Easy to Buy, Easy to Execute Panel

Chris Monteferrante, VP Product & Data Strategy, AdvancedTV Advertising, Spectrum Reach sat down with Brett Hurwitz, Business Lead, Addressable TV, Yahoo; Noah Levine, Head of Advanced Advertising Solutions, Warner Bros. Discovery; Adam Paul, Managing Director, Media Alliances, LiveRamp; Joanna Thissen, VP, Audience Solutions & Data Partnerships, OpenAP to discuss how we can continue to make it easier to buy and execute addressable TV at scale.

Without a single tech stack that connects all addressable inventory or audience platforms, how can the industry come together to make it easy? Senior executives across the largest programmers, distributors and advanced advertising platforms unpack today’s challenges and spotlight tomorrow’s opportunities around interoperability and automation. Key Takeaways include:

  • The addressable marketplace involves some complexity, but with 10+ years of experience, MVPDs have already done a lot to simplify & streamline
  • Programmatic is a great way to access linear addressable, programmer addressable and CTV addressable al in one place
  • We can help addressable to scale by continuing to push for interoperability on the identity side, planning & execution side & measurement side
  • If you’re not playing with addressable, you’re late. The future is moving towards fully being addressable

Enabling Programmer Addressable: A Fireside Discussion

Enabling Programmer Addressable: A Fireside Discussion

Larry Allen, VP & GM Data & Addressable Enablement, Comcast Advertising, sat down with Seema Patel, TelevisaUnivision to discuss the realities of enabling national linear inventory. And bonus: they played a fast-paced, lightning round conversation covering the key themes, trends and takeaways from the day!

  • Aside from the support of internal and external stakeholders, the key ingredients for a successful addressable business are:
    1. Data: you need to connect the data pipes and move data between systems
    2. Scale: when you’re evaluating a platform what are the ad opportunities associated with that platform; does the work and effort support the revenue goals?
    3. Data Connections: make it easy for the buy-side to connect their data sets to yours
    4. Automation: you need self service, automation for IO and campaign execution
  • There are 3 core components that make the hispanic-focused customer graph powerful and valuable: data fidelity, making it easy for clients to connect to the data and scale.
  • Today’s media measurement routinely undercounts the hispanic data-set, the reason is ethnicity is self-reported. Less than 6 out of 10 hispanic are included in 3rd party data-sets.
  • As an industry, we need to continue to automate for faster, better SLAs for the buy-side and to measure outcomes.

Closing Remarks

Closing remarks

Kevin Arrix, SVP, DISH Media, delivered the closing remarks, sharing some exciting things we can expect from Go Addressable in 2023.

What’s upcoming:

  • Implement bold steps to make progress on video planning and measurement
  • Work to accelerate and simplify convergence for CTV and linear addressable
  • Deepen engagement with key industry stakeholders
  • Increase education around both the benefits and applications of addressable television

Watch Go Addressable 2022 On Demand

The Rise of Addressable Advertising

Research shows that addressable TV is well-positioned for success next year. In October of 2021 and 2022, Go Addressable partnered with Advertiser Perceptions to survey 300 agency and brand decision-makers on their plans for addressable TV in the upcoming year.

2-in-5 Non-Users Will Start Using Addressable Next Year, While Over a Third of Users will Increase Their Spend

41% of advertisers that are not using addressable will start using it in 2023, compared to just 25% surveyed at this time last year. Despite economic headwinds, advertisers recognize the demonstrated efficiency in buying addressable TV. Additionally, 37% of current users will increase their spend in addressable TV next year.

Plan to Use Addressable Next Year

(Among those Not Using Addressable TV)

2021: 25%, 2022: 41%

 

Plan to Spend More in Addressable Next Year

(Among those Using Addressable TV)

2021: 34%, 2022: 37%

 

Increased Satisfaction Driven by Measurement Solutions, Simplicity of Buying, and More Addressable Ad Opportunities

18% of advertisers say they are very satisfied with addressable TV ad opportunities today—a 64% lift versus the same time last year. High overall satisfaction is driven by the flexibility and adaptability of addressable.

Over 3-in-4 advertisers that have used addressable are satisfied with the measurement solutions available for addressable TV today. With increased confusion around the state of audience measurement, addressable offers advertisers the opportunity to test and learn with different measurement and attribution partners.

Chart showing satisfaction with addressable in 2021 vs. 2022

77%
of users are satisfied with addressable TV measurement solutions


Advertisers note that addressable is now simpler to buy, and both the number of options and cost to implement have improved. Over half of those using addressable today say they are buying from either AVOD, programmers, OEMs, or MVPDs, indicating that advertisers are partnering with multiple providers to reach their audiences across services.

2022 Most Improved Areas for Addressable

48%
Simplicity of buying

46%
Overall options

44%
Cost to implement

96%
buy addressable across more than 1 addressable partner


The Path Forward Calls for Collaboration

Advertisers are excited about the future of addressable. To sustain its upward trajectory, the industry needs to work together in maximizing the scale, impact, and adoption of addressable advertising. That is where Go Addressable comes in.

The Market Value of Addressable TV

Countless options coupled with unique campaign objectives make media selection no easy feat for advertisers today. While we know there is interest in and excitement around addressable TV, what exactly is driving investment? Go Addressable partnered with Advertiser Perceptions to get a pulse on the industry by surveying 300 agency and brand
decision-makers.

Better Targeting, ROI and Past Success are Top Reasons for Using Addressable

Nearly 2-in-3 advertisers are currently including addressable in their media strategies and that’s because they understand its ability to deliver positive results.

Top Reasons for Using Addressable TV Today

(% Addressable TV Users)

48%
It provides
better targeting

46%
Ability to measure/
prove ROI

37%
Successful past
performance


Combined Linear and Digital Teams Manage Addressable

Nearly half of teams responsible for addressable TV cover both linear and digital planning – a valuable approach considering that addressable can span traditional TV and CTV.

47%
use combined linear and digital teams to manage addressable planning


Moving the Needle Forward

At least 1-in-3 are not using addressable today, and they say it’s because they do not have the budget to support it or because of a perceived lack of value relative to cost.

39%
Budget Limitations

23%
Lack of Value Relative to Cost

1-in-2 advertisers would increase investments in addressable given better measurement/proof of ROI

Half of advertisers say they would begin investing or invest more in addressable if they had better measurement or proof of ROI. Advertisers are seeking clear demonstration of value to make their media selection decisions, and the industry must continue to advocate for accurate and effective measurement.

In addressing the challenges faced by the TV ecosystem today, Go Addressable aims to advance addressable TV’s future value by helping maximize the scale, impact, and adoption of addressable advertising. To learn more about how Go Addressable is advancing the future of television, visit GoAddressable.com.

Addressable TV is defined as the ability to serve targeted ads to specific households or users 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.

Addressable TV Offers Precision Audience Targeting for Marketers at Scale

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.

Addressability and the Future of TV Advertising

As the use of data and targeting continues to change the way advertisers approach advertising, addressability has emerged as an effective, accountable, and optimizable way to reach the right audience at the right time. But are advertisers ready to jump on board?

Recently, Go Addressable – a cross-company industry initiative led by Altice, Charter / Spectrum Reach, Comcast, Cox, WarnerMedia / DIRECTV, DISH Media, Frontier and Vizio – partnered with Advertiser Perceptions to conduct a survey of 300 marketer and agency decision makers to learn how advertisers are approaching this monumental shift in TV advertising.

 

The results show that both interest and spend in addressable TV advertising are growing in 2022:

 

Nearly 90% of agencies and marketers agree addressability is important to the future of television advertising.

Over 3/4 of marketers and agencies say that linear addressable is the key to solving their marketing objectives in a fragmented media world.

1/3 of addressable TV advertisers say they will spend more in addressable in 2022.

1/4 of advertisers not currently spending in addressable TV report that they plan to start in 2022.


While advertisers agree addressability is a key part of advertising’s future, not everyone is taking advantage. Education and industrywide solutions are needed to support advertisers’ adoption:

 

1/2 of advertisers surveyed are not currently using addressable TV advertising.

2/5 of those not currently spending in addressable TV advertising say they are unsure if they’ll do so in 2022.

While nearly 3/4 of advertisers are satisfied with current addressable TV options, only 1/10 are very satisfied.

 
 

Through education and enablement, the Go Addressable initiative is committed to accelerating the growth of addressable TV advertising and making it easier for advertisers to incorporate addressable TV into their advertising campaigns.

Advertisers and Marketers can learn more about Addressable TV advertising by visiting the Go Addressable Content Hub for timely insights into addressable TV, including blogs, videos, infographics, industry guides and more.

Note: Addressable is defined as the ability to serve targeted ads to specific households or users 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.

Source: Advertiser Perceptions Omnibus Survey, commissioned by Go Addressable, October 2021; based on online survey with 300 advertiser and marketers

Addressable TV Advertising: Let’s Go

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.

Preparing for Addressability

The broader Go Addressable initiative, uses the following overarching definition of addressability:

Addressability encompasses video advertising experiences where a single message from an advertiser is matched to an advertiser-defined audience segment that shares one or more common characteristics. Addressability uses data and technology to enable targeting relevant messages to the qualified audience segment in adherence to business and consumer privacy compliance requirements.

It should also be noted that the term “Advanced TV advertising” is often used to encompass two different forms of advertising: one of these is Data-driven Linear, and one is Addressable. A comparison of the differences between the two is outlined below. Typically sold as two different products, with opportunities to combine for reach extension.

Data-driven linear

The ability to deliver commercials to high concentrations of an advertiser’s target audience through behavioral targeting and/or predictive modeling on a national basis.

Benefits

  • Nationally serve media during certain networks and dayparts that most highly index against an advertiser’s desired audience
  • Media distributed to full footprint maintaining national reach
  • Understand both household reach and in target delivery

Addressable

The ability for different commercials to be targeted to different households on the same network at the same time.

Benefits

  • Precisely serve media within brand-safe content while eliminating waste
  • Optimize media to drive efficiency and effectiveness
  • Understand effectiveness of media against brand KPIs via full funnel attribution
  • Within the Addressable Category, there are two methods of delivery: Creative Versioning & Audience Addressable

Enabling Addressable TV Advertising to Achieve Specific Marketing Goals

For decades, marketers have used TV advertising’s mass reach to build brand awareness and preference. As its advertising capabilities have developed and continue to evolve, the role and value of TV advertising has expanded. It continues to support mass reach in a fragmented viewing environment. In addition, however, its data-driven and technological capabilities also serve more tactical lower-funnel marketing objectives including promotion and sales activation, as well as measurement and performance attribution. The evolution of TV planning from the use of age/gender proxies to the use of desired audience segments (e.g. Men 18-49 proxy versus households in the market to buy a truck) opens up the opportunity for advertisers to take advantage of new data-driven TV planning capabilities, known as advertiser-specific, audience-based planning tools. The ability to match anonymized aggregate household-level TV viewing data to a broad range of third-party data sets, or even the advertisers’ own data sets, makes it possible to develop TV advertising plans that are more likely to reach the intended audience.

  • In addition, the use of more automated, audience-based TV planning, and more timely reporting, enables ongoing campaign optimization whereby campaigns can be updated based on how much of the advertiser’s target segment population is being reached with a desired effective frequency. In doing so, the ongoing TV campaign plan can be adjusted to deliver ads to the portion of the target audience segment that has yet to be reached with sufficient frequency. Given that TV viewing behaviors and the density of the advertiser’s target audience segment may have significant differences across various local geographies, many advertisers are benefiting from doing audience-based TV planning at a market, or even more local geographic level, either as a complement to a national TV ad campaign, or as a stand-alone locally-focused TV advertising campaign.
  • Last, and perhaps the most important addressable TV advertising capability, is the ability to measure down to the household level, for more precise campaign measurement and performance attribution. Measurement also makes it possible to derive more relevant insights relative to campaign effectiveness and its impact on business performance, within and across both traditional and addressable TV advertising. Such insights can then be used to better allocate, adjust, and align the various components of an evolving media mix to the marketer’s desired objectives.

As a result of these advancements, addressable TV plays a new and evolving role within the overall TV advertising mix, and can assist in driving marketer’s objectives throughout the entire purchase funnel.

Enabling Addressable TV advertising for Sellers

Each addressable enabled device (STB, Smart TV, Web or Mobile) that will be part of an addressable TV solution must be able to detect an upcoming ad spot/break via a standard “ad break” message. The standard message utilized to detect these Ad Breaks are inserted by the content provider in their video streams, and are defined either by the SCTE 35 protocol or OAR Watermark. These messages, when properly inserted, identify the specific video frame that begins an ad break (or an ad position), and thereby enables the receiving device to call an Advertising Decision System (“ADS”) for instructions. In turn, the ADS will provide instructions to the device for that ad break/position, which may include retrieving/inserting appropriate ad(s), and reporting status of playout back to the ADS.

Historically, the industry has adopted a “defacto” standard implementation of using Splice Insert messages (“Type 5”) to identify the start of a distributor break. Recent versions of the SCTE35 standard have provided for a broader and more informed message set. The SCTE35 messaging standard now provides mechanisms for identifying and distinguishing both Provider (e.g. “Programmer”) and distributor (or “local”) ad opportunities. These newer messages are sometimes referred to as “Type 6” or “Time Signal” messages.

Many programmers are starting to implement Type 6 messaging to identify their ad/break positions, while still identifying distributor breaks with Type 5/Splice Insert messages. This is because all existing legacy ad insertion gear is based on the Splice Insert messages. It is important to note that while SCTE35 provides a messaging standard, the implementation of this standard can vary significantly across programmers. This presents a challenge at the receiving device, which can be mitigated by “normalization” by the distributor.

02 Condition Signals

To use the new messaging and to efficiently design receiving devices capable of Dynamic Ad Insertion on BOTH distributor and programmer inventory, one approach is to standardize the signals at the distributor’s content ingest point. This is done with a Signal Processing System interfaced to the transcoders that are processing the content. This is also referred to as “conditioning” the signals.

The signal processing system acts on both distributor and programmer SCTE35 signals, and alternatively with watermarks for smart TVs, to provide a consistent messaging across all networks and all inventory. For Distributor ad breaks, the Splice Insert/Type 5 message are converted to Time Signal/Type 6 messages. For Programmer ads/breaks, the messages are made consistent with the distributors implementation of SCTE35. This might involve changing the “sub-type” of the message, the payload, or other characteristics of the message.

So, when a receiving device receives these conditioned signals, it is able to determine that an ad/break is approaching, whether it is programmer or distributor ad/break, and call the appropriate ADS (Programmer or Distributor) for an Ad Decision, applying any rules (if desired) based on the message contents.

In order for the devices to receive the appropriate ad content in the case where the ADS instructs the player to insert a different ad than is on the incoming programming, the Content Management System will need to have already ingested/transcoded the ad(s) into the various formats supported by the receiving devices in order to receive the ads. The Content Management System job is to push the ad to the Content Distribution Network (CDN), manage and maintain the content metadata, including the location/URL’s and provide status to the Ad Decision Engine (ADS) that the ad copy is available on the CDN for delivery to devices.

03 Create Audience Segmentation Files

Distributors and programmers will need tools that will identify the audience targets and create segmentation files. These files can be a combination of third-party data and/or subscriber information which may include geographic campaign reach information, as well as demographics and other target segment audience attributes. This information will be utilized to create Audience files which can then be provided to the ADS in order to make targeted placements (an addressable decision).

Distributors and programmers can directly integrate into agency and advertiser CRM systems to drive efficiency and speed in the audience segmentation creation process. (See Matching in Section One for further clarification.)

04 Prepare Inventory for Addressable Insertion

Deploying this addressable advertising capability in the existing environment of Linear/schedule based ad insertion (distributor/local inventory) requires a mechanism for identifying specific spots to be addressable within the existing linear ad insertions schedules. That can be done by using the traffic and billing systems to dynamically place a certain identifier in the Spot ID (for instance, a pre-determined prefix) or by adding metadata (e.g. order ID) to the schedule files provided to the ADS.

For the programmer use case, some mechanism must be devised between the programmer and the distributor to match a certain signal to a specific ad or campaign. This might be done with information in the SCTE35 (e.g. “POID”, or Ad ID), and might be supplemented with some “Out of Band” information exchange (e.g. match a certain POID or set of POIDs to a campaign), or may leverage the watermark in the creative being replaced by an addressable advertisement. This will require some new capabilities and alignment on the best approach to implement.

05 Deploy a Service Assurance Network

Distributors/programmers will need to agree on service assurance models that will be used to ensure that the addressable TV solution is adequately performing within an environment. These models, an agreement on how distributors/programmers will utilize and collect telemetry and operational data will need to be reviewed and agreed upon so that distributors/programmers can determine how they feed this data into automated monitoring and reporting tools to provide insight to management on how the addressable TV solution is performing.

06 Implement Business Intelligence Reporting

Programmers and Distributions will need to provide some form of reporting dashboards to advertisers. These reporting metrics can inform clients on forecasting, how campaigns are performing and pacing, billing and verification data.
Moving forward, there needs to be standard “Cap & Edit” rules for consistent verification of campaign delivery.