Advertising

Future of Brands Sydney provoked a frank debate about whether the agency model is broken. The best agencies may be clean but are still impacted by the transparency sins of others. There is still a trust problem. Remuneration models leave media services a target for procurement. There are plenty of things to fix, but there is no one-size-fits-all model to break: agile agencies have evolved and can find opportunities even in in-housing.

VOZ is unique: think BARB Dovetail and OpenAP rolled into one, supported by every major commercial broadcaster in the market. It is a Total TV measurement system that is integrated with a database that enables audience-based buying, like targeting auto-intenders across broadcast or streaming TV. This world-class toolbox is due for delivery mid-year and is a potential game-changer, albeit with some practical issues to solve around trading.

Comcast, Viacom, Charter Communications and Mediaset are onboard the Blockgraph initiative, which seeks to make data sharing and matching more secure, more scalable and easier for the TV industry. An early application for Blockgraph is addressable TV advertising. The technology has been incubated by FreeWheel, within Comcast Cable Advertising. All media companies are being invited to get involved. NBCU has been testing the technology.

Marketers are using programmatic technologies to help them discover and target granular audience segments via non-TV digital media but, according to Amobee, they need more scale for this type of buying. Only TV can deliver the targeted audience reach they need. There is a great opportunity for broadcasters to position themselves at the centre of the audience-based media buying universe, with non-TV digital used to complement them. But first they must generate and share first-party data. Meanwhile, programmatic has to work for TV, meeting a long list of broadcaster-centric requirements.

NBCU is helping to drive the change agenda for TV advertising in the U.S. The company has established direct relationships with advertising clients, launched its own measurement solution for all-screen viewing that is also the basis for a currency, and is trying to improve the viewing and advertising experience with lower ad-loads. It is beta testing the use of machine learning to better match advertising to content. The company predicts a renaissance for TV as an advertising medium, now it combines the “magic and the maths”.

Thomas Bremond, GM International at FreeWheel and Comcast Technology Solutions, has revealed that both companies are talking to multiple subscription OTT services that have concluded that they need advertising to sustain their content investments. Broadcasters could become their sales representatives, aggregating the newly revealed OTT audiences for marketers. If they do not, someone else will.

The UK’s largest commercial broadcaster ruled out a deal to make its inventory addressable-enabled via Sky AdSmart, saying it does not make strategic sense due to the ‘commission’ it would have to pay. This disappointed one big agency group, which is looking for more scale and easier buys for addressable advertising and wants the major UK broadcasters to solve their commercial differences with Sky and get onboard.

The sales division of Sky has grasped the future with both hands and is demonstrating the opportunities that await media companies who invest in advanced advertising and analytics capabilities. Sky Media can deliver mass-reach, audience-based and targeted advertising and unified multiscreen campaigns. It provides attribution and is ready to move towards a focus on business outcomes.

All this year, Future TV Advertising Forum has been challenging senior advertising executives to give their own industry a health check, in the face of concerns that cost-cutting, short-termism and digital-bias are undermining marketing effectiveness and threatening the long-term health of brands. Here is what analysts and agency leaders said at the debut FTVA Manchester this week.

ITV, Sky and Channel 4 have come together to be the joint Host Partners of Future TV Advertising Forum 2018. Alex Mahon, CEO of Channel 4, Carolyn McCall, CEO of ITV and Stephen van Rooyen, CEO of Sky UK & Ireland, will feature in a high-flying first morning of the conference that also includes a fireside chat with Linda Yaccarino, Chairman Advertising & Client Partnerships at NBC Universal.