Two developments have the potential to reshape advanced advertising in the U.S. over the next three years: the growth of AVOD and the parallel need to maximise the value of premium digital inventory, and the introduction of addressable TV advertising on programmer owned national inventory, as opposed to the two minutes per hour of ‘local’ inventory that cable operators are given as their regulatory right and which has been used to build the addressable TV business in the U.S. The first will expand total TV inventory and ensure more of it has digital-like advertising capabilities including the use of programmatic. The second, which has buy-in from the TV networks and ad buyers, will dramatically expand the potential inventory for addressable advertising at a time when addressable is now fully proven.
Both topics are being tackled in-depth at The Future of TV Advertising U.S. this Wednesday (June 30) during a live digital conference that starts at 1000 ET (1500 BST/1600 CEST). The organisers (Mediatel Events, which owns Videonet) say the thought-leadership event will highlight the opportunities and challenges for the buy-side, sell-side and ad-tech ecosystem, and the speaker list supports this claim, with all these groups well represented. You can hear from senior leaders at NBCUniversal, L’Oreal USA, GroupM, Disney Advertising Sales, Spectrum Reach, Ampersand, Canoe, Camelot, ViacomCBS, DISH Media, Comcast, Discovery, Roku and many others, and there is a rare opportunity to hear from Amazon Advertising, too.
You can see the full conference agenda here.
If you want to register (free), click here.
National addressable TV
The whole afternoon of Future TV Advertising U.S. focuses on national addressable TV. As the event description points out, the value of addressable TV advertising, both to ad buyers and sellers, has been proven on local cable and now the question is how it can be applied successfully to network-owned national spots and how the necessary collaborative business and tech models can be scaled. This event promises insights about the partnership options available to networks for national-level targeting, and the implications for marketers if national ad pods – and therefore virtually all television inventory, in theory – can be made available for targeting.
The national addressable TV session kicks off with David Porter, SVP & General Manager, Addressable Advertising at Canoe, who will review the addressable advertising market in the U.S. today before looking at the next big step: opening up programmer national inventory. You will hear about Canoe’s central role in creating a one-stop shop for addressable campaigns across a household footprint that spans multiple MVPDs, with some detail on the execution. (Canoe has already enabled the first-ever household addressable ad campaign across multiple distributors for a national cable network, and is an execution partner for On Addressability (the Comcast Advertising, Cox Media and Spectrum Reach [Charter] addressable initiative).
Marion Hargett, SVP, Agency Partnerships at Ampersand (the data-driven TV advertising sales and technology company that is jointly owned by the three largest cable operators in the U.S. – Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox) is interviewing Maureen Bossetti, Chief Partnerships Officer at Initiative (the global communications agency whose clients include Carlsberg, UPS, Lego, Nintendo, Deliveroo, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser) about how brands can use national addressable advertising to ‘water the tree’. Given that the emergence of programmer-owned addressable TV spots creates the potential for larger scale addressable TV, they will consider where this new inventory fits into the television playbook.
Chris Pizzurro, SVP, Global Sales & Marketing at Canoe then interviews Seema Patel, Vice President, Partnership Development at ViacomCBS (who serves as the business lead with MVPD partners, technology partners and internal stakeholders to onboard new addressable inventory sources) to discuss ViacomCBS’ addressable TV footprint (which spans broadcast, cable and OTT, and includes live linear and VOD). Best practices will be shared.
Nicola Lewis, Global Chief Growth Officer at Finecast (which enables advertisers to discover and reach audiences through addressable TV, harnessing partnerships with broadcasters, other premium publishers, and data providers) talks to Kevin Arrix, SVP at DISH Media, about how his company is ensuring national addressable advertising fits into the big planning picture. This includes ensuring that national addressable TV households and audience segments are easily integrated within a media plan that includes national addressable homes and segments found via other MVPDs and via Smart TVs.
Making national addressable TV work for everyone
The national addressable session concludes with a panel that explores how the U.S. industry can make national addressable TV work for everyone. Discussion points include the relative strengths and weaknesses of Smart TV focused initiatives and the MVPD-centric models when enabling addressable advertising on programmer inventory. Other questions include: ‘What do networks expect from an addressable enablement platform partner?’, and ‘How do we maximise the value of remnant audiences, both to networks and marketers, if multiple advertiser spot optimisation is widely adopted on national (programmer) inventory?’
Led by Jon Watts, Executive Director & Co-Founder at The Project X Institute, this panel features: Melanie Hamilton, Head of Enterprise Sales, Effectv, Comcast; Marissa Jimenez, Managing Director, Finecast; Huda Kazi, VP, Ad Technology and Operations, Discovery; and Julie Anson, Head of Addressable, Roku.
Super-charging AVOD
The morning of Future TV Advertising U.S. begins with a session focused on ‘Super-charging AVOD’. This explores the next steps in ad-funded premium digital video, including the audiences that are available, how advertisers access them easily, how we measure and trade them, how inventory yield can be maximised, and how we unify digital and linear broadcasting so campaigns can be planned and optimised as a whole.
Guy Bisson, Research Director at the analyst firm Ampere Analysis, presents on ‘The content characteristics associated with successful AVOD services’, drawing on his company’s extensive knowledge of content libraries and consumer ratings to characterise the catalogues that drive SVOD and AVOD consumption. This is where you can hear about the features seen in the most successful and the fastest growing AVOD services.
Ben Tatta, President, New York, US, Standard Media Index, looks at ‘The Business of AVOD’, reporting on investment trends for ad-supported services, including the CPMs they are commanding. He will look at the shift of ad dollars from linear to digital while comparing common currency CPMs across screens to demonstrate the differences in pricing strategies.
Jakob Nielsen, CEO at Finecast, will talk about how we ‘drive unmatched brand outcomes with the streaming generation’. You will hear best practice in planning, targeting, measuring and optimising campaigns that span the whole streaming/connected TV universe, and which are fully integrated with linear TV and addressable TV advertising in non-digital environments.
Moe Chughtai, Head of Advanced TV at MiQ (which identifies and connects data sources, and unearths insights, for more effective targeting – working with various data providers, DSPs and publishers) reviews what advertisers think about connected TV as a ‘channel’ today, how it is being used on the media plan, and what must happen before more agency spend is directed towards it. This presentation explores how connected TV fits into the total television toolbox.
‘The Streaming Era Has Arrived: What’s an Advertiser to Do?’ That is the next discussion, moderated by Dave Clark, General Manager at FreeWheel (a Comcast Company and provider of comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers and media buyers with a mission to power ‘TV as a Platform’) with Laura Molen, President, Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal and Shenan Reed, SVP, Head of Media at L’Oreal USA. What is TV advertising in today’s crowded, connected world? How can today’s marketer expect to pull together a cohesive approach when the streaming landscape is so fragmented? And how can data and automation act as the glue to pull it all together? These questions and others will be answered.
Dave Morgan, CEO at Simulmedia, sits down with Sam Bloom, CEO at Camelot (which provides marketing strategy and media services to leading brands, and is one of the largest buyers of CTV inventory in the U.S.) to consider ‘How agencies juggle the theories of old with the data of new’. They consider whether the explosion of CTV/AVOD and addressable, and data that makes it possible to plan and book beyond simple demographics, can distract buyers into over-targeting on a media that traditionally offered efficient reach. You will hear how buyers can exploit the new data sources while sticking to the fundamentals of marketing science.
Harnessing the growing reach and power of premium streaming TV
Jon Watts (Executive Director, The Project X Institute) also leads the panel discussion titled ‘Harnessing the growing reach and power of premium streaming TV’. This features: Henry Embleton, Head of Ad Products and Revenue, Crunchyroll; Maggie Zhang, Head of Measurement Success, Amazon Advertising; Jen Soch, Executive Director, Specialty Channels, Group M; Lauren Benedict, Senior Vice President, Addressable Sales, Disney Advertising Sales; and Reed Barker, Head of Advertising, Philo.
This panel considers questions like: What types of audiences are ad-funded premium streaming services delivering? Where does connected TV fit into the advertising toolbox? How do we make it easier to plan and buy audiences across premium streaming TV? How can advertisers use connected TV to build on their linear reach?
The Innovation Center
This event also features ‘The Innovation Center’ which looks at smart, innovative solutions in the U.S. advanced advertising sector.
Ryan McConville, EVP of Ad Platforms & Operations at NBCU, kicks off the session with a look at ‘Making television and its audiences a single, unified product for advertisers’. NBCU is further down this road then possibly any media owner, and you will hear about the vision, its execution, and how unification changes the way marketers work with TV (and how TV works for marketers) on a day-to-day basis.
Jim Owens, Sr. Director, Advertising Product Management at CommScope (a leader in the North American digital ad insertion market, whose solutions include the Manifest Delivery Controller (MDC) for DAI, video personalisation and IP video analytics), talks to Jamie Branson, CEO, View TV Group (the connected TV solution provider) about key technical challenges that service providers and connected TV providers face when scaling their ad insertion business. Practical solutions will be identified.
Rick Howe, Strategic Advisor, Thought Leader and Analyst, then interviews Malia Moran, GVP, Strategic Product Management at Spectrum Reach about her company’s advanced media analytics reporting capabilities. Launching this year, a deterministic cross-screen attribution solution will supply website lift attribution analytics to provide truly cross-platform measurement insights, connecting linear TV and streaming TV ad exposure to digital outcomes like website traffic (in a privacy-compliant way). You can hear the full details about that.
The Innovation Center also features Kevin O’Reilly, SVP of Product, Data & Monetization, and Caitlin Monaghan, VP National Sales, both from A4 Advertising (Altice). They will argue that the future of TV is not digital, that CTV is an extension of linear and that together linear+CTV form the foundation of TV, as a media mix. The question, they say, is what the right mix is and how you “do it right” – and this is your chance to hear the answers.
Tune in, live (and free) on Wednesday
The Future of TV Advertising U.S. starts at 1000 ET and finishes at 1515 ET (1600-2115 CEST / 1500-2015 BST) and is being streamed live.
Full event details including speakers and agenda
The Future of TV Advertising U.S. is produced by Mediatel Events, whose Future of TV Advertising Global (held in London each December) is established as the No.1 strategy event for TV advertising transformation. Mediatel Events runs The Future of TV Advertising series in Canada, Australia and Benelux, addressing unique market requirements against a backdrop of shared industry opportunities and challenges. Mediatel Events owns Videonet.
