In Part One of our Future of TV Advertising event preview, we list some of the sell-side innovations you can hear about, what leading buyers are discussing, and the leading research that will be revealed. We also highlight the addressable TV advertising sessions. Look out for Part Two at the end of this week.

World-class innovation from the sell-side

• Rhys McLachlan, Director of Advanced Advertising at ITV, will discuss how a programmatic planning and buying system can ensure broadcaster sovereignty and maximise inventory yield. You can learn more about one of the most advanced broadcaster programmatic solutions anywhere (Planet V, which went live recently).
• KC Sullivan, President & Managing Director of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCUniversal will give more detail about the ground-breaking One Platform, which is a strategy to reach all audiences across every screen. The aim is to create a more relevant advertising experience for viewers and greater impact for brands. With One Platform, there is an opportunity for a better premium video marketplace that helps advertisers reach the audiences they need to drive better business results. You will hear how NBCUniversal is building an advertising division to reflect global consumption as well as harnessing the power of its international assets, including Sky.
• Australian commercial broadcaster Nine explains how it enables brands to match their customer data against its registered users so that, among other things, they can target known customers or find ‘lookalike’ consumers. This addressable solution uses a DMP integration and is fully automated and privacy compliant. It does not rely on cookies and every ad impression is linked back to a person. You will hear about the technology, the use-cases for buyers, how it impacts the efficiency of campaigns and the role of TV within omnichannel campaigns. The speakers are Ben Campbell, Director of Advertising & Data Products at Nine, and Michael Stephenson, CSO, Nine.
• Kevin Arrix, Senior Vice President at DISH Media Sales, will reveal how one of North America’s leading Pay TV providers has made its set-top box VOD advertising inventory available for private, real-time programmatic trading. This interview explores the key lessons and results from the implementation, which means STB VOD can be bought through the same programmatic demand sources as other owned digital inventory.

Up-to-date advertising research and fresh thinking

• ‘The Value of Attention, and How to Measure and Trade Upon It’ with Karen Nelson-Field (Centre for Amplified Intelligence)
• ‘Advanced TV Uncovered: European Landscape’ with Virginie Dremeaux (Executive Director, Product and Sales Marketing International, FreeWheel)
• Orlando Wood, Author of ‘Lemon’ and Chief Innovation Officer, System1Group, on maximising creative effectiveness by examining the features of successful online video advertising.
• James Fennesey, Global CEO, Standard Media Index, on understanding AVOD – the big players, their catalogues and their audiences.
• ‘How Broadcasters can Improve Share-of-Time with Young Adults’ with Tom Harrington (Senior TV Analyst, Enders Analysis)
• The future of viewing and ad-supported TV – what the numbers say. This panel looks at the VOD market, content investments and ad budgets with: Maria Rua Aguete, Executive Director, Omdia; Richard Broughton, Research Director, Ampere Analysis; Duncan Stewart, Director of Research, Technology, Media & Telecommunications, Deloitte.

 What the buy-side is thinking (from interviews or panel discussions):

• Kate Rowlinson, CEO at Mediacom, discusses advertising in the age of Covid, and especially the agency lessons we can carry forwards.
• Steve Bignell, CEO at PMX UK (Publicis Media Exchange) explores the unification of broadcast and digital advertising.
• Benoit Cacheux, Global Chief Digital Officer, Zenith, considers how we can better understand identity, behaviour and context
• Carl Bratton, Head of Effectiveness at Direct Line Group, looks at how we judge and prove the value of television.
• Jean-Paul Edwards, Chief Product Development Officer at OMD, gives his views on connected TV as a new audience and new data opportunity

How the industry scales addressable TV advertising

• ‘The Path to ‘turn on’ Addressability in Europe’ with Marcien Jenckes, President, Advertising, Comcast Cable
• ‘Unlocking Advanced TV in Europe: The Marketers’ Perspective’ with Tim Willcox (Managing Director at Amnet Programmatic Experts, Dentsu), Emmanuel Crego (General Manager, Values.media) and Emmanuel Josserand (Brand, Agency and Industry Relations, FreeWheel) (confirmed speakers).
• There is also a panel focused on ‘What Pay TV brings to the addressable TV party’.

You can see all the confirmed conference speakers here.

The conference agenda is here.

You can register for this online event here.

No.1: Television is back on the offensive

When it comes to competing for advertising budgets in an increasingly data-driven world, television has been on the back-foot for more than five years. Some people think the ad-supported version of this medium is dying. But it looks like we have already passed peak disruption in markets where media owners are transforming their ad capabilities with better audience segmentation, targeting, attribution and even measurement. This was the first Future TV Advertising event when the determination to win back budget that has shifted to digital was expressed so forcefully and so often, and it feels like the television advertising ‘recovery’ has moved to the next level. The television industry has switched from defence to attack. We need to recognise this moment.

No.2: It’s not a question of if you follow the 60:40 rule, just how you implement it

Nobody is arguing with the conclusions reached by Les Binet (who spoke at the event) and Peter Field in their now-famous effectiveness studies (harnessing the vast resources of the IPA Databank) that you need to spend 60% of budget on brand advertising and 40% on activation to optimise campaign effectiveness (all sector average). Not one person at this event challenged their work – not on the panels, not from the audience. Binet & Field, and others who have supported their findings, have won the argument. There will be a rebalancing of budget which will lead towards more brand spending. The only question is how it will be done – that was the debate at this London conference.

No.3: Addressable TV is coming fast, complementing rather than replacing ‘national’ ads

It was generally accepted that we can expect an addressable TV stampede as more platform owners and broadcasters adopt the technology, and addressable household reach is expanded. But despite the growing interest in addressable, nobody says it will replace mass-market advertising, as some commentators used to. Addressable is viewed as a complement to ‘national’ (i.e. reaches all) advertising. The most important use-case today is to deliver cost-effective incremental reach, including into light television viewers. The main obstacles preventing an addressable TV stampede are cost, complexity and inertia. There is a groundswell of opinion that we need to start standardising on audience segments across markets.

No.4: Unification of broadcast and digital is everything

This will surprise nobody, but the message was often repeated at The Future of TV Advertising Global because it is just so important: the television industry must demonstrate de-duplicated reach and frequency across broadcast TV and digital, and we have to make it easier to plan, buy and report audiences as a whole, spread across every ‘format’, which means digital (including, importantly, connected TV), broadcast and addressable (addressable is now frequently talked about in its own right, despite spanning both TV and digital).

The siloes have to be broken down and it is also clear that on the sell-side, media owners are going to take what practical steps they can, individually, to enable holistic audience planning and buying even while they support wider industry initiatives towards cross-media standardisation. Small and medium steps are being welcomed, given the difficulty with taking giant strides.

No.5: TV is an activation medium, which makes it a uniquely full-funnel offering

We are going to hear a lot about ‘full-funnel’ media in the next 24 months, and it is the TV industry that will be shouting loudest. There are a few reasons for this: Budget spend will be rebalanced towards more brand building by companies who have neglected this task; Television has successfully argued that it is the undisputed champion of long-term, brand-built, value-add; Television already helps to drive activation, but the digital advertising giants have taken the credit for much of it.

Other reasons are: Television is getting better at the direct attribution of outcomes to advertising exposure that allows it to prove its role in activation; The attribution data is becoming available faster, in time to help optimise live campaigns; The technology that enables that improved attribution is going mainstream fast; The tech vendors who are making short-term attribution easier have a realistic, TV-friendly approach to life, so can fit straight into the existing ecosystem.

No.6: The real magic is data-driven, audience-based buying

This event provided a timely reminder that addressable TV is not the only use of audience-based buying. Another key use-case, which is better known in North America than in Europe, is optimised linear buying. In simple terms, you define the audience target against need-state, interests and lifestyle, etc. and you find which homes these people are living in – as with addressable TV. But rather than seek them out on a one-to-one basis using addressable TV (and so exclude homes that are outside your audience segment), you use set-top box data to figure out what channels and shows this audience segment is watching on linear TV, and what times of day they are watching, and then buy standard (national, i.e. reaching everyone) broadcast linear TV where you can find most of this audience at the best prices.

No.7: Agencies do have a future

Every year on the eve of Future TV Advertising Global, an invitation-only Pathfinders gathering addresses some of the hottest topics in advertising. This year it focused on the future of agencies, and it will come as no surprise that leaders at those companies are convinced they have a bright outlook, despite the attentions of brand procurement officers on the one hand and media services consulting firms like Accenture on the other.

One executive summed up the value-add that agencies provide (or should provide) very neatly: They are the guardians of effectiveness for client campaigns across the whole communications ecosystem; Agencies can look at the holistic picture, working out how best to use the different media and media owners together; Agencies are the guardians of balancing the long-term and short-term goals of their clients; They are the guardians of client spend, making sure that it goes where the audiences are.

Find out what people said on these subjects

Each of these stories provides more detail on the themes outlined above….

Television is back on the offensive

It’s not a question of if you follow the 60:40 rule, just how you implement it

Addressable TV is coming fast, as a complement to ‘national’ ads, not as a replacement

Unification of broadcast and digital is everything

The real magic is data-driven, audience-based buying

This event will explore what TV is doing, and what more it can do, to serve digital-first brands, whether it is generating fame or trying to meet short-term goals and demonstrate attribution. Confused.com is among the digital brands that will give its critique of TV. CMO Samuel Day reveals his attitudes to brand growth and how that feeds into his use of media and, in particular, television. He will consider the opportunities that a more data-driven TV advertising environment offers a data-rich company like his, and what he gets from the digital world that he would like TV to replicate. [Serving digital first brands, Day 2]

This event is a chance to soak up some of the best thinking the world of advertising has to offer. Les Binet, the renowned Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB and one half of the Binet & Field research team behind seminal works like The Long and the Short of It and Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era, kicks off the ‘Effectiveness under the microscope’ session. He will be discussing brand and activation budgeting in the digital age, and implications for media. Part of his presentation considers how the marketing world learned the wrong lessons from Silicon Valley.

The brand versus activation budgeting debate is playing out in marketing departments across the globe and the future of brands could depend on getting the balance right. Carl Bratton, Head of Effectiveness at Direct Line Group will explain why his company, operating in a performance-driven market, took the decision to invest more in brand building, bucking the market trend towards increased reliance on activation. As well as revealing the business impact of this strategy, he will outline how the marketing team achieved buy-in for a ‘long-play’ at board level, how they tracked the success of the strategy, and when they knew they had called it right.

Andy Pilkington, Media Director, Europe at adidas will discuss how his brand is reducing its use of short-term metrics, before a panel discusses the next steps if we assume Binet & Field are right when they declare that long-term marketing effectiveness is diminished if brands invest more than 40% in activation media and less than 60% in brand-building. If brands need to reduce activation spend to meet Binet & Field’s 60:40 (all-sector average) rule, should they cut all activation channels equally or cull the lowest performers, for example? Are there ways to test or forecast the impact of a 60:40 brand/activation adjustment before committing, and is it possible to successfully abort a ‘go long’ mission if your board loses its nerve?

You can see full details about the ‘Effectiveness under the microscope’ session here.

This year’s conference takes a look at the emerging market for non-broadcaster ad-supported streaming. Richard Broughton, Research Director at Ampere Analysis, discusses the role of advertising and hybrid subs/ads models in non-broadcaster streaming. DAZN Group and Carat are among the speakers on the panel ‘Harnessing the expected growth in ad-supported, non-broadcaster streaming’. Among other things, they will consider the kind of context and audiences found in mid- and long-tail OTT services and their value to premium advertisers, and how a thematic streaming service with no heritage in ad-sales or ad-tech, and only modest audiences, can become part of the planning, buying and reporting ecosystem. [Follow the consumer, Day 1]

Roku expands this theme during a Breakfast Briefing on Day Two about ‘Ad-supported OTT – the awakening’.

There is also a session dedicated to ‘Expanding digital reach’ – looking at advertising around connected TV and BVOD in particular. Ebiquity says shrinking audiences and rising costs threaten broadcast linear TV’s ROI dominance – so can media owners maintain cost-effective reach with linear+BVOD? You can hear the answers to that question and many more, like whether it is time to ditch the linear-first planning mindset and make greater use of pre-broadcast windows and other digital inventory.

The Future of TV Advertising Global excels at providing three things in one place:

• The big thinking, whether testing popular marketing theory or revealing new research
• Implementation strategies for advanced advertising (sell-side and buy-side), revealed by the people who live and breathe them
• A real understanding of the ad-tech that underpins the generational upgrade in TV advertising that we are currently witnessing.

If it is big thinking you want, check out…

• Karen Nelson-Field, Founder and CEO at Centre for Amplified Intelligence and her presentation on how brands and media owners succeed in the new attention economy. This includes a deep-dive into the relationship between attention and sales. [Setting the scene for a new decade, Day 1]
• Brian Wieser, Global President, Business Intelligence at GroupM will discuss the future of brands and brand growth, starting with the fundamental purpose of brands and whether we still need them, especially if AI-enabled digital assistants start recommending what to buy. He considers whether brands still need paid media, excess share of voice, emotional connections and reach into occasional users in order to grow. [How brands grow, Day 1]
• Professor Magda Nenycz-Thiel, Industry Growth Professor, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, provides the latest thinking from this world-leading organisation. She reveals what is happening to the performance of big brands and why, and what we can learn from successful newcomers, and what has changed in the search for growth. [How brands grow, Day 1]

For implementation of advanced advertising, and the tech behind it, this is just a sample of what you will find in London:

• Jeff Eales, Director of Systems and Development at Sky will outline how you achieve one-stop, cross-platform planning, buying and reporting [Next-generation planning, Day 2]
• Greg McLelland, EVP and CRO at Corus shows how TV has closed the gap with digital. This includes a look at the company’s investment in data to fuel optimised linear buying, which now represents more than 20% of TV advertising investment at Corus. [TV as an activation medium, Day 1]
• Matt O’Grady, International Commercial Leader at Nielsen Global Media will discuss how we measure connected TV, BVOD and SVOD. [Expanding digital reach: Connected TV, BVOD and OTT, Day 2]
• There is a presentation and Q&A on ‘Outvertising’ – why better representing LGBTQ+ audiences makes business sense. This includes best practice steps for diverse representation in modern advertising. [Creative Carousel, Day 1]
• Agencies will appreciate “Oh no, it’s a global brief!” – how great creatives can make great work that works across frontiers and language’. This panel, led by Lindsey Clay, CEO at Thinkbox, includes world-leading creatives. [Creative Carousel, Day 1]

If it’s market trends and consumer research you need, then check out these presentations:

• Claire Enders, Founder, Enders Analysis: ‘What increased streaming competition means for commercial broadcasting’. Among other things, she analyses the impact of international SVODs, and the potential impact of D2C streaming services like Disney+, on ‘incumbent’ ad-supported media owners and the time they have with viewers. [Setting the scene for a new decade, Day 1]
• Christian Kurz, SVP, Global Consumer Insights, Viacom: ‘What ‘watching TV’ really means in living rooms around the world’. He reveals the results of a new study that included the use of GoPro cameras to give an inside look at how households consume TV. [Follow the consumer, Day 1]
• Anne Tucker, Head of Research at Mediatel, and Richard Marks, Director at Research the Media: ‘Room for everyone? SVOD at the tipping point’. This considers the appetite for, and price elasticity associated with, SVOD services. [Expanding digital reach, Day 2]

Other highlights for 2020 include…

• The power of collaboration. In this session, you can learn about the core objectives behind Blockgraph and how it works, and why its backers believe it removes the barriers to data-driven TV advertising innovation. RTL AdConnect and Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland discuss the alliances they have built in Germany to advance content, data, technology and delivery. This session is where you can decide whether VOZ, Australia’s Total TV measurement and shared audience targeting platform, is worth the attention it is generating. VOZ has been described by senior agency executives as the Holy Grail of measurement and a potential game-changer for ad-supported TV in Australia. The leading broadcasters who are backing the system, including Network Ten and Foxtel Media, are among the speakers. They outline the problem it solves and how it works, and how channel owners differentiate themselves and remain competitive on the shared platform. [The power of collaboration, Day 1]
• Addressable TV in Europe. This session includes contributions from SBS Belgium (‘Seven things you should know when launching addressable TV’) and Canal Plus Brand Solutions (‘How Canal+ uses STB data as the missing link to connect TV to sales’). [Addressable TV in Europe, Day 1]

More information

You can see full details about The Future of TV Advertising Global here.

To register for this event, go here.

• Media agencies are reporting, and brands are acknowledging, a greater appreciation for TV as a medium than was evident just two years ago. There are plenty of things about TV that buyers want to change, from price inflation to inflexible deals, but the dominant sentiment is that they want to work with TV.
• TV works, both long-term and short-term, but still needs to get better at proving it.
• Despite some notable media owner innovations, this remains a slow-moving market, although progress should accelerate in the next year.
• The broadcast linear TV market is still holding up, but media owners are vulnerable to any decline in cost-effective reach, especially as BVOD is under-developed. Advertiser use of TV is qualified – they use TV because they need its reach.

This year’s event kicked off with a look at how the proliferation of non-broadcaster streaming services could lead to new ad-supported inventory where marketers can reach their target audiences, assuming a multitude of small-scale, thematic and special interest ‘OTT’ offers can be easily integrated into the advertising planning and reporting ecosystem. Roku, which supports third-party content owners on its device/OS platform, believes it can aggregate streaming audiences to a scale that will interest big media buyers who typically buy off broadcast TV or BVOD.

Roku has its own sales house and Christine Summers, Regional Sales Manager for Canada, confirmed that the company will help content owners on the platform sell their audiences, but only once they reach a reasonable scale individually. Speaking about the long-tail OTT market in general, Michael Ingemann, Managing Director at Cadreon, IPG Mediabrand’s ad-tech unit, said niche audiences are interesting. “They can be very powerful and provide an opportunity to talk to very concentrated and distinct audiences,” he commented.

Ingemann highlighted the need for programmatic access to the audiences. He also noted the big challenge an increasingly fragmented media landscape presents to agencies – the need to remove siloes in order to see and manage the customer journey end-to-end across all screens and platforms.

Roku supports subscription, TVOD and ad-supported monetisation models for content providers and has its own curated channel, Roku Channel, that is 100% ad-supported. Summers said the growth of Roku Channels represented a “doubling-down on AVOD” at the company.

The role of advertising versus subscription in the fast-evolving media landscape was an early topic of conversation at the Toronto event. Josef Hrebik, Canadian Media and Entertainment lead at the consulting/research firm Accenture, is convinced that more streaming will not mean everyone disappears behind an ad-free paywall. Using Hulu and its ad-supported and premium ad-free tiers as evidence, he said: “People want the option and choice [of ads or no ads] and when given that choice they usually pick ad-supported.”

Hulu has 28 million subscribers and 20 million of them – 70% of the total – choose the ad-supported option, Hrebik observed.

Guy Bisson, Co-founder and Research Director at Ampere Analysis, had more good news for both ad-funded media owners and advertisers desperate to maintain reach as viewing shifts from linear: Hulu actually makes more money from an ad-supported subscriber than from a premium-tier household. “They make $11 on advertising per month per subscriber for the ad-supported tier, which means total revenue of $16.99 with ads [since there is also a $5.99 fee for this tier]. That compares to $11.99 for the premium ad-free tier [made up of $11.99 subscription fee and zero ad revenue]. That is $5 a month extra per customer.

“That is why Hulu pushes that [ad-supported] tier so hard. That is why, when you go into Hulu and try to subscribe, ad-free is an optional add-on and why they dropped the price of the ad-supported streaming service earlier this year.”

Bisson noted that Canadians have quite a high tolerance for advertising compared to some European countries – though not as high as in the USA, where Hulu is based. One-third of Canadians say they don’t mind seeing ads around programming, based on research by Ampere Analysis.

Bisson painted a complex picture of interrelated forces that incumbent media owners in Canada need to master as the world goes more digital. On the one hand, the higher the penetration of SVOD in a market (using global data) the more television’s share of advertising goes down [as it loses out to digital, hurt by falling audiences]. But the flip-side is that the stronger the television advertising market is, the bigger the share of the online advertising market that video takes.

Finally, the use of BVOD in Canada is much lower than in Western Europe and the USA. The inference is that Canadian broadcasters have given streaming disruptors an easy ride so far. BVOD is an under-developed market in this territory but that means there is an opportunity to recapture and leverage that market, Bisson pointed out.

Bisson forecast that we will see more ad-supported streaming in future, pointing in particular to the use of hybrid (ads plus subscription) business models. “We are increasingly seeing a land-grab in the AVOD space,” he told an audience of media owners, brands and agencies. “There is a strong opportunity around hybrid; that is one of the big developments we are going to see, and it is where the opportunity lays for broadcasters because that is what they do. Hybrid is really going to influence where we move beyond SVOD and beyond ‘premium’ [ad-free].”

He also highlighted the opportunity for broadcasters in all markets to collaborate with joint streaming platforms (following the Hulu model and the forthcoming BritBox (UK) and Salto (France) initiatives). These leverage the broadcaster brands and give them the aggregation and content discovery power that Bisson thinks is essential in the digital world.

No new advanced ad tech initiatives were revealed by media owners at this year’s show, but Corus gave an update on its audience-based buying using its Cynch platform. This is live and means you can segment audiences based on lifestyle, behaviours and need state, for example. One-fifth of all Corus TV buys now go through a data-enriched targeting process using this technology, Greg McLelland, EVP and CRO at the channel group, reported. Advertisers can now buy ‘fashionistas’ or suburban families with three kids rather than just buying against demographics.

There is some collaboration around audience segmentation among media owners. Rogers and Corus are using some common segments that advertisers can buy against and McLelland said they are working with other broadcasters to expand the harmonisation of segment definitions.

McLelland reckons TV has closed the gap with digital when it comes to data driven targeting and proving outcomes. “We are getting pretty close to what you can do in the digital world, and 95% of Corus clients can measure the effectiveness of TV with their own attribution models,” he said. “They are more content to spend more money on television as a result, because they know it works.”

The attribution can be very short-term. One Corus client, the furnishings company Wayfair, has its products featured in home lifestyle programming on the HGTV channel. “They know when the products have been seen and how many lights they sell in the next hour after that,” he revealed.

McLelland made a point that is currently being emphasised by media owners in the UK: television is a full-funnel medium. “It is great for the long-term and also for the short term – it can do both,” he declared.

Nancy Surphlis, Chief Investment Officer at Omnicom Media Group, one of Canada’s biggest media buyers, also acknowledges this. “Our clients know television works short-term because sales are up. Some brands go on television and all of a sudden they see things happen, short-term.”

The Canadian bank CIBC is trying to introduce real-time TV attribution, but this has been a struggle, and its Senior Director for Media and Customer Marketing, Melissa Williams, emphasised the need to demonstrate short-term outcomes.

“We have spent a lot of time proving the long-term value of television but one of the hardest things for us has been proving the shorter-term value. We know that TV drives activation but struggle to get that measured.”

She said her company can see what happens online after advertising, but matching exposure to outcomes takes longer than in digital. “It is hard when you need the results for the next quarter and people say that maybe they can show you how TV performed in three months’ time.”

Despite that, CIBC is increasing its TV investments and Williams wishes it was easier to invest in the medium at short notice. “Banking and finance is a relatively volatile sector and if we need to spend X [on marketing] by next quarter [in order to reach business objectives] that is not as easy to do when you call up television people [compared to digital].

“It is a lot easier to execute [short notice media investment] on digital. But we definitely believe in the value of television and spend lots of time ‘selling it’ internally.”

For Expedia, more comprehensive set-top box data, and easier access to it, are on the wish-list. The company likes to match household viewing insights against its own customer data and Maryann Rusnak, Senior Media Manager, CA Brand Marketing at the travel service said this is harder to achieve in Canada compared to the U.S. The company has to work with each individual Canadian media owner to build its model today, and data is not available for all broadcasters, she said.

Rusnak emphasised the need to make all marketing channels work together and said, “When we invest in TV, we see the benefit across all our [marketing] channels.”

Referring to fears raised at the conference about industrial-scale digital ad fraud, Rusnak painted a bright future for Canadian TV. “We have made great strides to invest in television. TV is not dying in this market. The benefits of TV are massive, and I think investments will ship back [to the medium] and sky-rocket.”

This conference gave a sense that media buyers are starting to think more long-term again. Speaking during a session dedicated to creativity and creative effectiveness, Lyranda Martin Evans, Vice President, Executive Creative Director at DentsuBos Canada, highlighted the danger of neglecting brand spending. “If you have a sale on hamburgers, you get a spike in hamburger sales, but [without a strong brand] you won’t get customers when you are not holding the sale,” she warned, using an extreme example of activation-reliant marketing.

Williams said CIBC is trying to push more money into TV and other traditional media. “Like a lot of advertisers, it is possible we pushed too far into digital,” she admitted.

Binet & Field have famously declared that a 60:40 investment split between brand and activation (respectively) is the optimum for marketing effectiveness, as an average across all categories. One brand at Future TV Advertising Forum was asked why this advice had not yet influenced where people are spending their budget in Canada, and the reply revealed the kinds of cultural/structural challenges that come with trying to ‘go long’ after a strong focus on activation.

The brand executive emphasised that brand mattered 100% but revealed that their personal goals are set to drive sales, thus leading towards acquisition marketing.

Denise Rossetto, Chief Creative Officer at the creative agency BBDO Toronto, expressed sympathy with CMOs [due to the pressure on them to juggle media investments in a complex media landscape]. But her advice was that “the biggest risk is not doing a long-term play.” Part of her job, she feels, is to ‘reframe’ the risk/benefit analysis clients have to make.

Rossetto has noticed a small shift in sentiment among clients who moved away from TV ads and are now asking for TV ads again. She said the companies in question are noticing that some of the emotional connection to their brands has suffered from less TV. This observation was backed by Richard Fofana, VP Strategy at the media agency UM.

Rossetto said sentiment is shifting back towards storytelling and emotional ads in order to build brand. “I feel that some clients have missed it,” she confirmed.

Coming back to innovation, views were expressed that linear TV is not in crisis in Canada but it would be good if the buy-side could prepare for the possibility that one day it is (Williams, CIBC) and that disruption has not yet reached the levels when Canadian media owners will feel moved to drive addressable hard (Kristie Painting, CEO at Wavemaker Canada).

Al Dark, SVP, Media Sales at Rogers, predicted the Canadian television ecosystem will be much more addressable 12 months from now, especially as more IP-enabled set-top boxes are connected in cable homes and usage of TV Everywhere services grows.

Media buyers at this event presented a fairly positive attitude about TV but there is no room for media owner complacency. Rossetto at BBDO inferred that support for TV is highly qualified. “The starting point [with clients] is ‘How can we get the same amount of viewership as television without using television.”

Ari Elkouby, Executive Creative Director at the agency Wunderman Thompson also had a warning. After years of pitching creative campaigns to procurement officers and even CFOs at brands in the post-austerity years, with everyone driven to focus on efficiency, he recalled that, “TV was a big bullseye that they went after. Digital was hyped up, maybe a little too much, to deliver the efficiency without thinking about the long-term impact of it.”

Elkouby pointed to predictions of another recession. “If correct, we will be in a similar position, where people in charge of the dollars will ask if TV is the right place to spend and whether we can do this through digital instead.”

If we thought the media landscape is already disrupted, Niraj Dawar, Professor Emeritus, Ivey Business School, Canada, presented the argument that marketing has changed relatively little in comparison to what is coming within the next five years. The juggernaut that is hurtling towards the marketing and media industries, he suggests, is artificial intelligence, and in particular AI wrapped inside digital home/voice assistants.

He reckons these AI-enabled assistants will become an important intermediary in the brand-consumer relationship – relieving people of purchase logistics and brand decisions across a wide range of everyday products. “Once an AI knows what to order and when, and in what quantities and at what prices, and it compares products and the consumer does not have to think about these things, there is no reason to advertise to the consumer,” he argued.

He said advertisers would need to understand the algorithms AI systems use to make decisions for consumers. Dawar characterised the new relationship as consumers saying to brands, ‘Have your machine talk to my machine’.

“There will be very little that advertisers can do to reach consumers direct. If brands are wondering how Walmart became so powerful, they are going to find that in the next five years that these [AI] platforms are going to be 5-10 times more powerful than Walmart.”

He asked whether we even need brands once AIs are trusted to make choices for us, since brands evolved as a way to establish trust in products and simplify purchase decisions. And just to emphasise, he is predicting this disruption for 2024, not 2034.

Compared to AI, price inflation, pricing transparency, deal structures and trading mechanisms might sound hum-drum but Future TV Advertising Forum provided a rare (and possibly unprecedented) opportunity to see Canada’s biggest media owners line up opposite the biggest media buyers, literally, to thrash out their differences on stage across issues that are at the heart of media business and media relationships.

Though good humoured, this was a meaningful exchange that highlighted points of friction and sometimes the opportunity to solve them. You can read a summary of the dialogue below.

The buyers were represented by: Nancy Surphlis at Omnicom; Brad Hugill, Managing Director, Canada, Magna Global; and Sebastian Rennie, Chief Investment Officer, GroupM Canada. The media owners were represented by: Greg McLelland at Corus; Alan Dark at Rogers; Stewart Johnston, President, Bell Media Sales, Marketing and TSN, Bell Media; and Jean Mongeau, General Manager and CRO, CBC & Radio-Canada Média Solutions.

• Surphlis: There was more certainty about where you spend your media budget four years ago.
• Rennie: Today’s economic climate means there is more uncertainty about how clients will want to manage their media budgets.
• Surphlis: Increased pricing uncertainty [where the prices charged to agencies by media owners can change] is leading to spending uncertainty.
• Rennie: We would like to find a way forwards – maybe there is a role for Think TV as an intermediary. A share-based approach, as seen in the UK and Australia, is a possible solution.
• Mongeau: A share-based model is possible, but this requires a conversation with all stakeholders.
• Dark: Media owners also have less visibility about the future than ten years ago.
• Dark: We are not wedded to the agency deal and could do separate client deals
• Hugill: Likes the idea of a share-based deal, and could also talk about (budget commitment) ranges
• Rennie: Dynamic pricing means this is a very opaque market and we have no opportunity to understand the market forces and justify TV pricing.
• Mongeau: Price transparency should not be a problem – this is not a black box.
• Johnston: Pricing is very fluid, but it is not opaque.
• Surphlis and Dark: Both agree that everyone needs to press ‘reset’ on the approach to pricing.
• Surphlis: We have to sit alone and tell clients why prices are up, yet audiences are down, due to supply and demand. I would like sellers to explain the reasons to them, so we sell the idea of TV to them.
• Dark: We would love the opportunity to explain transparency, and explain the cost of content and the cost of innovation and infrastructure investments.
• McLelland: We spend huge amounts on content – the supply and demand curve must be honoured
• Rennie: Seasonal average [i.e. the audience figures used for trading in Canada] is not a good representation and heavily favours media owners
• Dark: Greatly agrees, and says broadcasters need to fix that. I believe it will prop up the value of TV and work in favour of broadcasters, as TV is under-valued.

Future TV Advertising Forum Canada will be back next year. The next three events in this series are Future TV Advertising Forum Amsterdam (Monday , September 16), FTVA Manchester (Wednesday, November 6) and Future TV Advertising Forum London (December 10-11).

The technology means that when someone tunes to a participating broadcast channel, the HbbTV app is opened and the broadcaster becomes aware that this household is watching their broadcast signal (probably digital terrestrial or satellite). Broadcasters with developed data strategies can establish a link between the Internet-connected television set or STB and other IP-enabled devices in the home, and use this as the basis to ‘profile’ the household – one of the key building blocks for targeted advertising.

Using standard digital ad servers, and with no meaningful changes at the broadcaster backoffice, digital ads can be served to the hybrid broadcast/IP device over the open Internet. The viewing device is told to switch screen output from the broadcast (DTT/satellite) signal to the IP video advertising stream that is arriving.

The IP delivered advertisement temporarily replaces the broadcast signal. The device then switches back from the IP input to the broadcast signal. Broadcasters can choose how they use the IP-into-broadcast insertion. One option is to show an advertisement as soon as someone tunes into a channel belonging to the broadcaster. Another is to replace broadcast ads with IP ads within existing advertising breaks.

In commercial deployment, HbbTV has been largely used in Europe to insert graphical ads, with a classic example being the ‘overlay’ of IP-delivered L-shaped graphics around the programme that is arriving on the broadcast signal. These graphical ads can be interactive and can lead to more advertiser content if viewers want to explore them.

HbbTV advertising gets exciting when you explore the potential for inserting video ads rather than graphics-based ones. There is a well-documented and realistic roadmap that can lead the European broadcast industry towards IP-into-broadcast video ad replacement, but a recent Videonet webcast (‘Implementing Broadcaster Addressable TV using HbbTV’) left the impression that it could be years, rather than months, before we see HbbTV-based addressable TV deployed commercially on a large scale.

Frode Hernes, SVP of Product Management at Vewd, the TV software provider that enables HbbTV support on devices, gave an overview of the capabilities in each version of the HbbTV specification that help to enable IP advertising insertion.

In the version that is widely deployed on television sets in Europe, v1.5, you have auto-start of applications on tune-in (required since the original v1.0 spec to enable red-button type experiences), stream event signalling and support for HTTP adaptive streaming in the form of MPEG-DASH. HbbTV 1.5 supports the insertion of IP video into broadcast signals but lacks later features that make frame-accurate insertion possible.

HbbTV 2.0 was introduced in 2015 and was quickly replaced with HbbTV 2.0.1. Once you are working with this specification, frame accurate video insertion becomes possible. With 2.0.1 you get precise timing for synchronisation of broadcast and broadband streams plus support for pre-buffering/pre-caching.

In the world of HbbTV, pre-caching does not mean loading a series of 30 seconds advertisements onto a DVR. It can mean pre-loading a few seconds of IP video into the device buffer while the consumer is still watching the broadcast signal. And as Hernes made clear, the amount of video you can load into the buffer is device-dependent and could be 90 seconds in a high-end television or as little as 2-3 seconds on an entry-level television set.

When inserting IP ads into broadcast signals, the broadcaster provides markers to show when an ad break is coming and then when the ad has arrived. The digital ad server treats these as ‘load stream’ and ‘play stream’ signals. The digital ad server makes decisions about which advertisement to serve to that precise household.

The ad server is informed around 30 seconds before an ad break arrives, typically. Speaking on the Videonet webcast Leon Siotis, GM Revenue Europe at SpotX, the video advertising platform and programmatic pioneer that is part of the RTL Group, said the ad server can start delivering the content earlier than it would otherwise do if the receive device can handle pre-buffering. Post-impression, broadcasters are sent reports showing that an ad was viewed and how long it was watched.

Germany is one of the most proactive HbbTV markets and a firm leader in the use of HbbTV for advertising, with ProSiebenSat and RTL both using the technology for graphical ad insertion. RTL has tested HbbTV for true video ad replacement, as well. Siotis reported that in this market, SpotX ad servers are connecting to 18 million different HbbTV-enabled devices per month, most of them television sets.

When it comes to the specification version supported on these devices, “2.0+ support is a low percentage of the figure – between 5-10%”, Siotis told the Videonet webcast audience.

There are no quick fixes for getting more 2.0+ boxes into the market; some manufacturers do not even support the higher specification yet. Vewd’s Hernes pointed out that TV manufacturers will only add the higher specification if broadcasters create compelling services that need the higher spec, beyond 1.5, and so create consumer demand.

For this reason, Hernes thinks we need to focus on how the industry achieves a ‘good-enough’ user experience using the 1.5 specification, which means without frame-accurate ad insertion. He believes this is possible using what amounts to a fairly simple concept – starting and finishing each ad break with a broadcaster ident/logo that effectively buys you time while the television/STB is switching between the broadcast signal and IP stream.

He pitched the idea of lining up a fully prepared replacement ad break on the server side, too. This would require that the IP ads being served to the home are chosen slightly earlier. And even if you wanted the household to see a couple of the ‘original’ broadcast ads you would have to make these same ads available on the digital ad server (since the full broadcast ad break is going to be replaced, and not just individual ads within it).

The chief merit of the fully prepared replacement ad break is that you have only two stream switches – into the (new IP) break and then out of the (IP) break and back to the broadcast signal.

Siotis at SpotX pointed out that HbbTV 1.5 can be used today to fully replace broadcast ads at scale. “What is missing is some features that improve the experience, like pre-loading.” His company provides a ‘Get out of jail free’ card when it comes to the ad insertion user experience, anyway.

“To ensure the user experience is as smooth as possible, we check the bandwidth and the device in advance of serving ads. Our ad server makes a judgement call on whether we feel a television set is capable of running the video and maintaining the user experience a broadcaster expects. If it is decided that a suitable UX is not possible, we ignore the opportunity for an ad impression.”

The ‘load stream’ signal from the broadcast is the cue to instigate the health check. This check would apply to any kind of ad (graphical or full video) on any of the HbbTV specification versions.

RTL still needs convincing that full ad replacement can be deployed commercially across the current device footprint. The broadcaster uses HbbTV for graphical ad insertion but as you can read in a separate story, Henry Rivero, VP Advanced Advertising & Innovation at RTL Group, has concerns about the UX and the consistency of devices across markets when it comes to full ad replacement. For full ad replacement, HbbTV is viewed as a test-and-learn process today at RTL. “The ad replacement is what we need to work on next with the standard,” Rivero told the webcast audience.

Work on advertising did not stop with the HbbTV 2.0.1 specification. Hernes outlined the efforts of the HbbTV task force that was set up last year to optimise targeted advertising. This group hopes to produce a dedicated ‘add-on’ specification – or what HbbTV calls an ‘Independent Specification’ – this year featuring, among other things, a ‘Fast Video Switch’ API for JavaScript designed to accelerate the switching process between streams.

As more features are introduced to the specification, the danger is that a larger experience gap develops between devices that support the latest spec and those that support ‘only’ v1.5. Rivero at RTL highlighted the need to achieve consistency across devices for at least a minimum performance threshold that he, as a broadcaster, can rely upon for large-scale commercial use.

“It is important to be able to sign off device families and say, ‘We know for sure that they adhere to not only the standards implementation but to the necessary performance requirements’.

“One area that [the HbbTV] specifications have not really touched upon, up to now, is the notion of minimum requirements when we talk about capabilities like buffering and switching,” Rivero continued. “These features are specified but there is no indication about the minimum buffering or switching performance that is necessary.”

Hernes agreed that minimum performance guarantees would enable broadcasters to trust in the UX outcome in each home, and he noted that the HbbTV community is discussing how this can be achieved. The challenge, of course, is that CPU power and RAM cost money. “Low-end TVs will always have less RAM and will switch more slowly than high-end TVs,” he pointed out.

A trade-off will be needed where the minimums are set reasonably high but not so high that they prevent manufacturers of cheaper TVs from participating in the higher specification end the HbbTV market.

Hernes highlighted an alternative approach that could raise standards even higher, at all ends of the device market. “That would need a way to channel money back [from the broadcasting and ultimately advertising industries that benefit from the ad replacement and targeting] to manufacturers. Then there is a business incentive to implement this [the higher specs with higher minimum performance guarantees].”

The webcast highlighted one other potential approach to improving the user experience for IP-into-broadcast content substitution (and therefore ad replacement). Hernes noted how the BBC (whose interest in HbbTV has nothing to do with advertising, and is driven by the possibilities for more personalised content, like regional news feeds) has demonstrated the ability to split the video and audio streams so the replacement (IP-delivered) audio can start playing ahead of the replacement (IP-delivered) video. There is a belief that hearing audio leaves consumers with the impression that the video began earlier.

Audio/video splitting requires HbbTV 2.0.1 and the synchronised broadcast/broadband timing that comes with it. With frame accuracy established, you can start playing the audio from the IP-inserted stream and then add the IP video when it arrives, slightly later. The audio and video are perfectly synchronised once united. Vewd and the BBC demonstrated this innovation at IBC 2018.

For IP-into-broadcast ad insertion, HbbTV is the only viable solution that can deliver scale in Europe. That is the view of Hernes, who urged broadcasters to get behind this standards-driven approach. This webcast laid out the roadmap to HbbTV-enabled addressable TV advertising and the challenges ahead. You can listen to the discussion in full (free) via this link.

Implementing Broadcaster Addressable TV using HbbTV.

When it comes to broadcasting, the company views HbbTV – with its ability to insert IP delivered graphics or video into broadcast signals within a television or set-top box –  as a way to start experimenting seriously with addressable TV advertising. This technology means RTL can develop addressable sales know-how and sales products independently of the Pay TV community while it figures out what collaborations are possible with operators.

Henry Rivero, VP Advanced Advertising & Innovation at RTL Group, considers HbbTV a means to build an addressable business with meaningful scale – and he points out that Pay TV footprints do not provide whole-market coverage in various key markets, like Germany, so an independent broadcaster solution for free-to-air broadcasting is necessary to achieve the reach advertisers want.

Speaking on a recent Videonet webcast called, ‘Implementing Broadcaster Addressable TV using HbbTV’ (and which you can hear on-demand via this link) Rivero confirmed that the broadcasters cannot rely only on their digital streaming services to provide targeting solutions. Broadcast still has the mass-reach, and there are cost considerations, too. “If you look at the economics, digital can become quite expensive if one reaches the scale that broadcast offers.”

So far, most of the HbbTV advertising work by RTL has involved IP-delivered display ads that are overlaid on the broadcast signal. These could be an ‘L’ shaped graphic that wraps around the broadcast picture or a banner-type presentation. More recently the company has been trialling full ad replacement, where a suitably enabled HbbTV television set switches momentarily from the advertisement contained in the broadcast signal to an IP-delivered ad, and then back again once the replacement ad has played out to the consumer.

The penetration of televisions containing the most recent HbbTV specifications has limited how far RTL Group can scale its HbbTV-enabled ad-replacement. While the 1.5 version of the spec supports ad replacement, there are a number of important improvements in the 2.0 and 2.0.1 versions that make full frame accuracy possible and therefore guarantee a better user experience.

The user experience is high on Rivero’s mind. He also expressed concerns about the consistency of device performance across the market and concluded: “The ad replacement is what we need to work on next with the standard.”

Rivero made it clear that addressable TV is not the only game in town when it comes to data-enriched advertising. Responding to advertiser requests for more targeting, the company is also looking at data-optimised advertising across the classic linear schedule.

Understanding the profile of a household is not considered a problem, despite the fact that broadcasters have no billing (and therefore credit card) relationship with a free-to-air viewer. Rivero explains: “Broadcasters have been investing heavily in their own data capabilities, including launching their own device graphs.

“The beauty of HbbTV is that one can immediately identify when someone has switched onto a given [broadcast] channel. At that point you can draw their [e.g. television] device into your graph and use your understanding of their likes and dislikes from the other devices they use, which are in the ‘graph’.”

Thus, broadcasters can associate us with primarily digital media consumption on devices that are linked to the same IP address as the television or STB through which the broadcast channel is viewed. The reason broadcasters know we have tuned into their channel is because on an HbbTV-enabled device, channel tune-in launches [from broadcasters offering HbbTV services] an application that opens on the device and starts providing feedback data to the broadcasters whose channel you are watching.

Rivero confirms the power of clustering devices and their usage. “We can arrive at a fairly good understanding of consumer behaviour in a household.”

RTL Group recently announced an alliance with  ProSiebenSat.1, a commercial broadcast competitor in Germany, for a joint buying platform that will give advertisers access to addressable inventory. This partly-anticipates the availability of HbbTV-enabled addressable TV inventory. “Both broadcasters are heavily invested in HbbTV,” Rivero confirms.

Leon Siotis, GM Revenue Europe at SpotX, the video advertising platform and programmatic pioneer that is part of the RTL Group, confirmed that one of the incentives for broadcasters to pursue an HbbTV addressable roadmap is the ability it gives them to embark on a test-and-learn process by themselves. “HbbTV gives them more control of their destiny, in a sense, though that does not mean they do not want to work with different ecosystem partners [e.g. Pay TV operators].”

Siotis echoed the need to address the total audience, beyond the Pay TV footprint, too. Drawing on his market-wide insights into what broadcasters are thinking, he said HbbTV is supported by the broadcast industry as a route to addressable advertising, although the level of support depends on each market, the scale of the opportunity and individual broadcaster priorities. “On paper, everyone supports HbbTV and thinks it is a good initiative,” he said.

Siotis confirmed that while there has been some work on ad replacement using HbbTV (like at RTL in Germany and M6 in France – the latter anticipating a relaxation in regulations that currently prohibit broadcast stream ad replacement) the current market opportunity is for graphical ‘overlay’ style advertising. “The real money is on the display side, using the existing linear ad but adding some form of personalisation on top of it,” he observes. “We are still in the trial and testing phase for video ad replacement with HbbTV. I would call them proof-of-concepts.”

Frode Hernes, SVP of Product Management at Vewd, the TV software provider that enables HbbTV support on devices, noted that while HbbTV applications are particularly associated with the DTT market, they are also being used on satellite. Technically HbbTV can be used on cable set-top boxes, though in practice cable Pay TV operators have been reluctant to let broadcast HbbTV signals into their homes.

On the webcast Hernes demonstrated ways to ensure an acceptable user experience for ad replacement using the 1.5 spec, even if it does not support full frame accuracy. Bearing in mind the need to harness the whole HbbTV device footprint, he suggested the use of broadcaster idents at each end of the ad break while the display device is switching between the broadcast and IP streams.

Hernes also outlined, in some detail, the full capabilities, when it comes to advertising, within the 1.5, 2.0 and 2.0.1 versions of the HbbTV specification, including the arrival of ad pre-caching so the stream switching becomes more seamless. He also explained the very latest work within HbbTV to cement the user experience with truly frame accurate ad replacement.

You can hear these technical discussions, and learn more about the industry debate on whether minimum HbbTV device performance requirements should be introduced, on the webcast playback, which is free. Click here to hear more.

This is the first time rival broadcasters in Japan have worked together to pool their online inventory for reporting and planning. The platform opens the way to plan targeted campaigns at scale and is viewed as a way to compete more effectively against global digital players. It is hoped the shared data analytics/DMP solution will boost the value of AVOD to broadcasters and advertising buyers.

The platform provides a number of data views, designed for different stakeholders. All broadcasters and agencies get access to programme  viewing information across all the participating online broadcaster digital services. Additionally, every broadcaster gets a private view of advertising engagement. Agencies can also use the platform to track their own campaigns across all the different broadcasters.

Video Research is responsible for managing the software plug-ins that broadcasters must include in their apps in order to provide the census-level reporting. Streamhub takes responsibility for the data that is returned, taking care of storage, processing and analysis. Streamhub has developed a data fusion model for combining the census and panel data that it says could be used in other markets.

The census data measured by Streamhub on behalf of the broadcast industry includes impressions, completion levels, unique users and whole-population average viewing times, covering programmes and each advertisement. The ‘unique user’ metric is based on unique browser, cookie and device IDs. True person-level de-duplication is enabled in homes that are part of the online audience panel but according to Akihiro Tsuchiya, CEO at Streamhub, the unique user census metric is still a major new benefit for advertisers in Japan. The data platform reporting allows broadcasters and agencies to agree what is paid for – providing the flexibility to set a relevant target demo impression as the basis for a payment and maybe establish completion thresholds, for example.

Streamhub describes itself as an enterprise SaaS analytics start-up that provides video audience analytics and data management platforms to publishers, agencies and research companies globally. While this is its first project with Video Research, the company came with good recommendations, having worked independently with a number of Japanese broadcasters where it provides a business intelligence solution harnessing many of the same measurement and data management tools that have been harnessed for the shared industry platform. Fuji TV and TBS are two national commercial broadcasters who already use Streamhub.

The broadcaster business intelligence solution covers programme and advertising tracking and is used partly as an editorial tool, helping users to understand audiences. Streamhub also fuses broadcaster streaming service registration details and log-ins (described by Tsuchiya as CRM data) with programme viewing and advertising exposure. Thus, the company had an existing track record of matching an understanding of who someone is against their viewing. Obviously, these BI platforms provide each broadcaster with only a view of their own service.

“With the shared platform we are using the same core mechanism. Broadcasters entrust us with their private data,” Tsuchiya explains. “There is a different [software on device] plug-in but everything else is the same. It was a natural evolution to start working with the currency provider.”

While agencies can already use the shared broadcaster reporting/trading/planning platform for some basic targeting, Streamhub is working on a more sophisticated data activation layer that could be added later. This would mean agencies can target viewers who watched particular programmes on a specified list of broadcasters and who perhaps also engaged with a known brand advertisement. This additional layer of functionality would also support audience-based buying against a set of lifestyle, behavioural, need-state and intent attributes, with broadcasters able to draw upon third-party data to support this.

The data analytics and DMP solution being used by Video Research and its member broadcasters and agencies could be used in other markets, Tsuchiya emphasises. “It is an enterprise platform and could be used anywhere you have standardised online video viewing logs and corresponding data. This could be used for something similar outside Japan.”

Focusing on the Japanese shared measurement/trading solution, Streamhub’s CEO adds: “It forms the basis of both a collaborative and competitive marketplace where there is shared access to basic collective data for planning at scale, while the broadcasters can view a variety of individual business intelligence data whether it is AVOD, live, SVOD or QoS. It sets up the foundation for a transparent and scalable ecosystem to generate new opportunities through advanced use of data.”

Yoshihide Ikeda, Director, Project Development Division at Video Research Ltd, declares: “With TV evolving, it is exciting to work with advanced technology that simplifies the processing of billions of data points and our panel fusion process. We provide an essential standard for video inventory trading and we can now look forward to developing new frameworks and opportunities that brings the most out of AVOD and OTT through Streamhub’s capabilities.”

OpenAP was launched in 2017 and is operated for the benefit of FOX, NBCUniversal, Viacom, and Univision. It was the first open platform for cross-publisher (broadcaster) audience targeting with independent third-party verification/posting. OpenAP 2.0 will go live this autumn.

Described as a centralised premium video marketplace with workflow automation, OpenAP enables brands and agencies to perform audience-based buying (where you can target consumer segments based on lifestyle, behaviours and need-state, looking way beyond demographics) at significant scale. One of the main attractions for buyers is that the audience segmentation is consistent across all the broadcasters and you can buy the audience set you want and reach them on the combined inventory of these television majors through a single plan.

Previously, OpenAP was focused on classic broadcast linear TV, so the addition of long-form digital video is a significant moment since it extends the inventory through which advertisers can find their target audience segment. Given the growing popularity of streaming, this is a natural evolution and it takes the industry another step closer to treating broadcast and digital as part of a single ‘whole’. The announcement from OpenAP does not specify what digital inventory will be available via the platform but we understand it will include on-demand as well as linear.

Unrelated to OpenAP (in the sense that it is not an integral part of the shared platform), but providing further evidence of how broadcasters are moving towards a ‘Total TV’ (all platforms treated as one) strategy, NBCU and Viacom (in the US) are using the CFlight metric developed by NBCU and which is now being adopted by Sky Media in Europe.

CFlight is a multiscreen metric that has exacting standards about what constitutes a digital view (i.e. 100% completion). It captures all live, on-demand and time-shifted commercial impressions on any screen, and non-broadcast viewing can be included in the audience totals that a broadcaster guarantees a buyer.

OpenAP 2.0 has been built in collaboration with Accenture and FreeWheel. Fundamentally, the problem it solves is making it easy for advertisers to make audience-based buys against television. Marketers like the ability to create custom audience segments and target against attributes like need-state (e.g. people who are known to be in the market for a new car in the next six months). These are capabilities they enjoy in digital and they want them from television, as well.

OpenAP is an important innovation in terms of the capabilities it offers but also because of the high-level thinking behind it (offering ‘television’ as a larger-scale single buy in competition with non-broadcaster digital like Google or Facebook) and the operating model (multi-broadcaster collaboration).

A joint statement from the OpenAP member broadcasters says the latest iteration fundamentally transforms the way that advertisers can transact to deliver holistic advanced audience campaigns from start to finish on both linear and long-form digital platforms. They view OpenAP 2.0 as a way to bring the industry together to make audience buying more transparent, consistent, and effective.

Here is what the broadcast partners have been saying about the forthcoming update:

Sean Moran, Head of Ad Solutions, Viacom: “We’re incredibly proud of the pioneering work that our team and OpenAP partners have accomplished in unifying and standardising the television business. OpenAP’s evolution into a transactional platform is intended to simplify activation for our brand and agency partners, which we believe will significantly impact the scale of advanced advertising moving forward.”

Linda Yaccarino, Chairman, Advertising and Client Partnerships, NBCUniversal: “With competition rising in every industry, marketers need new ways to define their audience and engage viewers across all platforms. Expanding OpenAP can help turn that vision into a reality.”

Marianne Gambelli, President, Advertising Sales, FOX: “Advanced targeting, transparency and simplicity are critical to our clients. OpenAP enables advertisers access to advanced audiences at scale with the highest quality TV content available across screens. FOX and the other members of OpenAP are committed to driving open standards that are essential to the success of our brand and agency partners.”

Here is a reminder of what OpenAP 2.0 provides:

• The ability to build consistent, cross-publisher audience segments for both national linear and long-form digital video
• The ability to submit orders to activate segments through a centralised cross-broadcaster marketplace
• Cross-publisher (i.e. cross-broadcaster) analytics for a unified view of advanced (i.e. audience-based) campaigns
• Comprehensive pre-campaign performance projections
• Post-campaign delivery metrics that include total unduplicated reach, overall tCPM and total audience impressions
• Consistent and standardised audience segments across all the broadcasters – in other words, if you want to reach working Mums, the definition of a working Mum is uniform.
• Secure segment sharing (if advertisers create target segments based on a set of consumer attributes, this competitive intellectual property is closely guarded
• Independent measurement – there is third-party verification of results.

Other notable advertising collaborations

If you are interested in television industry collaboration models around advertising, these are the other ones you should check out:

Australia’s Total TV measurement system VOZ, which comes with a shared audience targeting platform that is backed by the local broadcasters.

EBX, a shared programmatic solution for pan-European digital inventory operated by Mediaset, TF1, ProSiebenSat.1 Media and Channel 4.

RTL AdConnect, which combines RTL broadcasters and third-parties like ITV and RAI to help advertisers find audiences across multi-broadcaster inventory.

Sky’s AdSmart, which is being used by Pay TV rival Virgin Media to create a 30 million total household addressable advertising footprint for buyers.

Xandr, which combines the addressable inventory sales for AT&T, Altice USA and Frontier Communications, among other things.

NCC Media, the ad sales, technology and marketing company jointly owned by the U.S. cable giants Charter, Comcast and Cox.

This is some of the context that GroupM provides for why multiple industries, including the marketing/advertising sector, are so interested in DLT and its sub-set blockchain. In its recent report, ‘Blockchain & Marketing – Technology Design Considerations for Implementation’, the company says DLT is likely to become the backbone for the transaction layer of the Internet, or the ‘Internet of Value’. “Cryptographic keys across distributed ledgers supports users in securing and formalising digital relationships”, report author Jack Smith, Chief Product Officer, Investment at GroupM, writes.

Two promising areas of DLT are the management of digital identities and providing supply chain transparency. DLT should be able to provide a cryptographically assured trust mechanism for distributed identity management, data permissions and distributed consent management, the report notes. In the marketing industry, software applications are being built to streamline the layers of what GroupM calls overcrowded technology stacks that will impact advertising dollars.

GroupM, which is the world’s largest media investment company, is actively encouraging its clients to test-and-learn with DLT and prepare for its use. The agency group says it will partner them on that journey. The company is also exploring a fully-fledged blockchain pilot with a next-generation, high-throughput blockchain platform across multiple application areas, starting with smart contracting, billing and reconciliation.

GroupM sees potential for DLT in the programmatic space. It says the programmatic ecosystem is increasingly complex, making it even harder to build trust among advertisers, agencies, consumers and publishers. “Solutions, to date, have merely been expensive Band-Aids [small plasters] and not full answers to the fundamental challenge: helping marketers follow their data and dollars across the consumer journey.

“Authentication and authorisation are now critical to advertising because of privacy-focused laws and regulations like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). And, growing cost pressures in the CPG [consumer packaged goods] industry and beyond have given rise to new questions about working versus non-working media.

“Technology and data costs are being closely scrutinised. Demands for greater efficiency are evergreen in advertising, but the volume is intensifying. DLT is seen as a possible solution.”

GroupM says there is friction in the marketing/advertising system, particularly as it relates to identity management, data monetisation and capturing consumer consent for use of their data. “DLT may potentially reduce this friction if implemented effectively.”

The report lists some of the decentralised applications, built on blockchain platforms, that are relevant to the marketing industry and which are currently being piloted. These cover:

1/ Entity-level reconciliation. This includes streamlining processes across multiple entities in the programmatic value chain to capture efficiencies. It also includes increasing record transparency and ease of auditability in the ad-tech ecosystem via smart contracting.

2/ Impression-level optimisation. This covers building a secure value transfer system from ad dollars to impressions to sale, through better audience planning. It also involves utilising a democratically governed mechanism to codify measurement standards for better campaign management and optimisation.

3/ Data and identity management. This includes understanding that GDPR and related privacy concerns are making data security even more important through better identity management. It also looks at reducing the need for trust among value chain stakeholders, and between the advertiser and the consumer for authentic content.

The GroupM report warns about DLT/blockchain related hype, or thinking that everyone needs it. “Among those who understand it, the technology is considered a useful and powerful mechanism for processing transactions in a trustless, decentralised environment. However, the cost, performance and complexity have yet to be assessed and may vary on a case-by-case basis.

“In many cases, it is expected that claimed savings will come from the digitisation of legacy and inefficient processes, not necessarily from the adoption of DLT. Not all business situations require a blockchain/DLT-led solution. Often, a simple or distributed database-led solution is more than enough.”

The report adds: “By 2020, all major corporations are anticipated to deploy consultants in examination of DLT projects for cost cutting. However, for every dollar spent on DLT, another $20 will be spent on the ‘transformation’ element of these projects.”

GroupM has developed checks to help clients navigate the landscape, including whether a distributed ledger technology solution is really needed. The report offers more detail and it also outlines five critical steps that should be performed in sequence to derive maximum benefit from DLT adoption. These are:

1/ Get the data strategy right in the first place. “In the emerging world of Web 3.0, where each one of us will probably have only 30% of our information with us and the remaining 70% scattered around the Web, it is important to understand the distributed nature of our information. This includes the nature of ownership, consent and permissions.”

2/ Move from a distributed database to a distributed ledger.

3/ Understand the world of cryptography. Report author Smith warns that we will soon learn more about cryptojacking – where data is stolen, destroyed or mutated for individual benefit. GroupM thinks we need to find the right cryptographic technology for the marketing/media sectors  – “one that is common to all, protected and constantly upgraded across the industry”.

4/ Incentivise consensus protocol. “We need to align on the consensus protocol that is best suited for our industry,” the report confirms.

5/ Decide if all of this is public or permissioned. “DLT addresses many of our industry’s challenges across reconciliation, identity and campaign management,” the report states. “How can a permissioned blockchain address this, or should it? There are still debates as to whether it should be a private permissioned network like the financial institutions, or a public permissionless network.”

The report contains a warning for anyone who thinks DLT/blockchain can eradicate advertising fraud. “While DLT is perceived as viable for providing authenticity and authorisation, its mere application will not mean that fraud will vanish entirely.

“If an ad impression is delivered on a fraudulent site by a legitimate ad server and written to a blockchain record, that record may not be tampered with. Other data feeds (oracles) will be required to identify that the original impression was invalid, similar to the way third-party verification providers are used today. Our industry is still coming to terms with these challenges.”

The 18-page report can be downloaded here. It clarifies the ongoing dialogue about blockchain and how it can be leveraged by marketers. It takes a deep dive into the technology, discussing how some marketers are already using it successfully, as well as outlining how organisations can begin to implement blockchain to improve current processes and ensure future success.

The subtle name change means this is no longer Sky AdSmart but AdSmart (from Sky, from NBCUniversal) and the two companies are leveraging their scale to take the first steps towards creating what they call an unparalleled global solution for advanced premium video advertising. “AdSmart will enable global brands and businesses to easily activate targeting and optimisation solutions to reach customers around the world and measure results across NBCU and Sky’s extensive portfolios,” a statement says.

“Over the years, Sky has built a suite of advanced advertising tools, and we’re excited to share them with international marketers in the United States,” said Andrew Griffith, Group Chief Operating Officer at Sky. “Together with NBCUniversal, we are launching a global product unlike anything the market has seen before, that combines the quality and reach of TV with best-in-class addressability.”

Linda Yaccarino, Chairman of Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal, comments: “The world is getting smaller, and the opportunity for international marketers to make an impact with consumers is getting bigger. The industry has demanded a global premium video offering, and now one will finally exist.

“NBCUniversal and Sky are committed to setting the highest possible standards and transforming the ad experience,” Yaccarino continues. “Bringing our advanced advertising solutions under one global structure is the first step in our journey.”

Indeed, AdSmart is viewed as the start of an advanced advertising partnership that will deliver unprecedented value and scale from a media organisation. The Sky and NBCU teams will take insights and learnings from each other and apply them in their own markets. Thus, Sky will be looking to apply the best-in-class linear optimisation platforms used in the U.S. by NBCU in Europe.

The AdSmart solution now includes the following capabilities:

• Linear optimisation – NBCU and Sky can each enable advertisers to optimise their linear spend against a rich selection of consumer segments for enhanced delivery to target audiences through the unparalleled reach of national TV, leveraging Comcast set-top box data in the U.S. and Sky set-top box data in the UK for a total data set of more than 50 million households.
• Addressable television – NBCU and Sky can each enable advertisers to target precise consumer segments through addressable TV for ads delivered directly to target households over broadcast infrastructure (e.g. via satellite or cable).
• Digital targeting – NBCU and Sky can each enable advertisers to target precise consumer segments across digital platforms for ads delivered directly to target users through premium online content.
• Contextual alignment – NBCU is piloting AI-powered contextual media planning for TV, aligning brand messaging with highly relevant scenes across national programming to enhance ad effectiveness and give consumers what it calls “a more organic viewing experience”. This forms part of the combined AdSmart solution set. You can read more about NBCU’s contextual intelligence solution here.

Editor’s Comment

There are a few points to emphasise from this development. First, the determination to create a global solution for international brands. This will help Sky and NBCU compete with global digital platforms like Google and Facebook for data-driven advertising solutions. When the companies say AdSmart will enable global brands and businesses to easily activate targeting and optimisation, the ease of use is important. Marketers are faced with growing complexity in the multiscreen, multiplatform world, with their audiences fragmenting. They want solutions that help them find their audiences and execute against them with a minimum of extra fuss. The ease with which you can make big multi-market buys is one of the advantages Google and Facebook have exploited against TV.

Secondly, by combining their solution set, both companies strengthen their ability to offer advertisers a best-in-class continuum, ranging from classic linear TV through to optimised buying of mass audiences (with better audience discovery and segmentation, but where all viewers of a programme see all ads) through to one-to-one targeting . Few people believe targeting will take over from mass-reach, but it will complement it. Marketers will want the ability to buy mass audiences, and sometimes target to a greater or lesser degree. One common use of targeting is to top up the number of times you can hit lighter TV viewers via reach-all campaigns, so the mass and targeting campaigns need to be closely integrated.

Third, the expectation that Sky will bring AI-based contextual placement of ads into content to the UK is noteworthy in itself. Channel 4 is already working on similar technology. (see story). Having two rival solutions not only brings competition but adds credibility to the concept.