They Call It Broadcast For A Reason

“Broadcast TV is broad. That’s why it works.”

That quote, from Videa’s VP of Business Development and Strategy, Brett Adamczyk, neatly sums up one of the main themes of last week’s Programmatic TV Summit: advertisers are rediscovering television all over again because it gives them something no other medium does: massive reach.

One key advantage to broadcast TV is that unlike the internet, there aren’t an infinite number of options. For actual broadcast television, there are usually only three or four options per market. Factor in cable, and you’re still only looking at a few hundred choices, versus the many millions of websites digital has to offer.

“For a while, it seemed like ‘reach’ had become a dirty word,” noted Craig Broitman, EVP, COO at Katz TV Group. “People were so fixated on targeting that they forgot about the value of reach. Now they’re rediscovering it.”

The fact that advertisers are rediscovering not just OTT, but broadcast TV as well, was another common theme. It’s not just that broadcast has gotten attractive, it’s that it’s starting to be proactive about making itself more attractive to advertisers in order to get in line with what’s happening in the rest of the industry. 

Or, as eMarketer’s Gerard Broussard stated, “National TV is more 'handle-able' than local—that’s why local is so interesting right now.”

What Broussard was referring to is the fact that national TV buys have already been streamlined and made available for programmatic, which is why local is where the action is. Or as Magna’s Kathy Doyle noted “Local is a work in progress.”

“It’s refreshing to see all the current interest in bringing automated buying to local broadcasters,” Shereta Williams, President of Videa, noted. “When we first started in this market several years ago, we saw the possibilities and opportunities and that’s all coming to fruition now.”

One of the reasons local has become so attractive is that it offers advertisers a way to target consumers by both demographics and by geography.

That ability is going to play a huge role in the upcoming election cycle, as the ability to target consumers using local broadcasters is going to be a major factor for both national and local campaigns, as politicians look for the most effective ways to reach large numbers of targeted voters.

One final reason why so many panelists seemed to think TV was having a comeback moment was its ability to create an emotional connection with viewers. While digital media may allow for more finely tuned targeting, it lacks the storytelling ability of TV and while viewers may remember commercials they saw twenty or thirty years ago, they’d be hard-pressed to remember a banner ad they saw ten minutes ago.

“That’s the real benefit of TV,” said Videa’s Adamczyk. “The ad serves two purposes—it sells whatever it is you’re selling, but it also creates a strong brand image, one that’s likely to stay with the consumer for a while. That’s why we’re so positive about the future of local TV advertising and why so many advertisers are too.”