Local Advertising Still Strong at TV Of Tomorrow Show

One of the more interesting conversations at the TV of Tomorrow Show this year was about the Renaissance of Local TV Advertising. 

We’ve all heard about ATSC 3.0 and how it’s going to revolutionize the world of local television, bringing digital style capability to over the air broadcast. But while ATSC 3.0 is still in its nascency, there’s a more concrete change taking place, the automation of local TV ad buying.

As with all attempts at innovation, there was a great deal of initial resistance, as the local broadcast sales teams tried to understand what this would mean for them. The panel, which included Videa President Shereta Williams, TruOptik Founder and CEO Andre Swanston, Sinclair’s CRO Rob Weisbord and Will Felcon, Head of Product and Technology for TEGNA’s Premion, all acknowledged that while this had initially been the case, the industry seems to be coming along. As local ad sales teams come to understand the benefits of automation, they are much less hesitant to come on board. 

Williams explained that local station ad sales teams were initially worried that they would be replaced by automated systems or that the relationships they’d established over the years would be for naught. But as they’ve started using automated buying systems, they’ve come to realize that they can spend less time on paperwork and other clerical tasks and more time cementing those relationships with existing clients and (more importantly) chasing down new ones.

ATSC 3.0 was, of course, another hot topic on the panel, as the advanced metrics it brings—the ability to serve up addressable advertising in particular, should prove to be very attractive to advertisers, giving them the granularity they are looking for along with one-to-one measurement. Sinclair has been a major force in pushing for ATSC 3.0 adoption and the company remains very excited about the opportunities that ATSC 3.0 can bring to local advertising.

Foremost among these is the ability to compete with the MVPDs for addressable ad dollars. Whereas MVPDs like AT&T and Dish can offer up a national audience for their addressable buys, ATSC 3.0 allows local broadcasters to offer the same functionality to their advertisers, along with better metrics and accountability.

The flip side of ATSC 3.0 is that it’s a future technology. The underlying technological architecture was just approved by the FCC this spring, and it’s not backwards compatible, meaning that broadcasters need to wait for TV set manufacturers to start rolling out ATSC 3.0 compatible TVs … and for consumers to start buying them. That means the adoption curve, as panel moderator, Rick Ducey, Managing Director at BIA Advisory Services noted, is likely to take a couple of years.

Automated buying, however, is happening right now via companies like Videa, and the panelists concurred that it was a strong catalyst for revitalizing local TV advertising, bringing digital-style efficiencies to a medium that was devoid of any of the problems facing digital: brand safety, fraud and poor placement. In fact, local broadcasting offers the opposite—well regarded quality programming with long-standing third-party metrics. 

That, the panelists concluded, is what is making local broadcast advertising so valuable these days: at a time when much of the media is under suspicion and where viewers feel as if they are constantly being asked to choose sides, local broadcast TV offers a safe harbor, with strong content, a strong fan base and the ability to reach millions of consumers with an engaging message that’s likely to be viewed from start to finish.