Open AP: One More Step On TV's Journey To True Addressability
Fox, Turner And Viacom announced their new ad targeting platform, Open AP yesterday. The platform will allow advertisers to buy against specific audience segments across all three network groups, a big plus in an otherwise siloed industry.
While Open AP is definitely a step in the right direction, it’s still what’s known as “indexed” advertising: advertisers can buy against shows that index well for specific demographics.
It is not “addressable” advertising, where the network can actually show different ads to different viewers. That capability is currently only in the hands of the MVPDs who have the technological ability to deliver addressable ads during the two- to three-minutes per hour of ad space they are allotted.
AT&T, Dish and Altice all have strong addressable advertising programs and are slowly but surely educating advertisers and ad agencies as to the benefits of addressable TV advertising, which more closely resembles what is available digitally, where visitors to the same page see different ads depending on their demographic profile or location or device.
And make no bones about it—that is where the future is headed.
Over the next 18–to–36 months, we will see a rapid increase in the amount of TV that is watched over digital platforms, mostly MVPD TV Everywhere (TVE), much of it time-shifted. Now that Nielsen’s Total Audience Measurement (TAM) plan is in place, look for TVE to take off, and with it the audience’s propensity to watch TV on their own schedule. This will create a stronger need for dynamic ad insertion (DAI), or the ability to insert ads on the fly, based on the viewers demographic profile, location or device. TV-based DAI is in its nascency right now, though the technology to make it more robust is not that difficult, the business case for it is still lacking.
Most network inventory is sold during the upfronts, a period during the spring where the next season’s ad inventory is bought and sold. Advertisers buy specific shows at specific time slots, so programs like Open AP fit in nicely. But the networks will need to change the way they structure the upfronts in order to account for both addressable and DAI.
It’s certainly an achievable task, but it’s not one the network ad sales teams are eager to undertake: both addressable and DAI, and their partner-in-crime, programmatic ad buying (e.g. ad buying that’s done via an algorithm rather than a person) represent an added layer of complexity and uncertainty to the ad sales process. And many older network ads sales reps see them as potential threats—we have heard the addressable/programmatic/DAI triumvirate referred to as “a race to the bottom” more times than we can count.
That said, we feel that they are the exact opposite, that they represent a way for ad-supported TV to remain relevant and profitable in light of future changes ahead. The holy grail for the future of TV advertising has long been fewer, better targeted ads that the networks can sell for more money. That means addressable advertising that is inserted on the fly (dynamically) via programmatic bidding apps that allow for more precise targeting and serve up different ads to different viewers.
While Open AP is most definitely a step towards achieving that goal, the really big changes are yet to come.
Originally published at TVREV.com on March 15, 2016
Advanced TV/CTV/Video Advertising Innovation
7 年Time and device shifted impressions become increasingly addressable. As linear scale diminishes, it becomes harder to forecast impressions and campaign pacing becomes more important.
Product Designer at Paloalto Networks
8 年Addressable advertising does sound more cost-effective, but I think you said yourself once that some advertisers don't necessarily see that value because their goal is to increase brand awareness. Perhaps that's only relevant for the big brands?
Product Led Growth | GTM Tech Product Marketing | Expert in FAST & Freemium streaming TV | Sports, News & Entertainment
8 年It's pretty clear to me -- after having lined up an amazing panel of speakers on this topic -- that all three realms of advanced TV advertising are about to take off en masse. Sure, addressable HH advertising will grow fast and lead the pack. (Apparently already $1B plus.) Soon, OTT & TVE platforms could have serious scale -- but Roku & Amazon & Apple & Chromecast are unlikely to cooperate heavily on standards, which could slow things down. But every single TV network I'm aware of actively hiring and investing in learning how to mine rich datasets (including #SocialTV data, POS data and more) to enable marketers to buy increasingly useful, granular audience segments in addition to using the Nielsen currency. By partnering, these three networks are leading the way toward solving some obstacles to audience-indexed buying and it's clearly going to be an important part of the equation going forward. For more, join us in NY Mar 27 or participate in our LinkedIn Group: https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/8484572
Global Business Executive - Leading results and transformation through technology
8 年Is full addressability the holy grail that will always be sought but never found? The technology to do this exists (for everything but true over the air). It is the will and business arrangements that are lacking.
AI - data - cloud and everything required to make it work at scale for large enterprises.
8 年Hi Alan: It will be interesting to see how they do the match given how different the data sets are and the data quality. The measurement is also still panel based and not impression based so while it's a step forward, I agree with you that it's a very small step.