What If TV Ads During #SuperBowl50 Were Personalized?

It was November 2010. While in a multi-agency integrated communications meeting discussing a large brand campaign at a very prominent agency (not one I worked at but owned by the same holding company and representing a brand as its media buyer), a client bellowed out the following details: "In addition to our TV ad that will be running for three months after debuting during the Super Bowl, we're also going to run a social media and search campaign to capture intent by users on those platforms who may have seen the ad."

My ears listened more attentively out of curiosity. "Question, do we know if the ad tested well?"

His answer was what I expected, "No, not yet, it hasn't run. We won't know until the TV ad runs a bit in a few markets, then we can find out feedback."

"So let me get this straight," I said with caution, "You're going to spend a fortune to run the ad but you don't know how the ad will perform? Why not small batch test it?"

"What's a small batch test," he murmured.

"A test to a target audience on a platform like Facebook or YouTube where we have more audience data. We upload the ad and target it to our community and they give us feedback. Even if they don't comment we get feedback because we can see where they bail or rewind to watch portions of the video using YouTube analytics to track. It enhances our creative. Prior to doing the television ad buy we will know if at least our most influential customers like the content."

Suddenly the media buying agency rep in the same room who was hosting the meeting at his offices piped in.

"We can't do that Geoffrey. That leaks the ad. We're spending a ton of money to air it first during the Super Bowl. Besides, isn't YouTube just a bunch of cat videos anyway?"

"Do we have an edit of the ad, a teaser?" was my response. "Why not run this first on social media where you could pay $.00004 per impression rather than sink $1 billion into the TV ad? Maybe we use feedback on social as a way to figure out what creative works best for broadcast?"

The entire room looked at me like I had two heads.

"It's too late to do this Geoff. The network needs the ad in a few weeks. Production is done. The ad runs as is. Next topic?"

"I understand but how if it sucks?"

Later I was reprimanded by my boss for making the other agency reps look ridiculous in front of the client. I was simply using radical candor, something I realize now you can't do among people with fixed mindsets.

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What I was getting at here was how do you save lots of media money prior to plunking it down on a big platform like a television ad buy? But the room simply saw me as a troublemaker. A disruptive vice instead of a cheerleader. The ad did okay when it aired. The next year I wasn't working with that client and my new client didn't buy TV ads. "Not enough return on investment," was their attitude.

Now in 2016, what was mentioned in that conversation from six years ago is commonplace. Most Super Bowl ads for Sunday's game are already released. Most will be tweaked prior to airing and some will be different when they air post-game for the month following on networks. The power in programmatic is that you can test creative with certain audiences prior to rolling those out at scale.

This concept is much more mainstream now in the world of advertising but there is something that I feel is going to be missing as I watch #SuperBowl50 on Sunday. Many of the ads will be irrelevant to me including the brands that I may be a fan or consumer of. Much of this will probably be due to the fact many aren't tested in a non-traditional sense. Sure, ads go through testing with small audiences or using antiquated measurement models. The best brands test with those who are influencers or members of their community. Not a random sample of people. Random samples are what killed radio programming. Why would strangers talk about how good your programming is if they aren't already a listener? They fit the age demographic? So what? Are they passionate about the brand or user of the medium?

Sure, we need new users of our services all the time but the hardcore users always influence new initiates more than the brand influencing those decisions. Influencer testing can be objective, not subjective, as their voice mirrors that of a customer. Most will tell you like it is if a company is going the wrong path. Just look at the feedback recently from some of Uber's biggest proponents with their logo change. Most have no clue what the company is getting at with its brand refresh. Some feel possibly Uber has lost the plot and are in some dystopian science fiction novel the majority of us aren't reading.

My point in all of this is if brands are going to spend the amount of a small country's Gross Domestic Product for a lot of impressions to meaningless customers, why not know going in that it has tested well with people who are more than your target demo but who are actual customers? It appears that in 2016, the "spray and pray" model within the TV industrial complex lives on because personalized technology targeting doesn't exist with our TV sets. As a result, TV may become as old of a media as terrestrial radio. If they can't provide such personalized testing to small batches of target marketing within their platform, what's to say if brands will continue to funnel money into ads on those mediums?

My point here isn't that ads are irrelevant as much as the medium in which they are delivered (in this case TV networks) are irrelevant.

But what if in the near future I could target ads during those live events to five markets and knew more about who the audience was watching the programs? There are platforms that already allow this. So is it possible those platforms pivot to become the new TV networks of the future?

Stay tuned to this non-television channel to find out.

Geoffrey Colon is a communications designer who works at Microsoft. Read, Watch and Listen to his eccentric points of view on the worlds of marketing and advertising here on LinkedIn, YouTube and his podcast Disruptive FM on iTunes. Pre-order a copy of Geoffrey's upcoming book "Disruptive Marketing: What Data Punks, Growth Hackers, And Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating The New Normal" out later this year on AMACOM Books.