The streaming wars are  entering a new generation, marked by Paramount’s potential revival through Skydance and the emergence of unconventional social media entrants like LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok. 

Increased merger and acquisition (M&A) activity is also shaping the advertising space as legacy media players adapt to shifting consumer preferences toward streaming. This transformation underscores the growing complexity of the media landscape and the necessity for advertisers to diversify their campaigns and reach their audiences effectively.

The revival of Paramount through Skydance exemplifies how traditional media companies are reinventing themselves to stay relevant in the streaming age. Skydance, known for its high-quality content and production capabilities, can potentially breathe new life into Paramount’s streaming offerings, attracting new subscribers and retaining existing ones. This move highlights the importance of content quality and brand recognition in the highly competitive streaming market. Here are other ways to approach the new generation of entrants while still ensuring effective reach and campaigns.

Programmatic and CTV Integration

At Dstillery, we have seen firsthand how brands and marketers are refreshing their strategies to navigate this evolving environment. Integrating Connected TV (CTV) into hands-on programmatic buying platforms and leveraging clean room data matching are key strategies that marketers and brands use to better understand the impacts of CTV advertising compared to standard linear television.

With its ability to deliver highly targeted ads to specific audiences, CTV is rapidly gaining traction among advertisers across all parts of the funnel and becoming a factor when looking at budgets. By using programmatic buying platforms and clean rooms to combine fragmented reporting from walled gardens, advertisers can better target the right audience and optimize budgets. Yet, this tactic is still in its early growth stages

Adopting AI Targeting and Measurement Technology

Adopting AI targeting and measurement technology is crucial. These advanced tools help media buyers understand and then find customers on the most relevant types of content, genres, networks, or categories. AI-driven insights can reveal patterns and trends in consumer behavior that might not be immediately apparent through traditional methods. 

For instance, an AI system can analyze vast amounts of data such as aggregated historical reporting or ACR data related to their campaigns to better understand and optimize against their desired KPI and audience. 

One of the critical aspects of effective targeting in  streaming is understanding how ID-based targeting translates into CTV delivery to better identify your audience. While cookies allow for a 1:1 relationship between an ID and a single browser for targeting, these cookies do not exist on other devices, and so must often be probabilistically matched to a household via an IP address. This means that while one person in a household may belong to a given audience, ads will be shown to everyone in that household. It is essential to consider this when selecting your audiences or using content-based optimizing features to better fine-tune your targeting.

The Streaming Players

The continuing growth of ad-supported tiers on leading streaming platforms and potential entries of social players like LinkedIn, X, and TikTok further intensifies the competition. These platforms bring unique strengths and audiences, challenging traditional media companies to innovate and adapt. 

LinkedIn, for instance, could leverage its professional network to offer niche content tailored to career development and industry insights, while TikTok’s short-form video format appeals to younger audiences looking for quick, engaging content. X’s vast user base and real-time engagement capabilities could position it as a formidable player in live-streaming events.

Increased M&A activity among legacy media players reflects their efforts to consolidate resources and expand their streaming capabilities. These media giants aim to enhance their content libraries, technological infrastructure, and market reach by acquiring or merging with other companies. This trend will likely continue as companies strive to stay competitive.

What Is in Store for Advertisers

These developments mean advertisers must navigate a more fragmented media environment. Diversifying campaigns across multiple platforms and formats is essential to reaching the best audiences. Advertisers must stay abreast of the latest trends and technologies to engage viewers and measure the impact of their efforts.

Overall, the new generation of streaming wars presents challenges and opportunities for advertisers. By starting to take CTV into your programmatic buying platforms, leveraging clean room data matching, and adopting AI targeting and measurement technology, advertisers can better navigate the fragmented media landscape and reach their desired audiences. 

Understanding the nuances of both ID-based and content-based targeting, as well as staying informed about industry trends will be crucial for success in this dynamic environment. As the streaming wars evolve, advertisers must remain agile and innovative to stay ahead of the competition.

The post Conquering the Streaming Wars: An Advertisers’ Guide to Reaching Audiences in  Fragmented Media  appeared first on AdMonsters.

Today there are over 11,000 TV production businesses in the US (nearly 5% more than in 2022), and TV production is growing nearly 4% each year. On top of that, it’s never been easier for a content creator to spin up a FAST channel.

But building an audience? That’s a whole other matter. One of the biggest challenges facing content producers is making audiences aware of just how much content is available to them for free and from their existing smart TV. 

To learn more about FAST and where it fits into the TV landscape, we talked with Ron Gutman, CEO of Wurl, a 25-year veteran of the TV industry. Wurl and Samsung launched the world’s first native FAST channel in 2018, and today Gutman is hoping that over the next five years, cable, satellite, and broadcast providers will have completed their migrations to FAST.

AdMonsters: What made you decide to launch a new market — FAST?

Ron Gutman: We saw that other major streaming industry players were succeeding with the AVOD/SVOD model, and we realized that the next logical step would be the transition from linear television to streaming. 

Technology is often the catalyst for shifts in entertainment consumption, and the consumer clearly wants to consume TV digitally. That meant coming up with technology that allows linear TV providers to launch FAST channels very easily.

In the beginning, there was no monetization, so we needed to reduce the cost of launching television channels on streaming, which was one of our first goals.

AdMonsters: FAST is now five years old … would you call it a mature market now? 

RG: Not quite, but we’re getting there. There are three distinct stages to FAST’s growth. The first is moving content to digital so it can be watched on a variety of devices. That stage is complete. 

The second stage is monetization so content creators can profit from their content. The digital ad tech sector was able to monetize a lot of the streaming content, which was a big motivation for publishers to migrate. Without advertising to compensate for the reduction in cable viewership, there wouldn’t be a digital option for this content.

The third stage is viewership, and even though more than half of American TV viewers watch FAST today, this stage isn’t complete yet. If we want FAST to become more like cable, we need to increase viewership substantially.

AdMonsters: More than half of TV viewers consume content on FAST platforms today.  That sounds like viewership has arrived.

RG: It is a lot, but these households aren’t really availing themselves of what’s available. According to our own insights, most households watch just one or two FAST channels each month, when there are literally thousands available. The variety is unprecedented, but the public isn’t fully aware of what’s available to them for free.

Compare that to the heyday of cable, when people spent a hundred hours or more each month consuming content across 17 channels on average. That’s a huge difference, which is why I think it will be a few more years before that third stage is complete.

AdMonsters: When do you think the public will realize the breadth of content that’s available to them?

RG: I think that within five years viewers will migrate and the transition to FAST will be nearly, if not 100%, complete. The first five years of migration were about recreating the cable experience in the digital world. Over the next five years, we’ll see more digital technologies entering the CTV space and the full migration of viewership will be completed.

AdMonsters: Why should advertisers add FAST to their mix?

RG: Because it’s digital, and that means marketers can run true performance campaigns. They can measure how much they spent on advertising, who was reached, and how many of those viewers visited their website, or made it purchase. When consumers show intent, we can retarget them to drive better results. We never had that capability with traditional TV.

AdMonsters: Can you give me a precise example of a performance campaign that’s run on FAST?

RG: We said earlier that there are thousands upon thousands of FAST channels. If you own one of those channels, a key goal is to get more consumers to discover and view your content. There are millions of households watching FAST content, how do you find which will watch your channel?

This is actually a problem that’s well suited for machine learning. Because we have insights into viewing habits, we can predict what someone is likely to watch even before they realize they want to watch it. These predictions allow us to make really smart recommendations to the right viewer for tune-in campaigns. And we can quantify the payoff: your ad was seen by X number of viewers who then consumed your content either via a CTV app or via a FAST channel.

We can also retarget consumers on a mobile phone while they’re watching TV. Let’s say a consumer watches a lot of sports, but hasn’t tuned into the NFL FAST channel, perhaps because he didn’t realize such a channel exists and that he has access to it. We can retarget that user with an ad, and if he responds, the chances are he will check out the NFL channel. Our insights show that retargeting in the mobile channel while consumers are watching TV most often delivers the strongest conversion rate.

AdMonsters: Isn’t automated content recognition or ACR data supposed to help users discover content that they may like?

RG: Yes, and it does a good job of it. The problem is that it’s platform-specific, and it doesn’t cover all of the streaming apps. If you have a channel, you can’t really tie your content discovery campaign to actual conversions if the viewer watches your content in an app that doesn’t support ACR data. 

AdMonsters: You mentioned that machine learning can predict what a viewer wants to watch before he or she even knows it. Have you discovered anything surprising in that data?

RG: Yes, I assumed that affinity drives people’s viewing behavior. If viewers watch many nature shows, I assumed that recommendations for similar or adjacent content would lead to conversions. But, the data show that affinity isn’t as correlated to conversion as assumed. A person’s mood is an important driver. And that leads to an interesting question: how do we measure a viewer’s mood so that we can recommend content they’re likely to watch?

It turns out that real-time viewing behavior can be a window into a viewer’s mood. If they’re switching channels, it’s clear they’re just browsing and a recommendation may lead to a conversion. If they’re watching content that has an uplifting message, they’ll probably watch other content that is also uplifting.

Recency also has a big impact on conversion. If someone just finished watching the news, they’re not likely to want to continue watching the news. People tend to consume content in sequences and patterns. Machine learning is able to identify those patterns and serve up relevant content at scale.

AdMonsters: So M-L will play a key role in completing the viewership stage?

RG. Absolutely. ML-based recommendations will teach viewers that there’s a world of content at their fingertips. They just need to tune in.

 ### 

Ron Gutman is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Wurl – the leader in data-driven solutions for Connected TV (CTV). Ron has played an instrumental role in Wurl’s growth, helping navigate the company through streaming’s evolution to usher in the next era of TV. Ron joined Wurl nearly six years ago as Vice President, Broadcast Engineering and was appointed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in 2018. Before joining Wurl, he was the founder and CTO of Imagine Communications and, prior to that, the Director of Customer Solutions for BigBand Networks.

The post How to Build Viewership for FAST Channels: A Q&A with Ron Gutman, CEO of WURL appeared first on AdMonsters.

It’s nearly impossible to keep up with the growth rate — from newly launched streaming services to record-breaking pandemic-driven viewership to mounting ad spend. But with great expansion also comes myriad questions, expectations, and issues.

How do we solve for fragmentation? How will we accurately target audiences and measure advertising? Will there be more inventory options? The list goes on and on.  As the ecosystem evolves, so does the SSP. Ad tech players positioning themselves for the win, are partnering up and consolidating, providing buyer and seller alike less friction and fewer intermediaries. Let the M&A games begin.

We spoke with Ken Suh, Chief Strategy Officer, Unruly to learn more about the future of CTV/OTT, the power of Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) beyond walled gardens, and of course — as we near the end of the third-party cookie — user privacy.

Raquel Hudson: What should publishers and advertisers expect from ad tech partners as the CTV/OTT space continues to grow?

Ken Suh: It’s no secret that the demand for CTV and OTT on both the consumer and advertiser sides is growing at an incredibly fast pace. This means ad tech partners need to innovate and evolve in a way that ensures they’re not just bridging the gap between linear and digital TV buying, but also providing unique enhancements to the measurement, data, and delivery of that supply.

If you look at what we’re doing at Unruly, you’ll see how quickly we’ve evolved as a company – expanding beyond an SSP to become truly a full end-to-end solution that’s inclusive of unique demand from Tremor Video DSP, an ad management platform built specifically for TV, a proprietary DMP, and a dynamic creative studio, Tr.ly.

The more holistic and advanced the offerings that ad tech partners can provide, the more efficient the results will be in terms of both ad performance and inventory monetization — all members of the ecosystem need to keep this in mind in the coming year.

RH: You mentioned data enhancement, which today also includes Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data that is kept behind walled gardens. Why is it so important to have access to ACR data beyond the walled gardens?

KS: Because ACR data recognizes content that appears on a smart TV – whether that’s through a streaming app or broadcast – it’s a powerful tool in tying together linear and CTV/OTT advertising, but it has limitations when kept within the walled gardens.

When buyers are forced to go directly to the sources individually to activate that data, they’re faced with inefficiencies in the buying process, in solving for audience duplication, and in connecting the dots between their digital and linear measurement.

But accessing ACR data holistically outside of the walled gardens on the open web means that it can be deduped at scale, enriched through other sources like set-top-boxes, and give buyers comprehensive measurement of their linear and CTV/OTT plans. Only then can they really unlock the full potential of ACR data.

RH: Ad-supported streaming viewership has seen exponential growth in the past two years. What are some trends that you’re seeing outside of the US in the expansion and adoption of ad-supported CTV/OTT?

KS: We’ve certainly seen a boost in adoption, especially in Europe. The IAB reported that 60% of TV viewers in the UK and Italy watch CTV at least once a month. But a key theme we’ve all seen come up time and time again is the increasing concern around user privacy with digital – and CTV/OTT of course falls into that bucket.

We’ve obviously been talking about GDPR and cookie deprecation for a few years now, but consumers are still keen to understand (and control) who’s using their data, and in what ways. They want a personalized advertising experience but want to ensure they control who is accessing their data. That’s why I’d say solutions like opted-in ACR data from smart TVs and those that utilize publisher-direct data, like content-level targeting, are going to boom and thrive in the future.

RH: What is your prediction for CTV/OTT in the next 5 years?

KS: I think the increased demand for inventory here is going to make the landscape even more of a seller’s market, and subsequently, I expect we’ll see further consolidation in the ad tech space.

Both publishers and buyers will likely reduce their list of ad tech partners down to their most trusted partners, and – as I said earlier – those partners will have to innovate and evolve at lightning speed to bring true value to publishers and advertisers.

That’s why we’ve made big moves like acquiring Spearad, an advanced ad management platform, to not just enable publishers to take better control of their inventory, but also reap both the efficiency and monetization benefits from working with a single trusted partner.

Ultimately, I believe the companies that can forge a strong connection between the buy- and sell-sides are the ones that stand to win here. They can provide the most effective, efficient path forward for both parties to transact.

The post The Future of CTV Is End-to-End appeared first on AdMonsters.

In Part 1, I outlined the challenges that advertisers experience managing reach and frequency for CTV buys. A sample quintile analysis of a frequency distribution is shown in Part 1. In prior, less fragmented worlds of TV buying, these tools were invaluable to buyers and discouraged overdelivery of the same ad to viewers in a short time period. The challenges of fragmented buying channels and technologies (AVOD, Digital T/V Streaming, Programmatic and DAI) and lack of cross-platform measurement were identified.

Now, with the rapid migration of audiences to CTV platforms just as CTV paid and ad-supported channels have exploded on the scene in 2020, both viewers and advertisers are further challenged.

Consumers can see the same ad over and over again—or not at all. Advertising buyers encounter powerlessness in managing frequency, creating a mix of overexposure to some and severe under-delivery of ads to large chunks of viewers. Three key dynamics contribute to this imbalance:

1. Fragmentation of CTV buying options, and a Walled Garden sales approach pushed by the largest CTV providers.
2. Slow movement toward cross-platform ad measurement and tech that would allow for better cross-platform frequency management.
3. Unbalanced supply and demand due in part to pandemic-driven growth of OTT and advertiser distrust of the CTV ecosystem to track and report fraud-free executions.

Here are some of the latest developments with reach and message frequency in CTV and OTT, as well as some insight into what ad tech could be doing to solve these challenges:

CTV Walled Gardens

The Wall Street Journal quotes industry executives who say increased advertising won’t solve the problem of too many ads repeating until a universal ID solution is established. And that is unlikely due to content providers’ insistence on walled gardens.

This creates an over-reliance on using DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) to buy across platforms, yet without a universal ID or other cross-platform measurement solution, it is impossible to know the frequency distribution for a multimedia budget plan or to measure it post-buy.

Some of the established ad-supported streaming services like Hulu (Hulu also offers an ad-free “Flix” version) are doing a fair job within their systems of providing frequency capping as more advertisers come on board.

What Should Ad Tech Do? Ad tech can continue to refine the basic technologies of ad delivery (Addressability, Viewability, DAI (Dynamic Ad Insertion) and ACR (Automated Content Recognition) for CTV within platforms while supporting development of cross-platform measurement tools beyond walled gardens.

Ad Measurement

There was a time when cross-media measurement was possible, if not easy or perfect using Gross Rating Points (GRPs) where each point represents 1% of the target population. Reach was expressed in unduplicated GRPs, while duplicated GRPs took into account frequency of message exposure.

That left a simple formula: Reach x Frequency = Total GRPs which because they were duplicated could exceed the 100% of the population. For example, a media plan might reach 86% of the target population an average of 4.7 times in a flight for a total of 404 GRPs. Deeper research produced frequency distributions (see part 1 of Reach and Message Frequency in CTV and OTT for an example) so advertisers could manage both reach and frequency.

There is movement from the advertiser side and through industry associations to push for cross-media measurement and technologies and guidelines for creating it for the CTV age.

The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) has been pushing hard, joining a global cross-media measurement coalition and is behind the 2020 CIMM (Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement) cross-media measurement manifesto. The timeline for success is foggy.

In December, Nielsen announced a plan for “a single cross-media solution to drive comparable and comprehensive metrics across all platforms” by the end of 2024. Whether that will be enough, and still relevant in four years is a big question, but definitely one worth keeping track of.

What Should Ad Tech Do? Ad tech must contribute to, step up and participate in these initiatives in order to keep the advertiser marketplace healthy, and to keep walled gardens from driving media consumers to ad-free, subscription CTV platforms—what TVREV Co-Founder and Lead Analyst, Alan Wolk, calls “Flix” services.

Supply and Demand

There has also been an explosion of AVOD (Advertising-supported Video On Demand) and FAST (Free Ad Supported T/V) services since Covid-19 restrictions kicked in. Meanwhile, traditional cable TV subscriptions are rapidly declining.

With TV viewing up, and ad budgets down due to the pandemic, advertisers haven’t caught up with the digital CTV expansion of inventory.

What Should Ad Tech Do? Ad Tech can’t do much about supply and demand, however they are key players in supporting the initiatives led by the buy-side to stand up to and solve the problem of proprietary walled-garden protectionism on the supply-side.

The post Reach and Message Frequency in CTV and OTT Part 2—and What Ad Tech Can Do About It appeared first on AdMonsters.

There’s overwhelming fragmentation that poses great challenges for pricing and measurement. And with its high CPMs, the space is extremely prime for fraud too.

There are also challenges related to reach and frequency in the current T/V ecosystem for both consumers and advertisers as well. Here, we’ll take a look at some examples and then dive into reach and frequency analytics.

T/V Consumers Challenge #1: An Annoying Anomaly of AVOD Digital T/V Streaming , Programmatic and DAI

That awkward and confusing moment for T/V consumers when they start seeing the same ad an excessive number of times within a pod, a show, a daypart or a day. Lynne d Johnson wrote for AdMonsters in August 2019: “Since advertisers tend to purchase streaming by impressions, sometimes fulfilling commitments leads to the scenario where a viewer sees the same ad one too many times. … What’s not sold directly, is filled through an ad exchange, which is built to serve pre-roll ads more than TV ads or they’re targeting based on demographics, so the experience is not the best.” As Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) and Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) technologies improve, this should change, but with programmatic partially feeding the proliferation of new streaming services, it may not solve the problem.

T/V Advertisers Challenge #2: Reach and Frequency Data Can’t Yet be Applied Across Media Platforms

With the recent MRC Cross-Media Measurement Standards released in September 2019, a “viewed” T/V impression is an ad with 100% of pixels in view for 2 seconds minimally, with a specific duration of time to be included after a 2021 phase-in. Measurement of unduplicated audiences across platforms and media vehicles won’t arrive until these standards are broadly adopted by providers.

The fragmentation of media options, not just for T/V, but across the different devices (e.g. personal computers, tablets, smartphones and smart TVs), content providers (CBS All Access, NBC Peacock), walled gardens (Hulu, YouTube) and aggregators (Roku, Google Chromecast) works against the broad adoption of universal measurement standards.

Advertisers desperately want ways to de-duplicate cross-platform, cross-media buys and restore their ability to analyze reach and frequency across the quintiles of larger media plans. This was echoed by Mastercard SVP, Global Media Ben Jankowski at the February 6, 2020 CIMM Cross-Platform Media Measurement & Data Summit. There he reiterated that “the goals marketers want from cross-media measurement … is to deduplicate reach of their ad campaigns across TV and all digital platforms, as well as manage frequency.” The ANA is currently conducting a Pilot Test of cross-media measurement while industry trade groups the IAB, the 4As, CIMM, 3MS, ARF, MRC and World Federation of Advertisers’ Media Committee among others are working on cross-platform measurement solutions.

A Quick Review of Reach and Frequency Analytics

The formula R(each) x F(requency) = GRPs (Gross Ratings Points) has long been key to balancing an advertising media mix so the reach of the target audience will be optimized. Through analysis of the frequency distribution, “overkill” frequency against a small portion the target reached can be avoided. By analyzing five equal quintiles of population reached, a traditional TV-only schedule might be seen delivering excessively high average frequency in the top two quintiles (defined as heavy TV viewers) underperforming in the other three.

Frequency Distribution Illustration: 500 GRP Traditional TV Plan Mock-up Targeting US Homes

Here, while the total plan reach of 75% of the target population with an average frequency of 6.67 might seem like acceptable overall delivery for a month, analyzing the frequency distribution shows only 2/5 or 30% of the total population is being reached at satisfactory (3+ in this case) frequency levels. A solution might involve shifting spending from a single to a two-vehicle plan and adding lighter TV viewers (via online news video pre-roll for instance) in a second media vehicle.

GRPs are defined as percent of population reached and may go over 100% since GRPs are a duplicated number used to reflect the overall weight or “pressure” of the plan. Reach is the unduplicated % of a population that is reached, exposed to the ad at least once.

Part 2 of this series on reach and frequency management will address additional challenges and solutions that marketers and their agencies are facing and creating to resurrect this powerful planning and measurement tool globally.

The post Reach & Message Frequency in CTV and OTT: “I Keep Seeing the Same Ads Over and Over Again.” appeared first on AdMonsters.

Many global companies have already adapted to the European Union’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation(s)) and now must add functions to comply with California’s CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) laws that go into effect January 1, 2020, and are enforceable July 1, 2020. Companies operating primarily in the US must now put into place the operations and functions for CCPA and prepare for future state or federal regulations. CCPA focuses on companies doing business in California, which is the world’s fifth largest economy.

Fortune and source Pillsbury Law have outlined requirements for which large-sized companies will need to build response mechanisms in order to comply with California’s CCPA laws. Consumers must be provided:

• The right to request disclosure of detailed data usage policies and partners
• The right to request a copy of the previous 12 months information collected on a specific user
• The right to have such information deleted (with some exceptions)
• The right to request that their personal information not be sold to third parties
• The right to not be discriminated against for exercising any of the new rights

How does CCPA Regulation Differ From GDPR?

According to Pillsbury Law, GDPR compliance is not CCPA compliance. CCPA goes beyond GDPR by adding consumer request responsibilities, a broader definition of data “sales” and more definitions of what the consumer must be able to opt out of.

What Makes T/V (Television/Video) Data Privacy Different From Other Digital Media?

T/V is in a period of rapid expansion for digitally delivered offerings from major new video streaming services. 28 such branded services will be out by this time next year.

If there are seven touchpoints where data is shared in the digital distribution chain:

1. carriers/device manufacturers,
2. digital content/service providers,
3. intermediary selling platforms (SSPs),
4. intermediary exchange platforms,
5. intermediary buying platforms (DSPs),
6. Data Management Platforms (DMPs)/Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and
7. advertisers/agencies—then each of these must be responsible for their own CCPA compliance and for the compliance of others in their chain.

Ad-supported T/V ‘s future relies on an emerging addressable advertising technology, ACR, that will dramatically change T/V advertising delivery, measurement and monetization.

Automated Content Recognition (ACR) allows both subscription providers (like Netflix, Disney+) and ad-supported T/V providers (like Hulu, YouTube) to capture viewing data on screen for smart TV owners, all of whom opt-in to have this and personal identification data shared when they set up their set’s internet access.

This opt-in often is accepted thinking it is permission for the TV manufacturer to use the data, but second-by-second ACR-captured viewing data matched to that device user will also be used by content providers who can sell the addressability to advertisers for a premium price. This demographic, behavioral and geographic “big data” is all gathered on Smart TVs, projected to exist in 75% of all TV homes by 2022 in addition to existing mobile and laptop/desktop usage already capturing that consumer’s behavioral and device-ID data.

How Will Operations Be Affected?

The new CCPA consumer privacy rights require investment—in human resources and technologies to set up and manage compliance functionalities, in new procedures and training and in doing a complete data management audit around what data exists, where data segments reside, which third-party companies touch consumer data, and how it can all be organized around a single consumer identity for opt-out.

EMarketer put out a checklist for companies to review in order to comply with CCPA, and operations will be especially involved especially in these questions:

• Do you have the tools, people and processes in place to comply with both front-end (e.g., privacy policy, consent management) and back-end requirements (e.g., data hygiene, privacy by design, right to delete data or right to be forgotten)?
• Have you conducted a data audit to determine where all personal information is stored and how it is moved between internal databases?
• Have you vetted each partner to ensure they abide by required compliance and consent standards in each of the regions or countries in which you are operating?

One More Thing to Keep an Eye On

For US companies there is speculation that with CCPA going into effect in 2020, it may be better for a federal privacy law to be passed in order to avoid the prospect of having 50 slightly different State laws to adhere to. Microsoft has already announced it will embrace the CCPA guidelines for all US consumers. So, staying on top of any moves by the FTC toward that prospect will be very important going forward. A recent Ars Technica headline stated: “FTC head asks Congress for real privacy laws he can enforce.”

The post Interrupting Regularly Scheduled Programming: Privacy Regulations and the Emerging T/V Ecosystem appeared first on AdMonsters.

First: Digesting Alphabet Soup

As traditional ad-supported linear television morphs into a digital ad buying ecosystem, the jargon and definitions of “Addressable TV,” “Advanced TV,” “OTT,” “Connected TV,” and other acronyms can be inconsistent and create confusion for ad tech, buyers and sellers.

The IAB produced a nice infographic on what they call Advanced TV Targeting in late 2018, which is the best I’ve found in explaining all the moving parts. It defines “Addressable TV” this way:

1. Addressable TV allows advertisers to purchase audiences as opposed to traditional methods of buying based on programming.
2. [It provides the] ability to serve different ad content to different audience segments watching the same TV program on IPTV and set top boxes, based on specific audience targeting, in either live, playback or VOD mode.
3. Addressable VOD: A subset of addressable TV where the ad is inserted into cable programs within the VOD content, accessible through a cable provider set top box.

Contextual Targeting Context

For years, advertisers and marketers have used the programming environment of linear TV to define the audiences that will be reached. The ratings estimates provided by Nielsen explained who was watching TV programs in broad demographic terms (age and sex). That led to different programs, day-parts, and networks commanding different pricing for ads on a CPM basis, depending on whether it had a richer mix of women, men, younger, higher income or light TV viewers etc.

The surrogacy of program viewership, however, is steps away from actual viewership, since the old approach did not even provide commercial ratings, nor whether the viewer was watching the ad or not. It was bought as an opportunity to be seen—and no more.

As marketers began to enjoy the benefits of digital video with its superior targeting, tracking, and accountability, that very broad method of contextual targeting seemed less and less desirable, and the “waste” of reaching viewers outside strict target audience definitions became more and more intolerable. Context alone was no longer enough.

What Does This Mean for Ad Ops?

So much of the future success of addressable TV depends on the migration of digital video best practices and the ability to continually adapt and improve ad targeting as new technologies arrive. And the experience and learning that both video and non-video publishers have gained in the online and mobile programmatic space will be highly valuable in the T/V (Television/Video) world we see emerging.

According to eMarketer, TV still leads single media ad spending at more than $70 billion a year or 29% of all measured ad spending. There are signs that 2020 will be a significant growth year for person- or household-level targeting in TV, driven by arriving technologies.

5 Technologies to Watch for Addressable TV

Ambitious Ad Ops practitioners can invest now in learning about and tracking trends in the following technologies and platforms, knowing that both viewers and advertisers love the ability of TV, soon to be T/V (Television/Video), to tell a great story in sight, sound and motion.

OpenAP introduces standards for targeted TV buying led by the consortium of NBCU, Viacom and Fox by:

• unifying and standardizing targeting for both linear and digital TV platforms, allowing incorporation of first-party advertiser data.
• Testing in second half of 2019 an OpenAP buying platform for advertisers and agencies. This offers an alternative to the many “walled gardens” of Google and Facebook where data is captured, held, and controlled by the owner and sold to the buyer.

ACR is Automated Content Recognition technology that can read what content is showing on an internet-connected screen including Smart TVs. This allows for second by second tracking of viewability, and with device owner permission, matching it to behavioral and demographic audience definitions on a device-by-device basis.

DAI is Dynamic Ad Insertion, that allows content providers to place ads within content for target audience definition (A), with one ad going to one home or device, and a different ad within the same content stream or VOD distribution path that will reach another target (B) home or device.

ATSC 3.0 is defined by Digital Trends as industry-created standards that “combine OTA broadcast signals with your home internet. At the base level, actual programming like shows and movies are broadcast and received over the air, while commercials are provided over the internet [through DAI].” This opens the door to addressable TV within the historically one-way broadcast TV sector.

CDP is Consumer Data Platform and has become a key part of the ad targeting equation this year. AdMonsters describes it this way: “CDPs use first-party data (and can combine it with second-and-third party data) and identity resolution to provide a single customer view that can be accessed in real time for a host of marketing, advertising and customer experiences needs. CDP data is continuously processed and maintains a persistent customer record over time.”

The post Addressable TV: The New Kid in Town appeared first on AdMonsters.

What is ACR?

ACR is a technology that (with device-owner permission) reads pixels on a smart, internet-connected device screen as it delivers content to a T/V consumer—on a second by second basis. A recent Forbes article explains that the data is then shared with the manufacturer’s tracking software, matching them to a database that keeps track of local broadcasts and other T/V content sources.

So What?

In the past, ad value was determined by the “opportunity to expose” a viewer to an ad (not actual verified exposure). The contextual program rating served as surrogate for the commercial rating. ACR helps advertisers know if the ad itself was on-screen for specific viewers and for how long, and will help sellers justify higher rates for verified, completed views. Some points of valuation capturable through ACR include:

• The type of viewing platform—Connected TV, OTT, Linear TV, DVR playback, MVPDs, VOD
• Location—both fixed screen and mobile locations
• Viewer profiles—individual or household demographics and/or IP addresses, aiding cross-media measurement
• Viewing behavior—viewability, program/provider preferences, ad avoidance, ad consumption, time spent, channel surfing, fast-forwarding, binge-watching, completed views etc.

ACR is not only about helping television get more digital; it also allows digitally-delivered video to move beyond impressions and calculate reach and frequency, which has always been a necessity for television buyers.

The real-time nature of recording “glass-level” behavior moves T/V measurement into territory that television has not yet dared to visit. TV must be more measurable in order to compete with other digital delivery platforms. And according to Adweek, “ACR data provides the first independent verifiable source [of addressable audience data] through direct verification.”

This authentication of data, combined with second-by-second viewing measurement plus the door-opening promise of addressable T/V are key reasons why historic television content and measurement giants are seriously investing in ACR:

• After acquiring Gracenote’s Video Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology in 2017, Nielsen has integrated Gracenote-branded technology, unique IDs and metadata (through its own Grabix analytics platform) into an increasing number of its measurement, analytics and advanced advertising solutions according to Nielsen.
• CBS, A&E and MediaTek have joined with Nielsen’s Gracenote in a five-market pilot, enabling the many MediaTek-powered Smart TV platforms to deliver addressable advertising capabilities in live trials.
• Ad Age recently revealed that NBC Universal, CBS, Disney Media Networks, Discovery, AMC Networks, Turner, AT&T’s Xandr, Comcast’s FreeWheel and Hearst TV have formed a consortium with Inscape, a division of Vizio (10 million Smart TVs) to develop open standards for ACR, DAI and addressability across all Smart TVs. It is called OAR, for Open Addressable Ready.

Challenges Ahead

Data privacy issues and the consumer opt-in challenges will guide the level of success that ACR and its sibling addressability technology DAI will bring to the ad industry. As GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act bring legal restrictions or self-regulation, consumer data privacy and how data is used will be a hot issue.

All ACR players will need to stay ahead of regulation by making opt-in transparent to users and terms of use as clear as possible. Digital marketing news publisher DMN calls the February 2017 settlement between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Vizio “ the de-facto case law on the topic”, believing that ACR companies are now required to both prominently disclose the “opt-in” agreement to the consumer and obtain their express consent.

What Now?

By 2021, according to eMarketer, there will be about 114 million Smart TVs in the U.S.—enabled by ACR-capable devices like Roku and Apple TV. ACR is about data, viewability and addressability – all adding obvious value for advertisers and content providers. However, any growth will happen only if consumer benefits like content search, ad relevancy and a saner volume and frequency of ad messages justify viewer decisions to opt-into the ACR process.

Catch John Osborn’s session, “What Do Advertisers Want From Video?” at Ops June 4 in NYC, where he’ll discuss what advertisers want from video in terms of audience targeting, metrics, and most importantly what they should be looking for.

The post Automated Content Recognition (ACR): The Field-Leveling Technology for T/V (Television/Video) appeared first on AdMonsters.