While it seems inevitable that targeting TV audiences at a set-top box level will become a widespread practice, the targeting of individual households at massive scale seems like a less assured eventuality.
“This is really about human behavior; it’s not really about what technology will allow,” says Ashley J. Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp., which is building an inventory management platform to help video programmers maximize revenue for their ad inventory, in an interview with Beet.TV. “The reality is that if the true demand was there and the economic upside and incentive was, we would be there a lot faster.”
She likens it to how cable TV still hasn’t unbundled “in a pure sense,” even though there was a sense that consumers were insistent that it would. But it still hasn’t come to pass.
The opportunities afforded by addressable TV are clearly immense, and marketers are hungry for the ability to measure their television buys with the precision and granularity of digital video. However, Swartz observes that the industry is proceeding with caution, and the existing model for how TV is bought and sold remains entrenched.
“We will continue to perpetuate the old-media traditions of television and the business models until they don’t serve us anymore,” she says. “So the reality is that I think we’re a bit away from true addressability and specifically on an individual household level.”
Beet Retreat on Addressable TV
The topic of addressable TV will be the subject of a three-day executive retreat at the W Fort Lauderdale, November 11-13. Swartz will be one of the featured speakers.
