Bloomberg Media wants all its outposts to remain free. That’s going to require continued advertiser finance. So it’s no wonder the company is frustrated with the state of TV ad sales.
Bloomberg TV sales head David Bickford wants to teach the old dog of telly some new tricks – namely, the kind of measurement and analytics advertisers now get online.
“When you’re placing an ad on TV, you can buy an ad at a specific time and you get a spot schedule,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “That doesn’t translate to digital.
“That is really holding everybody back.
“Until that’s solved, you’re never going to get to what some people refer to as the ‘holy grail’ – ‘I want to buy a spot ‘here’ and have it run at the exact same time any way it’s consumed’.”
Bickford blames lack of analytics and lack of ad insertion technology in the TV space. There are dozens of ad-tech vendors trying to approach the problem, but Bickford says technology isn’t ready for primetime, while addressable-TV platforms go against the aim of mass-reach TV.
We interviewed him as part of our series on the need for standards around premium video advertising. The series was produced around the NAB Digital Summit in Las Vegas. This series on Beet.TV is sponsored by the NAB.
