In less than two decades, Experian has evolved from a direct marketing provider with roots in snail mail and email to a big player in cross-channel solutions. Now it would like to expand its measurement capabilities in linear television, but that will require media owners to “play nice” so that everyone can benefit.
“That is where I’d like to see things move a little bit more,” Kevin Heindl, Director of Partner & Advertiser Solutions for Experian Marketing Services, told Beet.TV in an interview last week in Manhattan during the Beet.TV Leadership Summit on cross-screen addressability. “We have our challenges,” he added. “Media operators say, ‘What’s in it for me’? We’re looking to advance their goals.”
Experian considers addressable TV, which is based on anonymous, personally identifiable information about households, to be “a version of the truth” as much as any data can be. “When you start to layer on other facets such as other data points, you’re also dealing with the PII statement of truth, so you’re getting very smart at what you’re doing,” Heindl said after a panel discussion titled “View from the Sell Side.”
He would like to see Experian take the lead in bringing more information together for both targeting and measurement, citing a Forrester Research report about advertisers wanting to consolidate such functions.
“They can’t have 15 entities doing 15 different things because what happens is four channels are all reporting 50 million dollars in revenue but the CMO is seeing $100 million overall,” Heindl observed. “We have to start looking at centralizing the intelligence in the ad sales and measurement so that we can get one version of the whole.”
One year from now, Heindl would be happy if the industry standard has expanded beyond the current two minutes per hour of addressable TV ad inventory and if cross-channel interaction has become less complicated.
“The way we’re going about it isn’t brain surgery,” Heindl said. “It’s not that overly complex, but what we need is the entities involved to play nice. I’d like to see a little more reaching across the table because it’s going to benefit the whole as much as the independent owners. Being a neutral partner, we have the ability to unite the nations if you will.”
This video was produced at the Beet.TV leadership summit in New York on cross-platform addressability on July 26. The event and the series is presented by DISH Media Sales and Experian Marketing Services. Please visit this page to find additional videos from the summit.
