MIAMI – With some 250 addressable television ad campaigns under her belt, Tracey Scheppach’s worldview as she ventures out on her own can be summed up in four words: “From the couch out.”
That’s because the CEO & Founder of the agency Matter More Media intends to “push myself to do everything different than a normal agency would do,” Scheppach explains during an interview at the recent Beet.TV Retreat 2016. “Right now, a lot of digital players are building digital back to the couch. I like to think of TV as the first thought, not an afterthought.”
Interviewed by Tim Hanlon, Founder and CEO of The Vertere Group, Scheppach traces the genesis of her fledgling business effort to a personal desire to make media matter more for advertisers, consumers and programmers. “I do believe in the long term, all television is digital, all digital is addressable and all addressable is programmatic,” is how she sees the future.
Even though just about one percent of TV spending is done on an addressable basis, “I do believe that’s a great place to start,” she notes, adding “There’s a huge mid market” of advertisers that are great candidates for addressable.
One of her favorite examples is the $2,000 Peloton spin bike, which Scheppach thinks “is perfect for addressable” because of its price point and niche audience. To her chagrin, Peloton ran direct response ads during the recent World Series, “which I don’t think is right for their brand.”
As she seeks her first clients for Matter More Media, Scheppach has a good idea of her better prospects: marketers with between $10 million and $20 million to spend and an incidence size of between five and 15 percent.
Asked by Hanlon to place addressable TV ads on the spectrum of pricing—from premium to direct response—Scheppach says “I think of addressable as premium” but notes that it’s still early in the pricing game.
“Some categories are starting to get priced out of the marketplace,” says Scheppach, citing the example of consumer packaged-goods. “It’s very hard if you’re selling bleach and you make five dollars a year on a loyal customer to justify addressable CPM’s.”
It will be up to individual media sellers to understand where to price the marketplace. “It’s really early to make any kind of bets on where addressable should end. But I believe it’s a premium product,” Scheppach says.
This interview was conducted at Beet Retreat 2016: The Transformation of Television Advertising, an executive retreat presented by Videology with AT&T AdWorks and the 605. Please find more videos from the event here.
