VIEQUES, PR — It operates what is becoming known as one of the world’s leading addressable TV advertising systems. Now the UK’s Sky is launching AdSmart in to Ireland.
Speaking at the Beet Retreat in Vieques, Puerto Rico, in the middle of March, the satellite platform’s advanced TV director Jamie West said: “Sky AdSmart launched in Italy six weeks ago, it launches in Ireland on April 7 and then in Germany in 18 months’ time.
“It’s important than all advertisers can expect the same quality of service and execution across the different territories.”
AdSmart was launched four years ago, and allows advertisers to pre-fill subscribers’ set-top boxes with ads for custom-targeted play-out during linear TV commercial breaks. It is helping smaller and local businesses buy ads in TV for the first time.
Sky has since launched AdVance to help ad buyers understand frequency of play-out to deduplicated consumers across Sky’s advertising offering, which includes online sales, as well as an analytics tool.
As he aims to deliver an advertiser offering that can match those of Google and Facebook, West says the changes are prompting a reboot of how Sky wants to price its advertising, having introduced a commitment, four years ago, that it would only charge for ad views that were 75% completed.
“TV has the best opportunity now to really differentiate itself,” West said. “TV as a business should have standardised currencies, measurements and metrics. We need to start thinking about the differential between a view on a three-inch screen versus a 52-inch screen.
“We will be transitioning all of our currencies – whether it be long-form video – to be all 75% view-through rate – in a high-engaging, lean-forward environment, where brand messages excel and excite on he big screen.”
This video is part of a series produced at the Beet.TV Executive Retreat in Vieques. The event and series is presented by Videology and 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
