After reducing the ad load in some of its programming on truTV and TNT, Turner has seen a corresponding ratings lift while seeking to bring more native ads to television as a complement to the ad reduction. And in this interview with Beet.TV during the 2017 TV Upfront, Ad Sales President Donna Speciale says she expects more media companies will be joining the Fox-Turner-Viacom audience targeting OpenAP.
“We’ve seen ratings lifts in both areas,” Speciale says of the truTV and TNT ad reduction efforts, along with “increased brand affinity to the messages that have been within those pods.” Specifically, she says C3 ratings—which track average commercial minutes in live programming plus total playback by digital video recorder out to three days after—was “probably anywhere from five to seven to ten percent lift,” depending on the programming.
“It’s going to be continuing. truTV might be adding some more of their programming with LCI and there are going to be more originals on TNT in 2018 where you’re going to be seeing reduced commercial load,” says Speciale.
On the native ad front, Turner has been asking clients to take some of the one- to two-minute messaging they’ve done in the digital space and bring it to TV. In addition, its content studio has been marrying Turner’s talent ranks with ad messaging and environments. “And that’s going to have a huge pop and resonate really well with the consumer right now.”
Turner uses its targeting capabilities to find the right placement for native content across its entire portfolio, as Advertising Age reports.
According to Speciale, OpenAP was a direct response to clients “asking us to get together.” Even though the individual member networks had focused on their own audience targeting capabilities, “Some of the comments have been ‘it’s great but it’s a little complicated, it’s not scalable. Would you guys consider coming together?’”
She believes the consortium will be a “catalyst” to spur more advertiser interest in audience targeting using their own data sets during this year’s TV Upfront.
“We have been getting a lot of response from other media companies and we are hoping shortly that we’ll be able to announce other people joining the consortium,” Speciale says.
This segment is part of a series leading up to the 2017 TV Upfront. It is presented by FreeWheel. To find more videos from the series, please visit this page.
