Only one company spent more on US TV ads during the winter holidays, according to iSpot.TV – but Target is still looking for the box in the corner of the living room to prove its worth.
One of the retail giant’s top execs says TV is still performing for the chain – but that doesn’t mean times are not changing.
“We continue to see a reasonably healthy television marketplace,” Target marketing SVP Kristi Argyilan tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We see, in our data, plenty of evidence that our guests are still watching a lot of television.
“But we do see it diminishing a little bit every year … to the mobile phone. We will be following those changes in behavior.”
What does that following look like? For Target, it means a combination of partnering with digital ad companies, reviewing where best to spent traditional TV money and commission creative for new screens.
“We are trying to assign value to all television at this point – there’s a long tail when you consider all the inventory sitting in cable, in particular,” Argyilan adds. “Where is the programming that’s really valuable?”
She says a combination of Target’s own studio, in-house creative department, an Indian creative outpost and its creative agency suppliers are tasked with making new-style ads for a plethora of new platforms.
“We’re able to hit at all levels and altitudes and to create the amount of content that we need,” she says. “We’re still working on the pipes to distribute the content faster.”
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.
