CANNES – In a world of seemingly endless video content choices, one thing is still missing: a better value exchange in which consumers realize that watching commercials might just be worth it.
“I think it’s one of the things we’re kind of missing,” Dave Penski, CEO of Publicis Media Exchange Americas, says in this interview with Beet.TV at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
Although he’s encouraged by conversations at Cannes about such a value exchange, it’s still very much a work in progress.
“For a very long time in this business, the reason that commercials weren’t an issue is because the consumer realized they had to watch those in order to get the content they wanted,” Penski says. “Now with so many different options on getting that content without the commercial viewing experience is where it’s challenging.”
In the meantime, he feels that reducing ad loads would be an improvement, but it has to be balanced somehow. “Our clients are not going to pay a 100% premium to cut ads because it doesn’t feel like it’s quite their responsibility. I think it’s going to be a mixture of how you value that impression,” he says.
Part of achieving a value exchange requires that agencies evaluate “what we are producing, what type of ads we’re putting against it and what is that value exchange for the consumer.”
Having attended Cannes for about a decade, one of the things that strikes Penski as a “large surprise” this go-round is the number of U.S. clients on hand and their level of engagement.
“You expect the digital and tech clients, but it’s really across all of our categories,” he says. “They’re looking at this as a place to kind of stop, pause and think about what they’re looking for from an innovation standpoint.”
Mentioning Snapchat and Twitter, Penski has a more positive view of them as partners because they realize they need to do a better job of “putting the advertiser first and having the right ad experience for our clients.”
This video is from The New TV Ecosystem Leadership Forum at Cannes Lions 2017, presented by FreeWheel. For more from the series, please visit this page.
