Can industry optimism and collaboration defeat fragmentation? From the viewpoint of Marcien Jenckes, the answer is a resounding yes.
Jenckes, who is President, Advertising, Comcast Cable believes now is the time to be very optimistic about what premium video can be.
“It is the best way for marketers to reach their audiences. We’re coming off of the greatest Upfront in history. There’s a lot of successes that we can look at,” Jenckes says in this interview with Beet.TV at the annual Comcast/FreeWheel Client Summit.
Add to those factors “this incredibly, from my perspective, optimistic collaboration between all the players in the ecosystem.” Whether it’s networks or distributors, “We know the power of what we have and if we work together we can create value for everybody,” Jenckes says.
Now for the challenges. Alongside audience and data fragmentation, they include new digital competition and the need to rationalize different sources of demand.
While the golden age of TV is upon us, more platforms and viewing choices are making it difficult to pull together audiences for advertising purposes. And fragmentation isn’t a problem solely limited to audiences.
“Everybody has their own different data pools. People are struggling for how do you create joint identity across platform, or how do you find that segments you’re looking for across multiple pools of data.”
Among the many tools that Comcast’s Advanced Advertising Group has developed is its new Blockchain Insights Program, which combines the capabilities of FreeWheel, Strata and Visible World. The initiative expands upon the advertising relationship between Comcast and NBCUniversal as well as new collaborations with Disney, Altice USA, Channel 4 (UK), Cox Communications, Mediaset Italia and TF1 Group (France).
The companies will work together on a new and improved advertising approach to facilitate the secure exchange of non-personal, audience insights for addressable advertising.
“For us, making sure that the tools exist for that to happen as efficiently and effectively as possible is critical.”
This interview was recorded in Manhattan as part of the Comcast/FreeWheel 2017 U.S. Client Summit “Unifying The New TV Ecosystem.” This series of videos from the summit is presented by FreeWheel.
