The barbarians of the digital age are at the gates of traditional television. The question is, can the traditional TV industry work together enough to keep out the likes of Apple and FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google)?
That’s the advanced TV battlefield as sketched out by Tony Yi, who is GM Strategic Commercial/Business Development at Videology.
“As an industry, there is a lot at stake right now,” Yi says in this interview with Beet.TV.
Given about a $2.5 trillion market capitalization of FANG, their conquering the TV space isn’t optional, according to Yi. “It’s a must-have for shareholder growth.”
But their onslaught comes at a time when programmers and service providers are coping with lots of consumer behavior shifting, cord cutting and the cost of creating content.
“There’s a lot of market dynamics working against the traditional television space and a lot of market dynamics working for the folks like FANG and Apple,” Yi says.
The big question: “Will the traditional media space suffer the same fate that the digital publishing space realized? We hope not.”
As it works with media companies of every stripe to up their technology game on the sales side, Videology fears fragmentation.
“The issue is, if it happens in individual silos and fragments, our fear is that the technological advancements actually accelerate the barbarians getting through the gate.”
What’s needed is more “strong direction” from the industry, including initiatives like the OpenAP audience buying consortium of Fox, Turner and Viacom, according to Yi.
Although data and inventory optimization are different pieces of the whole puzzle, “ultimately it’s about the marriage of the data and the inventory” and business outcomes.
“Google, Facebook and Amazon are going to have incredible multi-asset attribution capabilities,” Yi adds. “They see every search, they see the majority of purchases online. Without a very strong attribution, outcomes-based validation of the industry efforts around cross-screen advertising, it’s going to be very challenging to fend off FANG and Apple.”
This video is part of a series of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Advanced Advertising conference held during NYC TV Week. Beet.TV’s coverage is presented by 4C Insights. Please find additional videos on this page.
