MIAMI – To reach its guests in the most effective ways, Target wants to create “a different kind of video ecosystem.” This requires lots of data—a growing in-house capability of the retailer—a better understanding of the context in which those guests consume media, plus being more nimble with creative versioning.
Target Media Director Nick Jezarian was one of the keynote speakers at the recent Beet Retreat Miami 2017. He shared his views on how Target envisions a more effective ecosystem, the company’s in-house data capabilities and the addressable television venture the company is pursing with its agency, Team Arrow, and NBCUniversal in response to questions from moderator Tracey Scheppach, CEO & Co-Founder of Matter More Media.
To collect and interpret data, Target has “a big group of in-house developers and analysts” but it’s open to and supportive of collaboration with a variety of partners.
In Jezarian’s words: “The goal of what we’re building is not to alienate or isolate Target from the rest of the marketplace. We’re bringing it in-house because we’re trying to thread together and make some more sense of the chaos that is in the marketplace right now. But we believe that’s going to require a lot of deep partnerships and relationships.”
He described the need for more than just a couple of creative executions for campaigns, which has been the norm in TV for a long time. The retailer’s in-house unit, Target Creative Studio, complements its work with Team Arrow and other outside partners.
Creative “is the number one thing that we’re focused on” and “not just letting an investment level or a production budget dictate how much content you’re going to create,” he said. “So we’re actively trying to figure out how to become more nimble to create more content so that we can be more relevant.”
Target hasn’t prioritized research into over-the-top viewing versus linear TV, according to Jezarian. But given the prevalence of binge and marathon watching behaviors in OTT, “Actually we need to pay attention to that because that’s where you can show up in a really tone-deaf way if you’re not thinking about your content and your experience very well.”
Team Arrow and NBCUniversal are partners with Target on addressable TV ads, an effort that Jezarian describes as “not the entire end game” but something that can help to inform creative and program choice decisions. “It’s a place where content really matters” while creating “some resource challenges that you need to figure out as well to really go deep in that space and be successful.”
This video was produced at the Beet Retreat Miami, 2017 presented by Videology along with Alphonso and 605. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
