While there’s no shortage of data available for enhanced consumer targeting, some advertisers still cling to gross rating points and broad demographic targets. “Some clients are opting in a little bit more than others,” says Anthony Laurenzo, SVP, Non-Linear Video, Dentsu Aegis. “We’re starting a slow evolution away from age and gender demography to more strategic targets and even guaranteeing those strategic targets in certain instances.”
Dentsu Aegis has gone full throttle on its custom platform, M1, the most recent data integration being with IRI. As announced early last month, M1 will now allow custom audience creation utilizing IRI Verified Audiences and/or IRI ProScores audiences linked to first- and/or third-party data.
In this interview with Beet.TV, Laurenzo explains why he is bullish on current and emerging data sources like automatic content recognition.
“Audience buying is definitely where we want to get to as an industry. Anybody you speak to on both sides of the desk would probably say our reliance on age and gender demographics for transactional purposes is really outdated,” Laurenzo says. “We have all this data that can tell us who’s watching what content, why can’t we transact on those more granular targets?”
Agencies are still “very much held accountable” to segments like adults 18-49 and the price at which they can transact for gross rating points. “It’s ‘as long as you get me this price on this demographic then you’re doing okay’ versus I want you to buy the audience that we need to hit and then if that audience then goes and makes some sort of action.”
Laurenzo says there’s no shortage of audience-based television advertising inventory in the marketplace. “Every network group has their own audience-based platforms that we can leverage and they’re making a lot of inventory available through those platforms.”
The question is what’s the right data to use and when would you use it, according to Laurenzo.
“There are a lot of partners now with ACR technology and I think that’s great,” he says, citing Vizio, Samsung, Samba and Alphonso. “It’s really changing the game in terms of measurement.”
He cautions that despite the plethora of data available, “It’s muddy. Not all the data’s perfect. You have to really go through the methodology of how they’re collecting everything. But I’m actually bullish on the data marketplace.”
This video is part of a series The New Marketplace for Television Advertising, presented by dataxu. Please find more videos from the series here.
