While NCC Media’s newly announced division will work to advance the national addressable television market, it will employ the same principles—better data, targeting and measurement—to grow the spot TV business. “It’s important to point out that NCC’s traditional business in the spot marketplace is not going to go anywhere,” says Andrew Ward, VP, Comcast Media 360.
In this interview with Beet.TV at the recent Cadent & one2one Media UpFront 2018 event, Ward pegs the spot TV universe at about $30 billion in advertising sales, with the NCC-aligned MVPD’s representing roughly $6 billion. “We actually think there’s a terrific opportunity to grow that spot business by bringing to the table many of the attributes that are going to drive the addressable marketplace around data, targeting and measurement,” he adds.
As with the new NCC division, which is expected to launch in June, the overall concept is to move away from traditional Nielsen age/gender audience measures and “deliver audiences in a more robust manner than traditionally has been afforded” to the local TV marketplace.
Across the 60 or so cable networks “that we insert advertising in each of our markets, that aggregate impression pool is about sixty to seventy percent of total viewing,” Ward explains. With two-thirds of viewing and one-fifth of dollars spent, “We think there’s opportunity to grow that core spot business by layering on increased levels of data, targeting and measurement focused in the spot environment.”
Although the sales structure of the new NCC division will rely on a “very much independent sales effort focused on the national addressable marketplace, we think the work we will be doing in that environment will also fuel the spot marketplace.”
This video was produced at the Cadent & one2one Media UpFront 2018 industry summit. You can find more videos from the series here. The sponsors for this series are Cadent and one2one Media.
