We have seen new TVs come with curved screens – but what if the next shape in TV was hockey-stick?

That is the growth trajectory the industry is now seeing in the realm of advanced TV advertising, the practice of serving TV ads targeted to individual viewers.

“I think that the conversation has really shifted to advanced TV, whether that is even indexed linear, or it’s addressable linear through set-top box or satellite, and then of course connected TV and OTT,” says Andre Swanston, CEO of Tru Optik, a data management platform which facilitates ads for connected TV platforms

“That’s what people are almost leading the conversation with now … and you’re seeing lots of dollars shift.”

Swanston was speaking with Beet.TV at Beet Retreat In The City. Tru Optik’s technology helps marketers with targeting OTT viewers, measuring consumption and tracking attribution using first- and third-party data.

The Stamford, CT-based outfit claims its technology has sight of what 500 million consumers in 150 countries are viewing or listening to, out of a library of 20 million titles.

Videology previously tapped Tru Optik, which sees clients of the former use the latter’s data about OTT viewing to better segment and target viewers.

“What we’ve seen, even anecdotally, is we’ve seen our existing clients and TV networks and publishers, even the ad tech platforms, we’ve seen like over 8X increase just in the last two quarters in terms of data used across connected TV and OTT,” Swanston adds.

“We don’t have quite as much visibility into like, the addressable TV, but I can imagine that it’s just kind of an industry-wide thing.”

Why the Beet Retreat Matters

Swanston also spoke about the Beet Retreat In The City event, saying he was pleasantly surprised to hear a panel discuss the potential benefits of blockchain in advertising.

“I don’t know how Andy and the team at Beet pull it off,” he said. “I mean, you don’t even have to ask for an intro to a big-name exec – just show up at a Beet event and you’ll eventually meet them. That’s why I think you’ll see people fly in from wherever. I’m happy that I keep getting an invite.”

The interview was conducted at the Beet Retreat in the City at the post event reception by Matt Prohaska, CEO and Principal of Prohaska Consulting.

This video was produced at the Beet Retreat in City & Town Hall on June 6, 2018 in New York City. The event and video series are presented by LiveRamp, TiVo, true[X] and 605. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on    @robertandrews