With more than 20 years of experience in various forms of traditional direct-response media, Assembly’s Fabian Villegas sees elements of DR appearing in some very non-traditional places, including addressable television.
“The DR and the general market environments are sort of merging a little bit. So now everything is going to be measured, whether it’s a DR campaign or whether it’s a general market national campaign,” says the agency’s VP and Director of Performance Video.
Assembly defines addressable as the ability to target an audience, measure the exposure and understand how they are connected, Villegas explains in this interview with Beet.TV.
“For DR, since everything that we do is measured, it’s a supplement to measurement. We identify an audience through addressable and then we find out whether that validation of that target meets the measurements.”
Asked about addressable inventory that Assembly surfaces for its clients, Villegas says it’s divided into two streams, the first being premium inventory. “If we go after a target, there is inventory that serves that target,” he says.
“On the flip side, there’s what is called an under-deliverable addressable. There’s inventory that’s left over that is not being targeted. We can take advantage of both.”
For some of the virtual MVPD’s like Sling TV, “We can take advantage of the under-addressable inventory at a cost effective CPM.”
He sees a culmination of both entities merging together as more marketers try to get a better handle on understanding measurement and targetability.
“Whether it’s placed in an Upfront or whether it’s placed in scatter or whether it’s placed in DR, everything will get measured in some way, shape or form and follow that journey from investing to an execution to an understanding of how that consumer went through the media journey.” Villegas says.
The pricing advantage that Assembly has under the “DR umbrella” is that there’s more flexibility in terms of coming in and out of inventory quickly. “The understanding of the inventory that we have is the same as a general advertiser, but we have more flexibility in terms of pricing, in terms of flighting.”
A certain level of timidity with regard to address drives from its complexity—at least on the surface, according to Villegas. But there’s nothing stopping advertisers from executing the basics.
“It has to do with targeting, data, there’s a lot of logistics that have to happen. In its simplest form, there’s ways to use addressable by simply targeting a household. Now the measurement part is a little bit more complex, but it also depends on what it is that you’re trying to go after.”
This video is part of the Beet.TV series titled Targeting Today’s TV Viewer sponsored by DISH Media Sales. It is published along with this DISH Media Sales Straightforward Guide in ADWEEK. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
