Two years after the launch of Discovery Engage, a data-driven linear television targeting solution, Discovery has expanded from three targetable categories to nine. Now bolstered by its acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive, Discovery is in a pilot with Sorenson Media to offer advertisers “a complete marketing mix,” says Discovery’s Keith Kazerman.
“Many clients now are using first-party data to apply to their linear TV buys. It is the full national scale in that entire break, but we’re able to find the highest concentration of that target audience and deliver that spot to those households in a much more effective and measurable way,” says Kazerman. “Really, every major advertiser group has leaned in at this point.”
Asked about Discovery’s work with Sorenson in this interview with Beet.TV, Kazerman says it’s aimed at filling a gap in what Discovery’s national portfolio can deliver to advertisers. He notes that cable has always been good at top-of-funnel reach at scale.
“Now with Engage, we can reach consumers in a consideration set, middle of sales funnel. The one piece that hasn’t really been answered at scale yet has been addressable or dynamic ad insertion on live linear feeds.”
This is why Discovery is teaming with Sorenson to figure out “how we can look to solve that problem and really have a complete media plan through all cycles of that sales funnel for an advertiser. And addressable is I think is that last missing piece that national TV is lacking.”
Sorenson’s technology, when embedded in Samsung TV sets, can detect and analyze everything that appears on the screen. The company works with publishers to help optimize advertising and shares some of the revenue with Samsung.
Advertiser adoption of data for TV targeting “continues to build momentum and very quickly,” Kazerman says. “We’re seeing now a handful of clients that are moving their dollars entirely in the Upfront through Discovery Engage. Which I think is indicative of the marketplace and the power of the data that clients have at their disposal and how they want to apply it to TV.”
Like other TV providers, Discovery is experimenting with new ad formats to improve the viewer experience. Kazerman believes there will need to be some level of industry standardization for such formats down the road.
This video is part of the Beet.TV series titled Addressable TV Evolves sponsored by Sorenson Media. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
