Just because consumers have lots of video delivery choices—whether it’s VOD or one of several other acronyms—doesn’t mean advertisers should think of those platforms as silos to be filled with ads. They should think holistically when balancing unit-based ads with impression-based ads while working to improve the ad-viewing experience, says Adam Gerber.
Everything starts with how media companies choose to integrate their advertising models, the President of Global Media for GroupM’s Essence agency explains in this interview with Beet.TV.
“Some are choosing to run a simulcast of their existing over the air feed, which would include whatever advertising is running through traditional MVPDF’s or over the air,” says Gerber. “Others are choosing to dynamically ad serve into the DMVPD stream and make it much more like a digital kind of environment, where impression-based media is being bought and sold and decisioned at an ad-server level, and a campaign level.”
Essence doesn’t focus on platforms for the sake of platforms, according to Gerber. “I think it’s a big mistake to try to break the marketplace down into DMVPD’s, MVPD’s, satellite, traditional VOD, on demand through OTT, traditional FEP distribution through desktop and tablet or mobile. All of those things are simply the consumer choosing to watch TV content one of two ways. Either live or on demand.”
What’s common to all those choices is that advertising is sold two ways. The first is unit-based within a show that reaches everyone who’s watching, “or impression based where I’m delivering an impression-based decision in real time,” says Gerber.
There are different ways that advertisers execute platforms and there are limitations along the way. “That will go away over time as the marketplace moves to more consistent standardized delivery platforms, but I really think it’s a mistake to think things in silos.”
An overarching concern should be how to stem the flow of viewers to non ad-supported services, Gerber adds.
“The challenge for marketers in that environment is that the more that we don’t fix the traditional ad model in the video ecosystem, the more migration we’ll see to non ad-supported environments. And that is a bad thing all the way around for marketers, for publishers and media companies, for agencies.”
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.
