As addressable television advertising closes in on some 80 million homes by year’s end, Sorenson Media is emerging as “kind of a new player in this area” with a clear differentiation, says MODI Media’s Marc Cestaro. “They have not only national avails, they have local avails that go across cable and broadcast, which is new. “
In this interview with Beet.TV, the WPP agency’s Director, Addressable Lead talks about the complexity of executing addressable TV campaigns for GroupM agencies across various MVPD’s from clients, ranging from adult diapers to luxury cars.
“They’re not necessarily one provider,” Cestaro says. “When you think of adding the satellite guys and the cable guys together, that’s all incremental reach. But where Sorenson is unique is they sit on top of that. So they can extend reach and they have access to different inventory that we haven’t really tapped into yet.”
MODI has seen good results for clients using addressable but it’s a fluid playing field. “There’s a lot of learning curves, there’s a lot of new growth in the space and with that comes new clients and new opportunities,” he says.
“The providers don’t necessarily work together. Everybody has their own data, their own buys, there’s no magic solution that goes across everyone so it’s a manual process.”
Cestaro likens Sorenson’s positioning in the market to that of Apple Pay.
“Meaning they’re not Visa, they’re not Mastercard they’re not Discover. Those companies kind of sit there. But they’re kind of sitting on top of that and they’re helping direct or being the pipes behind a more aggregated approach and a more wide-scale approach,” he says of Sorenson.
From an inventory standpoint, Cestaro doesn’t think there’s limited supply of addressable TV inventory. “Can there always be more? Absolutely. The demand is high.”
With about two-thirds of U.S. households able to be targeted with addressable ads, some marketers are testing addressable while others keep returning to it, having navigated the learning curve.
“You’re going from GRP’s to impressions,” says Cestaro. “The way we buy it is different. The way we target is very different. Even the back end piece is all different.”
As addressable continues to scale, “What Sorenson is doing is taking what was there and really just doing it a different way that hasn’t quite been done yet and it’s really allowing for more of a top level approach.”
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.
