LONDON — The UK’s pay-TV company Sky has blazed a trail by serving billions of addressable TV ads, those targeted at individual households. But German addressability is limited by regulation.
Yes, for addressable TV as for plenty else besides, in Europe, things can get fragmented.
The new unit established by GroupM to smoothe the path to buying addressable campaigns by aggregating inventory has picked the UK to start. But that doesn’t mean Finecast doesn’t have bigger ambitions.
Asked what it would take for the technology to hit scale across Europe, GroupM CEO, EMEA, Dominic Grainger says in this video interview with Beet.TV: “I think it requires a really appetite from the different broadcasters to invest behind it. And to see the future.
“The challenge is that there’s many different markets and many different players, and a lot of those players don’t particularly want to work together in this space necessarily. So there may be different solutions even within one market.”
The agency’s business unit aims to “help advertisers address hard-to-reach TV viewers through a single access point with standardised measurement”.
The company, which says it is more a tech company than an agency, has previously said it wants to roll out to global markets.
It also plans to deliver a self-serve tool to both agencies and brands.
“Something like addressable can be a step change and I think that can really give so many more, not just targeting opportunities and creation of different audiences, but actually creative solutions for our advertisers as well,” Grainger adds.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.
