PHOENIX – When it comes to advertising, screen size matters and it all starts with the big TV. The first exposure to a brand message begins the storytelling, which then leads to finding “that same user, same household, same viewer on other screens either for down-funnel messaging in web video, mobile video or even display,” says MediaMath’s Mike Fisher.
This is particularly appealing to so-called direct-to-consumer brands with traditional digital video assets they can now extend to TV, the company’s VP and Head of Advanced TV and Video says in this interview with Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting.
What those newer brands have in common is that they probably haven’t had a relationship with a traditional agency while growing their businesses on the Internet with one-to-one, measurable marketing. They’re attracted to things like programming and tent-pole events they’ve never been able to access. “Programmatic really fits well into that pipe especially for TV, which is why direct to consumer is so big for us,” Fisher adds.
As video SSP’s continue to evolve, MediaMath’s model is “to focus on running on the rails that the publisher wants us to run on. A lot of our partners build leverage, Telaria and other video SSP’s, as their connection point for us into their inventory.”
This, in turn, “allows us to connect to multiple supply sources. It allows them to connect to multiple demand sources without having to do one-to-one integrations with networks.”
Working closely with its supply-side partners and TV networks yields lots of “cool things,” including enabling the passing of show titles, obtaining more information about viewing habits, which can then enhance the bid stream.
“Another really exciting we’re working on is being able to know how long someone has been in a viewing session,” Fisher says. “If someone’s spending four hours binging TV content, being able to hit them early with a message is so much more memorable and important than hitting somebody later in a binge session with a message.”
Working with SSP’s “we’re really able to determine how many ads that person has seen and use that to determine bidding.” Fisher describes the strategy as “this is what our outcomes are, this is where we want to be spending, but make sure we’re surfacing the right message and the right creative at the right time for that person, without needing to set up a separate strategy for video, and a separate strategy for TV and a separate strategy for display. Letting it all talk to each other, letting it all optimize across full funnel.”
Asked about the use of custom creative at various points in the purchase funnel, Fisher recommends that marketers use the same creative spots in connected TV as in linear.
While MediaMath isn’t seeing 10,000 different versions of a piece of creative, “some of our smarter clients are saying that after first impression happens with that mass-market creative, then start focusing more on driving a message for that specific user based on what we know about that user and their online behaviors.”
This segment is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2019, Phoenix. This series is sponsored by Telaria. Please find additional videos from the series on this page.
