CANNES—Perhaps the best way to summarize a panel discussion with executives from LiveRamp TV and NCC Media about advanced-TV interoperability is the following quote from NCC CEO Nicolle Pangis: “We’re in the bottom of the first inning of a baseball game that’s going to go into extra innings.”
This theoretical game isn’t going to be won by the emergence of one overriding supply side platform, Pangis predicted in this segment, which was recorded at the Beet.TV advanced TV summit, presented by Amobee and hosted by Hearts & Science at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Moderator Tracey Sheppach asked what it is that buyers can ultimately expect to see. “Once we move through this innovation, do I have two logins to two different systems Xandr and NCC? Is that what it looks like?” said Scheppach, the CEO & Founder of Matter More Media.
“I think the future of collaboration in television is a much different discussion than what a lot of people are having, which is like ‘come on my platform and then you can use my demand-side’…that is not the way we’re going to get far fast,” responded Pangis. “It’s how do we connect with one another and sort of bring each of our super powers together, and the demand side is always going to want to do something a little different.”
Allison Metcalfe, GM of LiveRamp TV, explained that about two years ago, LiveRamp began to focus on automation to better serve the sell-side. Last fall, the company sold Axciom, the data provider that had itself acquired LiveRamp in 2014. “Life has changed pretty dramatically since then,” said Metcalfe.
Along the way, LiveRamp figured out that it needed to pay more attention to the buy-side. “The reality is that LiveRamp sits on the CRM’s of close to four hundred of the largest brands in the US and internationally. Those brands rely on us for people-based marketing strategies. It’s very natural that they would look to us to help them understand what’s possible in TV,” said Metcalfe.
Easier said than done, she went on to explain. Her team of four full-time people whose daily mission is to evangelize advanced TV to brands typically come away from meetings with “a list of twelve questions” regarding how to reach those brands’ audiences across platforms “and it takes us months to answer those questions.”
Even when such discussions lead to a purchase order, the entire process can take six months. “If we could get that to maybe two or three months, that would be a win for both Nicolle and I.”
One advantage of distancing itself from Axciom is that it dispels doubts about perceptions of LiveRamp’s neutrality, according to Metcalfe. “We are a technology platform with a data marketplace.”
Under the leadership of Grant Ries, LiveRamp is helping companies that have data assets but never considered themselves to be data suppliers. Metcalfe cited the example of travel data co-op Adara, which came to LiveRamp because it wanted to get into TV.
“So now we’re able to offer some really unique targeting capabilities to the travel industry, which historically wasn’t a really big buyer of advanced TV strategies,” Metcalf said. “We’re seeing a lot of trends like that.”
This video is from Cannes Lions if from our series, Capitalize on Convergence, presented by Amobee. For more videos from the series, visit this page. To find all Beet.TV coverage from Cannes, please visit this page.
