Ongoing data mismatches and the wish of some tech vendors to own the ecosystem mean the true opportunities for selling TV ads using advanced digital techniques have “plateaued”.
That is according to the North America boss of the world’s largest media-buying agency, GroupM.
Tim Castree, GroupM North America CEO, in this video with Beet.TV, says traditional TV, therefore, remains robust with plenty of remaining upside to sell data-optimized traditional TV ad campaigns.
He is calling for “open” standards to change the game.
Castree spoke with Ashley J. Swartz, CEO, Furious Corp, in this recorded discussion at Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!” in August.
Three steps to pace
Castree is calling for three things to accelerate adoption:
- “A simple standard … to agree … to measure all screens on an impression basis.”
- Agreed “data portability back to the customer’s definition of how they want to look at audience”.
- “The ability to define what data I’m going to use to build my advanced audience targeting set.”
Simple standards
Swartz described Castree’s vision for a common standard as “ensuring that they have a UID that allows them to identify unduplicated reach across multiple supply sources.”
He added: “Within that (standard), we’re (need) to understand, who have we reached perhaps, and at what level of certainty, and who have we reached for certain.
“We want to bring other data into systems where we care about people as the central kind of units that we measure things around. I think we can do a lot more with television than we are today.”
Bundling holding back addressable
Castree accused certain vendors of acting in their own best interests.
“We’ve had a lot of systems … a lot of companies trying to bundle data, technology, and inventory, and not bring it back to us,” he said. “(But,) we (at agencies) want to buy that in a disaggregated way.
“Bring the data back to us, so we can de-duplicate it and look across that”
Coming soon?
Some of these challenges may seem big. But Castree is confident. “I think we can get all those three things done in the next year,” he said.
That is because it isn’t the technology holding back adoption, it is protectionism.
“When we don’t operate this way, we give a massive advantage to the walled gardens (Google, Facebook and Amazon).”
And GroupM seems intent on the industry building common standards in an open way.
“Our goal at GroupM is to have an approach … which is not some locked-in GroupM standard.”
This video is part of a series from the Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!” hosted by GroupM Worldwide and sponsored by Amobee, Comcast Spotlight, TVSquared and WideOrbit. Please visit this page for additional segments.
