SANTA BARBARA — It was back in mid-2018 that AMC Networks first said it would allow advertisers to dynamically insert ads to reach specific households.
That was after AMC Networks – whose portfolio includes AMC, IFC, SundanceTV, WE tv and BBC America – hired Adam Gaynor, the long-time DISH Network executive who oversaw media sales including addressable TV initiatives.
Fast-forward a year, and Gaynor says AMC’s addressable TV approach will involve partnership, evolution and complementary context.
Ad versioning
“At first when we launch addressability, we’re going to look at what I believe is versioning,” Gaynor, now VP of AMCN Agility, tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “If an advertiser wants to come in, they can immediately have different messages to different parts of their core audience.
“As we each test out the systems, and the platform, and the capability, we’ll then – at our own pace, really – be able to evolve that to what we call aggregation or multi advertiser addressability, to really think about the best ways to help those advertisers reach the audiences.”
AMCN Agility is a data-driven sales team the network created early in 2018.
It includes AMC’s Aurora video targeting platform, which can utilize audience segments.
Partnership
To advance the opportunity, AMC has joined Project OAR, the addressable TV standards consortium that is “Open Addressable Ready” but is led by TV manufacturer Vizio and includes Disney, NBCU, Turner, CBS, AT&T’s Xandr and others.
“There are different pieces that have to bring addressability together,” Gaynor says. “So you need a decisioning system, you need a watermarking system, you need tags, you need a lot of tech that helps bring that product to life.
“Each of us are going down our own path of bringing those things together. We’re feeling really good about the partners that we’ve chosen to sort of stitch things together to bring this capability to life on our national inventory across smart TVs.”
Inventory
With the likes of AMC Networks joining the addressable TV advertising fray, many observers may be tempted to wonder – do they networks want to wrestle control of ad sales from under the noses of cable operators?
“The answer is ‘no'” Gaynor says. “I think everybody has talked for so long about needing more inventory and more capabilities. We look at complementing … that inventory.
“When you think about addressability, it really allows advertisers to find their consumers wherever, whenever. And so context gets removed from that equation. At the network level, we can bring context back into question.”
This video is from a series leading up to, and covering, the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara. This Beet.TV series is sponsored by Xandr. Please visit this page to find more videos from the series.
