Despite years of talk of “convergence” in media and technology, there is still confusion about how exactly it should play out on the ground, according to an executive trying to help advertisers better understand the market.
“There’s also a lot of confusion around it because oftentimes people think, ‘Oh, connected TV, that’s ‘convergence’,” says Philip Smolin, chief strategy officer at Amobee, an ad-tech platform vendor.
“Convergence is really about how you bring data-driven audience strategies to all forms of TV – that’s connected TV, and it’s linear TV, and it’s addressable TV, and it’s online video, and it’s even social video.
“So solving for that is really a very different problem than what the industry originally solved when you used the term ‘programmatic’ back in the mid 2000s, around remnant display advertising.”
Amobee is a media management software provider helping in the use of data for planning, transacting, measuring and analyzing ads across TV, digital and social.
Amobee, whose TV initiatives took off thanks to its earlier acquisition of Videology Group, helps advertisers buy and sell across 30-second connected TV and other video inventory.
Smolin says his platform enables the fusion of panel planning data and measurement with digital planning data and measurement, and lets advertisers use their first-party audience data for not just programmatic or addressable TV ad buying but also linear TV ad targeting.
The aim is to get “one definition of an audience, and to be able to engage with that audience in a conversation very seamlessly across channels”, Smolin says.
This video is part of a series of interviews conducted during Advertising Week New York, 2019. This series is co-production of Beet.TV and Advertising Week. The series is sponsored by Roundel, a Target company. Please see more videos from Advertising Week right here.
