Major TV platforms are intent on selling ads targeted at individual households. They just would like to see a few industrial changes in order to fully realize that dream.
In a panel discussion at Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!”, three TV platform representatives discussed their take on “addressable” TV.
Ahead of next year’s 2020 US presidential election, two of them said that electoral candidates are big customers for local addressable TV ad campaigns.
Ashley Swartz, Furious Corp CEO, led the discussion with:
- Jennifer Donohue, Hulu VP local advertising sales
- Sean Robertson, DISH Network General Manager, Addressable & Programmatic at Dish Network
- Andrea Zapata, Comcast Spotlight VP research and insights
DISH talks politics
“We started this addressable journey seven years ago,” Robertson said. “We have the set top box data. Let’s use that to make our advertisers more enabled and more capable to reach a target audience.
“One of the early adopters to addressable was the political marketplace. It’s not (for them) enough to do (targeting by) age, gender and geo because you and your neighbor will have different politics.
“We looked to streamline that process and formed a joint venture (with DirecTV) called D2 where all political dollars to our two firms on an addressable scale are coming through one joint department.”
Comcast looks ahead
“Comcast has invested in technologies like blockchain, Blockgraph,” said Zapata. “I mean we are really looking at making sure like right now in the local space, we’re doing BYOD (Bring Your Own Data) actually for political ads. We are doing some really cool things in the local space.
“In five years what I would really like to see is, ‘How do we get addressable? How do we get national, how do we get geo all actually bought from the same team?’ It’s audience focused, it’s platform agnostic, it’s network agnostic. And there’s a currency that actually looks at (it) impression-based and de-dupes (audiences).
Hulu re-thinks ads
“At Hulu, the nice thing about our local team is that we can execute with an ease on the client side,” Donohue said. “You can buy every DMA (designated market area) in the United States or you can buy down to one zip code.
“It doesn’t just have to be a 15-second spot or 30-second spot. You could use our ads selector, make a decision. The viewer could decide, “I’m going to watch a two-minute commercial and then be ad free, a binge ad or a pause ad.”
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.
