Advanced TV has become a buzzword, being used as a bucket term to capture everything changing about the television and streaming industries. Nicholas Hartofilis, evp of national video activation at Zenith Media, has a productive outlook on what he wants to see from the industry in the next decade.
“Have [advanced TV] be a complete choice in what targets we can apply, the ability to actually get to a point of true automation, going full end-to-end, and being able to do that at speed and scale. That’s not where we before,” Hartofilis tells Jon Watts, the co-founder and managing partner of MTM London at the Beet Retreat, a half-day Beet.TV event in New York hosted by Publicis Media.
Right now, these capabilities aren’t yet matured, except for data-driven linear, Hartofilis says, which has helped precision in planning and audience targeting and in getting more yield out of TV. “We just now need to get to that next phase, which is beyond planning,” says Hartofilis.
That’s where Zenith’s 2.0 phase comes in. After launching a precision TV service two years ago, returns have diminished as the industry has continued to evolve and the company is now expanding. “[We’re] getting to the point where with one lens you can see a much broader landscape, and starting to take it to the next level,” says Hartofilis. That includes a focus on convergence – taking areas where companies are spending a lot of money and bringing them together in order to make the most of those investments.
More convergence and collaboration will take shape in 2020, says Hartofilis, as companies leading transformation in the industry will need to work together instead of partake in a “data arms race.”
“There’s definitely an arms race – there’s a data arms race, an addressability hidden arms race going on right now and at the end of the day, we need to come together to be able to scale as all collective stakeholders to make sure that what we bring to market is right,” he says.
This video was produced at the Beet Retreat leadership event hosted Publicis Media in New York. The event and video series is sponsored by FreeWheel and LiveRamp. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
