TV companies in 2019 have been getting better at working with ad agencies to help sell ads in ways that take advantage of advanced TV’s new tricks.
That is the view according to one executive who sits at the nexus of TV, ad-tech and agency professionals.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Philip Smolin, chief strategy officer of Amobee, paints an optimistic picture of evolution.
“The really good news is we’re seeing, I think, across the board in the last six months or so, pretty recently, almost all of them leaning in more than you would’ve expected, on being able to do several things,” he says:
- “Use of data – working as really much more of a partner as opposed to just a vendor, a partner to the large agencies and being able to utilise a brand’s first party data.”
- “Being able to package that, so what they’re selling is not just linear or digital – it’s linear and digital as a function of that audience.”
Smolin was speaking with Jon Watts, partner at TV consulting firm MTM, for Beet.TV.
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.
It is a media management software provider helping in the use of data for planning, transacting, measuring and analyzing ads across TV, digital and social.
Smolin describes how advertisers are now striving to plan and buy TV ads across both traditional linear and new OTT channels in a seamless way, one that takes advantage of features like:
- “The ability to utilise a brand’s first party data to understand definition of audience.”
- “It may be who are consumers who have visited a brand’s website, but did not actually convert.”
- “That conversion doesn’t necessarily mean a product purchase. It could be an insurance company and it’s for quotes or lead generation.”
He recognizes that this evolution is not a zero-sum game in which OTT providers will simply win out over linear – at least, not for all audiences.
“Addressable (TV) is, I think projected, to go to about like 13 or 14%,” Smilin says. “CTV will be a full third of the industry. But the flip side of that is 50% or more is still going to be traditional linear.
“Younger audiences will skew more to CTV. But for most brands it’s about using a combination of them.”
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.
