SAN JUAN– Addressability is an area that many are focused on this year, and WarnerMedia is no different. In an interview with Beet.TV at the Beet Retreat in San Juan, David Porter, vp of ad innovation and programmatic at WarnerMedia, emphasized that he’s excited about the progress they’re making in national linear addressable capability.
They have worked both across the company and across the industry to take steps to overcome technical complexities like ad serving and ad replacement.
“What’s most exciting is that they’re collaborating,” Porter says. “This is important because we need to get to standards, things like triggering and signaling, so that we can scale and get to efficiencies.”
WarnerMedia is also in conversation with partners across the supply chain to see how they can enable this technology. When it comes to these specific technical elements, they’re currently piloting a few different parts of the technology. First, they’re testing consumer experience.
“We have premium video content that deserves premium video ads,” says Porter. “So it has to be seamless for the consumer—no slates, no chunks, no bumpiness.”
Secondly, they have to ensure that they can get the right ad to the right household as advertised. Lastly, they’re taking a look at measurement.
“We have to make sure that we can measure the households that get the targeted ad,” Porter said. “But at the same time, there’s what’s called ‘underaddressable’ which are the households that did not see the targeted ad. That’s C3 measurement, so we now have to have a new hybrid measurement of addressable and C3.”
During these pilots, they’ll be working with their agency partners to see what they want out of national addressable capability.
“As the technology building blocks come together, we’ll make sure that we’re delivering value back to our agency partners.” Porter says.
The marketplace has been asking for addressable inventory for a long time. Because of this, Porter said they’re aiming to ramp up their national inventory and make it addressable.
“We’ll have to basically aggregate together multiple different distributors to create this fully national addressable capability.”
This video was produced at the Beet Retreat San Juan 2020 sponsored by 605, DISH Media, NBCU, Roundel & Tubi. For more videos from the series, please visit this landing page.
