At the end of an otherwise “crazy” year, DISH Media sees a way forward after strong momentum in the growth of addressable TV ad sales.
In June, DISH Media told Beet.TV it was selling 60% of ads programmatically.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Kevin Arrix, Senior Vice President, DISH Media, says players in an increasingly splintered industry need to come together in pursuit of openness and a common goal.
Catalyzing collaboration
Arrix sees strong momentum around the advancement of advertising technology, with plenty of healthy competition amongst distributors and programmers, tech companies and measurement providers.
DISH’s goals are two-fold, Arrix says:
- To be a catalyst to companies marching in the same direction.
- To partner with a strong collection of advertisers, peers and competitors to hash out evolving approaches.
“Our goal is to bring clarity to the forefront around what the biggest priorities are not only for DISH,” he says, “but everybody in the addressable space, so that we can lock arms as we hit 2021 and keep bringing what the industry does want and keep evolving to a world of better data-driven advertising.”
Arrix continues: “We’re big proponents of open. Open from our point of view is going to be key to success in this fragmented media market going forward. There isn’t going to be one central technology that everyone is going to use. You have to be interoperable, and you have to plug in as a supply side, and as a publisher side. It’s our obligation to plug into tech and platform that our clients select, so interoperability is really important.”
National addressable
DISH Media has been expanding its addressable capabilities for a few years now. Twelve months ago, it launched Reach Booster, a tool that can extend the national reach of brands’ ad campaigns.
It also launched a creative versioning tool for campaigns. But Arrix says most momentum is happening on national minute enablement.
“For us, addressable has been incredibly successful. It’s been a very strong growing line of business. That has primarily focused on the two minutes of addressable (per hour) that distributors have. And now we’re at the dawn of enabling the national minutes for programmers.
“So from our point of view, what we want to know is, what are the biggest priorities and hurdles that we need to get over and solve for? And it really spans across the industry, from tech players to programmers, distributors and measurement companies.
“We all should have the same north stars. At the end of this project, if we can have two, three, four north stars that we’re collectively marching towards, I think that’s going to make a big, big difference.”
Glass half-full
Arrix acknowledges 2020 has been challenging. But he sees a way forward for the business.
“The most important thing to do is dig in and keep working hard, stay connected with your clients and understand what’s happening from their side,” he says.
DISH is very fortunate to have a balanced portfolio with DISH linear and SLING OTT.
“From a media point of view, the negatives of COVID outlined in anybody’s business what their true weaknesses are. And we took that as a glass half-full, and looked at those weaknesses and addressed them.”
Opening new doors
For Arrix, the positive way ahead leads back to openness, transparency and accountability.
“I haven’t met a marketer or agency lead in the last six to nine months that doesn’t have accountability at the top of their priority list – ‘I need to know what the impact is of the dollar that I just spent’,” he says.
“Accountability is really important going forward, it’s one of the core pillars of our open approach and I think that has fuelled the fire for data-driven addressable advertising, and that is a positive that has come out of the COVID situation.“
You are watching “An Open Ecosystem is Key to Advanced TV Success,” a Beet.TV leadership video series presented by DISH Media. For more videos, please visit this page.
