Addressable TV Is Too Complex, Buyers Say. Verizon Media Wants To Change That

The new power of connected and addressable TV technology offers a remarkable promise – the ability to transform TV from a one-to-many medium in which everyone saw the same ad, to one in which advertising is customized for individual households.

Getting there has been a slog – and buyers still say the process is too complicated.

A survey of brands and ad agencies – commissioned by DISH Media, Cadent, Canoe, Comscore, INVIDI Technologies, LiveRamp, Verizon Media, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia – shows the evidence.

Buy-side calls for help

The study, Era Of Addressable, carried out by Forrester found the buy side calling for change:

• Simplify buying and managing campaigns across suppliers (66%)
• Increase scale (65%) and national footprint (64%)
• Interoperability among MVPDs (74%); technology partners (93%)
• Single measurement standard from media companies (92%)

The complaints are a consequence of the way in which new viewing and advertising options have grown up in the US. The market is fortunate to have seen the launch of a plethora of services, many of which boasting their own unique way of booking ads.

But that is a far cry from the traditional cable TV days, which had relatively standardized ad operations by comparison.

Plethora of platforms

Beau Ordemann sympathizes.

“Think about the, the plight of the TV marketer, there’s over 300 OTT apps,” says Verizon Media’s head of connected TV sales.

“There’s the networks and content owners. There’s distribution platforms. There’s device manufacturers. There’s the companies that amplify streaming content. And there’s multiple MVPDs out there, they’re all selling addressable TV advertising.

“So, how on earth am I, as a buyer, supposed to manage an efficient buying process in aggregate reporting, much less be able to control for reach and frequency across all the suppliers and systems? That’s why we’re building tools to pull together MVPD Set-Top Box addressable, and connected TV.”

Fixing the problem

The industry is now seeing a smorgasbord of initiatives aimed at stitching together the patchwork US addressable TV ecosystem, like Project OAR and OnAddressable.

Ordemann’s Verizon Media offers a demand-side buying platform (DSP) that offers access to 80 million households via DISH and FIOS, plus Sling TV, Hulu, Roku and traditional TV network streaming inventory like Viacom, CBS, and NBC.

That is part of a wider play to access more than 900 million visitors to Verizon Media’s overall portfolio.