These days, TV networks are trying to sell advertisers with a broad-based offer that comprises both linear and on-demand programming.
That’s the theory. The truth is, behind the scenes, a veritable spaghetti soup of systems is required to make the dream a reality.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Stacy Daft, GM, Enterprise Commercial Business Development at Amobee, describes why equal, cross-channel sales is so complex, and how it can be fixed.
Seller centralisation
“They’re dealing with legacy platforms that are on the linear side of the house,” Daft says. “They’re disconnected from the digital platforms. And neither one of them really has an awareness of the other – yet, there’s still a need to monetize the full portfolio and maintain budgets that traditionally could be met on linear channels alone.
“So, ultimately it leads our clients looking for technology to reunify and package their inventory
“This leaves media companies with a unification problem, really – how do they pull together a full view of their inventory across all linear and digital distribution channels, regardless of that consumption platform?
“And it makes monetizing the content even that much more complex because they don’t have a centralised place to understand how their audiences accumulate across the different screens, much less have an ability to optimise for a specific client’s KPI across their full portfolio.”
Buyer beware
But it isn’t just the sell side that is facing complexity when embracing the new opportunity that lies inside proliferation. Ad buyers, too, are interested – but confused.
A recent 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%)
Daft feels their pain.
“When you think about the addition of CTV and more streaming services and premium TV quality content moving digitally, there’s a desire to not lose the data and the effectiveness of targeting in the digital environments,” she says.
“But most importantly, make sure that that is done in conjunction with the planning that they’re doing across their linear portfolios as well, so that they can maintain and understand total reach across their investments, whether or not it’s linear, digital, CTV, and what portions of those investments or what portions of their audiences are being reached in which environments and how incremental is the addition of new channels to their holistic buy.”
Viewers’ experience
Smoothing out that complexity matters to more than just media owners and advertisers.
Kinks in this chain can degrade the viewer experience.
“Sellers have the opportunity to use that targeting and the premiums that come along with providing optimization and better targeting across their portfolios to reduce ad loads,” Daft adds.
“This is something that’s also desirable by brands. They themselves have a stake in the consumer experience.
They don’t want to be repetitive and annoying, similar to media companies, in terms of how they want to satisfy their clients as they compete for the eyeballs across the various distribution channels today.”
You are watching, “The Stream: New Audiences, New Opportunities,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Tubi. For more videos, please visit this page.
