LOS ANGELES – Viewers are dividing their time spent with video content among a wider variety of devices and platforms, challenging advertisers to measure reach and frequency more accurately. ViacomCBS supports efforts to create a cross-platform currency for the media marketplace alongside its development of its Vantage platform for advanced advertising.
“Optimization, targeting – all this stuff – is probably further ahead right now than measurement,” Travis Scoles, senior vice president of advanced advertising at ViacomCBS, said in this interview with Justin Lebbon, co-founder and director of Mediatel Events, at Beet.TV’s Beet Retreat. “I’m excited for measurement to catch up to prove in a very concrete way that what we’re doing is creating not only change within the industry, but a lot of value for our advertisers.”
Source: eMarketer/Insider Intelligence
As marketers seek audiences across devices and platforms, ViacomCBS aims to help them with their linear, digital and addressable television ad strategies. ViacomCBS has 50 million linear-addressable households, in addition to its linear and digital reach to allow for audience-based buying.
“It’s really about aligning strategy and execution,” Scoles said. “That means audience-based buying, that means taking data and executing from our clients, who are advertisers, and creating a marketing plan within full portfolio of ViacomCBS assets.”
Currency-Agnostic Platforms
ViacomCBS is open to alternative currencies as advertisers and other media companies seek the best ways to measure audiences and to set the value of ad transactions. The company seeks to be currency-agnostic, whether advertisers want their campaigns to execute against metrics from companies including Comscore, VideoAmp or Nielsen.
“We see this as a way to leverage modern and new up-and-coming innovative players with these interesting data assets to align that strategy with execution,” Scoles said. “We allow our buyers to choose based on what they’re trying to do, and how their data will ultimately activate best against the currency partner.”
ViacomCBS supports industry groups that are developing standards, such as the OpenAP consortium for addressable audience measurement. The company also wants to see greater interoperability among different platforms and the development of privacy-compliant consumer identifiers.
“It’s leaning into those types of technologies, and saying, ‘Hey, if somebody is out here and they want to solve the standardization problem, we’re all up for it. How can we work together, and how can we think as an industry about leveraging those types of solutions?’” Scoles said. “We’ll be a consumer of that solution so that we can ultimately execute against our content and our audiences on behalf of our clients.”
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