SANTA MONICA, Calif. – One of the drearier parts of being a knowledge worker is doing repetitive tasks that take time away from other responsibilities requiring creativity, such as business development and strategy. Workflow automation promises to transform how media and marketing professionals do their jobs and unlock productivity, especially as traditional linear television converges with digital video.
“Getting workflow automation right, I think, is critical for the future of interoperable TV buying,” Chris Maccaro, chief executive of Beachfront Media, said in this interview at the Beet Retreat Santa Monica. “It’s tremendously complicated from an integration and technology standpoint.”
Media companies may have libraries of content that aren’t set up for digital distribution, and certain business processes may be handled manually, making them more time-consuming.
“The technology that sits behind the TV to enable that for automated workflows is disparate and disconnected,” Maccaro said. “Getting all that right and making those connections work and talk to each other is a tremendously difficult technical task.”
Ad-Supported Streaming Growth
The streaming industry also is changing as media companies offer ad-supported tiers as they seek to expand their audiences or hold on to existing subscribers who are canceling service to save money. Netflix and Disney+ this year rolled out services that charge a lower subscription fee in exchange for showing commercials.
“There’s no surprise that AVOD’s [ad-supported video on demand] on an upswing because people are getting subscription fatigue,” Maccaro said. “You could have predicted that when you saw the acceleration of cord-cutting a couple of years ago, which is starting to level off now.”
The growth in ad-supported streaming is changing the way marketers reach and engage audiences. Those marketers want to avoid showing the same ads to the same viewers to often, and they don’t want their brand identities to be confused with those of their rivals.
“There are things that just have to be done well if we want to curate a high-quality TV experience for the programmers and distributors that are bringing that content to consumers,” Maccaro said. “That means you have to be able to do things that TV has historically done well — in a digital environment, like competitive separation and deduplication….It’s going to challenge all of us on the technology side to make sure that we’re doing our best work.”
You are watching coverage of Beet Retreat Santa Monica 2022, presented by Ampersand, MiQ, Nielsen, PubMatic, T-Mobile Advertising Solutions and The Trade Desk. For more videos from the Beet Retreat, please visit this page.
