SANTA MONICA, CA – Regular viewers of connected television are familiar with the phenomenon of seeing the same commercial too many times during the same program. They may also see ads that are in the wrong language or seem geared toward a different demographic group. These incidents underscore the need for greater transparency in the streaming ad market.
“There there’s been a lot of progress in the type of information that we get from our streaming buys, but there’s still a ways to go,” Samantha Rose, executive vice president and strategic investment lead at media agency Horizon Media, said in this interview with Beet.TV contributor Rob Williams at the Beet Retreat Santa Monica.
“We understand why there are certain limitations in the streaming landscape based on different partners and their contractual obligations to all of their different partners,” she said, “but we need more transparency in order to be able to really decision better.”
Program-level information and subscription data are among the resources that are helpful to media buyers as they allocate budgets among different video publishers. Another challenge is being able to determine whether a campaign is reaching the right viewers as they switch among streaming services. The platforms have become “walled gardens” that guard their subscription data against being shared, preventing marketers from having a holistic picture of viewing behavior.
“We need to be able to look at the streaming landscape from a landscape perspective, and understand what’s happening across the board – not just campaign measurement and number of eyeballs or impressions served,” Rose said.
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Looking ahead, Rose said she would like to see greater collaboration among media companies that historically have been fierce competitors for advertising dollars.
“On the sell side, there’s reluctance there because they think that it means that their dollars are going to go down and they’re going to get less of our clients’ money and our advertisers’ money,” Rose said, “but I think that it’s actually just going to be better for everybody and more advantageous to have that cross-partner collaboration.”
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