a4 Advertising's Hasan Rahim on Advanced TV's Role and Value in the 2021 Upfront

a4 Advertising reaches over 120MM HHs with 90MM HHs reachable on cable Optimum formerly provided by Cablevision has been a pioneer of linear addressable TV since the very early days With the move to audiencebased buying and HH addressability Rahim notes that first mover advantage is proving to be a true assetMediaVillage Can you give us an update on the scalability of addressable TVHassan Rahim From a scale perspective it39s never been bigger and it continues to grow in leaps and bounds Linear addressable TV alone is going to hit a 50 cable universe penetration by the end of the year As scale exceeds the tipping point the quothowquotamp160and quotwhyquotamp160become even more important It needs to be a wellconsidered strategy from beginning to end If you have the ability to do all of this awesome targeting and deliver specific creative to specific audiences and measure but you only have a single creative what39s the point Are you using the advanced analytics that are now possible in your linear addressable TV campaigns to help inform your overall TV strategy The creative and strategy teams need to be in sync and fully involved with their agency partners right from the beginningMediaVillage In addition to HH addressable you have a product that you refer to as national optimized linear Can you explain what that is and what you believe it adds to a marketer39s media planRahim Sure Some folks refer to it as datadriven linear TV as well Using proprietary technology our experience as the 4th largest MVPD in the country and established relationships with other MVPDs across the country we are able to planexecuteoptimizemeasurereport on nationally distributed linear TV campaigns using advanced audience data transacted on Nielsen Live3 or Commercial3 impressions as the currency Over the years Altice USA has invested in multiple smaller nimble companies offering expertise in specific quadrants of the media ecosystem which are all coming together to offer our clients an endtoend solutionAdditionally since Altice USA is also a marketer with annual paid media spend in the hundreds of millions a year we have been enhancing our capabilities on our own marketing plans over the years and are now able to offer these highlyvetted solutions to external clients through a4 AdvertisingMediaVillage At the beginning of the pandemic there were a lot of unknowns and clearly volatility In 2021 do you see another round of volatility as media consumption segues into a postpandemic hybridwork modelRahim I think 2020 was a necessary wakeup call to those who had been hesitant to embrace the changes that we39ve all been witnessing over the past decade For a4 Advertising 2020 was unexpectedly somewhat positive given the circumstances We all know that there has been a massive shift in consumption from live to streaming both live and ondemand in an incredibly short amount of time Given how slowly we tend to react to big changes the gap between expectations and realities is still quite large A lot of people are still stuck in the mindset of quotbut two years ago this was my 1849 CPM and why should it be different nowquot I think it39s going to take a while as it always does for realities to merge There39s a palpable shift towards technology metrics mechanics and highly measurable KPIs that in the past weren39t part of the Upfront conversations It39s been fascinating to see where it39s been less about comedy and entertainment and more about value and measurement in the 2021 Upfront presentationsMediaVillage With this shift to OTT viewing we hear pronouncements of fluidity and movement of traditional linear dollars into the OTT space Earlier this year Nielsen pointed out that over 42 of all OTT viewing was on nonadsupported services and even the AVOD services have limited ad load In your opinion is there enough inventory available for this shiftRahim I don39t think so I think even 42 seems too low I think it39s probably closer to 80 at best 20 of total streaming is actually ad insertable I think digital did itself a disservice over time wherein just because you can measure it doesn39t make it worth measuring You can and should measure but what you do with those results matters more than just measuring them This shift to addressability at scale within live programming is going to give parity from a targeting measurement and analytics perspective to what39s still the biggest reach vehicle out there linear TV If you39re going to shift dollars to streaming to reach the nonlinear viewer that39s not a bad idea and we offer similar incremental reach opportunities tied to our Linear TV buys but you39re going to run out of inventory fairly quickly If it39s to measure and glean insights which can help inform your biggest spend in the video landscape linear TV in a somewhat dynamic incampaign cadence then that makes more senseMediaVillage The biggest buzzword of the year last year was quotflexibilityquotamp160Both sides buyer and seller recognized the impact of the pandemic and behaved accordingly As we come out of that especially recognizing how surprisingly strong the market held towards the latter half of last year how much of that quotflexiblequotamp160behavior will remain Is the adversarial relationship between buyer and seller returningRahim I think it is more so than it should be I think it39s part of human nature to go back to something that is known especially after the last 1215 months Prior to the pandemic we knew our roles you were a buyer or a seller You quotbattledquotamp160and after the end of the day you put that aside and socialized had a drink ate a piece of finely marbled beef It is kind of going there but because of all the collaboration that happened last year I think it39s not as contentious as it was At a4 Advertising we take a clientfirst approach and offer our decadeslong experience as an ISP distributor programmer and marketer using bestinclass data in a privacyprotected manner across our owned and operated footprint all the way to the full national TV map While flexibility is something that has typically been valued and priced at a premium we feel that flexibility is now table stakesMediaVillage A lot of buyers know the historical a4 Advertising as a regional buy How have you been able to get over that perception to be considered as a national solution for premium brand safe inventoryRahim Over the years through growth and acquisitions we39ve added a lot of digitalcentric capabilities that we are packaging with our linear products starting with ourselves We betatest them on ourselves first make improvements and adjustments and then offer them to our clients We offer extended and incremental reach using deterministic authenticated IPbased measurement and targeting We have almost 50mm HH on an IP basis that we can use to measure targetamp160and optimize privacy compliant which is huge given the cookie and ID issues Through our Compiler product we have been onboarding first party data for years in a clean privacyprotected environment We39ve automated a lot of the pain point processes in the planning and execution to where it39s now at scale We offer the advertiser the ability to get as targeted as they want or not with the flexibility of an easy in and out of the marketplace at a fixed CPM where we assume all the riskChange has happened As the volume of quality TV data continues to grow and the friction slowing the sharing of said data diminishes the gap between digital and linear will continue to shrink The value of reaching a consumer on the big screen remains as strong as ever and at a4 Advertising we39ve been in the game longer than mostClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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a4 Advertising's Hasan Rahim on Advanced TV's Role and Value in the 2021 Upfront

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Jeff Minsky

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a4 Advertising's Hasan Rahim on Advanced TV's Role and Value in the 2021 Upfront

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