Ampersand's Ivins and Niemeijer on the AND Platform: Simplicity and Scale

The AND Platform is what the Ampersand team has been quietly building since Pangis joined 18 months ago and hired chief data officer Bob Ivins pictured below right and chief technology officer Gerrit Niemeijer pictured below leftquotVideo has gotten so much more fragmented that it39s an order of magnitude more complicated for those who plan media and almost impossible to buy without technology Through simplicity precision and scale we39re defragmenting the television landscapequot Niemeijer said as he Ivins and I sat in the Amelia Earhart conference room in Ampersand39s airy new Times Square offices where all the conference rooms are named for pioneersquotAmpersand is built on the power of 39AND39 amp8212 from our historic rep business selling those two minutes of local avails on networks like ESPN and AampampE across every MVPD and now across every kind of multiscreen video inventoryquot Ivins added quotThe AND Platform makes it simpler to find audiences at scale plan and execute campaigns and measure and report resultsquot Niemeijer finishes the thought quotwith precision in censuslevel data from nearly 40 million US households amp8212 that39s more than anyone else And then we bring in Ampersand39s scale in supplyquotThe data and tech pair is quick to credit Ampersand39s owners MVPDs Charter Comcast and Cox for making the investment in technology and data that makes the AND Platform possible They also praise their inventory partners amp8212 including companies such as ATampampT Dish and Verizon amp8212 and networks of all kinds that offer premium ie highly engaging and brandsafe TV and video contentquotNothing39s more addressable than sending an ad to someone who entered 39cheap tickets to Brazil39 into a search engine But nothing produces better results for brands than the engagement people have with television amp8212 scripted drama live sports everythingquot Ivins says quotSearch ads are good but nobody hums the jingle from a display adquotquotIt39s the content that makes TVquot Niemeijer adds quotAnd viewership overall is up People have never been watching more television than they are today it39s just a fragmented viewing landscape and we39re bringing it together to make it simpler for advertisersquotIvins unsurprisingly for someone with quotdataquot in his title sees Ampersand39s access to pseudonymous data from owners and affiliates as essential quotImagine you39re trying to reach an audience and you know that you can reach 70 percent with linear TV and 30 percent via streaming How do you know what spots to run and where to get to your entire audience without reaching some over and over and some neverquot he posits quotHaving a large base of real amp8212 not modeled amp8212 and of course privacyprotected viewing data is criticalquotAmpersand has already been doing this type of analysis manually for campaign posts using its base of viewing data with inventory delivered across 85 million households The AND Platform which is currently an internal tool though expected to be eventually exposed to buyers makes the process fast and accurate amp8212 and finally makes it possible to use precise TV data as a planning tool Eventually the audiences could be as narrow as Ivins39 favorite example quothouseholds with threelegged dogsquot but for now there are fixed segments that Ampersand39s sales team can work with to build an optimized plan for every market across the USIn asking why they are announcing the AND Platform now before officially putting the controls in the hands of clients Niemeijer references the level of quotnoisequot in the industry and the desire within Ampersand to ensure the company does its part to set clients up for success with tools that are new to how TV has been traditionally boughtIvins with whom I spoke on an attribution panel last year chimes in that the AND Platform is a tool that is producing real outcomes for advertisers and that marketers may not be using the tool themselves right now but they39re definitely seeing its benefits quotOne advertiser in the luxury auto sector was investing in television nationwide We39ve been using the AND Platform to put their national ad occurrence data against the viewing data in those nearly 40 million homesquot he says quotThey can see which households in their target audience are seeing those national spots and which are underdelivering or underexposed It created what our president Andrew Ward calls 39tier 1539 giving them a much more informed national platform It39s working for the brand very wellquotAsked to express why the AND Platform is unique from other TV planning tools Ivins returns to the power of AND itself quotIt39s similar to tools like Spectrum Reach39s Audience Trak or NBC39s One Platform but its insights are harmonized from multiple partners and not a single sourcequot Moreover he points to the continued collaboration needed within the television industry to better serve the media buying community quotDigital grew from zero to a 130 billion business because they could do three things data targeting and measurement The AND Platform is about bringing that kind of ease to the power of televisionquotClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Ampersand's Ivins and Niemeijer on the AND Platform: Simplicity and Scale

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Kathy Newberger

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Ampersand's Ivins and Niemeijer on the AND Platform: Simplicity and Scale

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Kathy Newberger

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