National Addressable TV has Arrived. But is it Ready for Primetime?

The holy grail of Advanced Television is the tantalizing idea that every spot delivered to the household TV set and ideally down to the individual can be personalized and customized to optimize the impact of the financial investment by the marketer Commercials would become more relevant based on data Waste would be eliminated Don39t have a dog in the house No dog food commercial Keep Kosher or Halal No need to run that Jimmy Dean sausage ad to your home Just leased or bought a car Automakers do not need to speak with you for a while You only drink La Croix Let39s heavy up Bubbly ads to that home with specific messages around why you should give the new Kiwi Lime flavor a chance The ideas and usecases for Addressable TV are the dreams of audience strategists whether agency or marketerYet to date lack of scale the limitation of inventory to local ad breaks with their lower availability and higher CPMs due to the premium of addressable tech have proven to dampen the growth trajectory Until recently many marketers with exceptions considered addressable as a 39nice to have39 but not a core budget line item on their media plan That may soon changeAddressable tech startup AdCuratio has done the work of tying together the myriad of technology and systems integrations necessary to enable national addressable TV advertising In a recent announcement addressable pioneer technology Invidi whose core technology has been powering local addressable through MVPDs for nearly a decade amp160and a group of distributors and networks including ATampampT39s DirecTV Dish Network AE Networks ViacomCBS and FOX have joined AdCuratio39s National Custom Messaging Platform NCM to launch a working system that enables networks to offer up Addressable TV inventory on both national and local inventoryMichael Kubin EVP at Invidi Technologiesamp160 explains that there are three types of addressability theoretically availablequotThe first type of national addressable inventory is called 39Single Advertiser Spot Optimization39 SASO With this method as is currently done in the television marketplace only one addressable advertiser buys the ad unit That advertiser can run multiple versions of creative based on the demographicgeographicpsychographic profile of the household Currently SASO is the only method available in part because it doesn39t require a complete paradigm shift on the Network side of inventory allocationMultiple Advertiser Spot Optimization MASO Where a single ad unit is split between multiple advertisers based on their audience targets for example one unit on AampampE39s quotBiographyquot could be split into Auto Buyer Intenders Dog Owners Videogamers In theory this could be a winwin for both the seller and the buyer The seller can charge a higher base CPM while the buyer could end up paying a more efficient net effective CPM with the elimination of waste However that also puts the onus of selling out every impression or risking unsold impressions along with the complexity labor and cost of the ad ops involvedFinally the last form of national addressable is aggregation which is quotbasically throwing everything together and mashing it all upquot says KubinAdCuratio Chief Client Officer Chris Geraci believes their platform will take some of the complexity out for the networks quotWith our platform the networks will be able to upgrade existing national commercial time to be addressable by utilizing our userfriendly interface An ad operation lead at the network takes the advertiser39s schedule running against a network and uploads it into our system They pick and choose which inventory that they the network want to be addressable We build in segmentation and build audiences We are taking a single advertiser and optimizing the version of that commercialquotGiven the likelihood that marketers will want to extend the reach of their national addressable TV buys with additional inventory from the MVPD39s local addressable a logical request by advertisers would be a net reach and frequency segment report While that report is not available at the moment the inclusion of Invidi and several of the MVPDs in AdCuratio39s NCM makes such a report feasible and Geraci confirmed that is under assessmentAE Networks who is at the forefront of innovation in this area is one of the key network participants Santosh Mathai AE Network39s VP Precision Performance platform partnerships sees addressability as an opportunity to dramatically increase value for their clients quotAdCuratio39s NCM creates for our partners the opportunity not only to have a new ongoing or an evolving conversation throughout that journey but also encourages the recognition of the value of our full audience footprint Premium content smart technology targeted and relevant messaging continue as an integral part of AE Networks39 ongoing commitment to deliver actionable solutions to the national marketplacequotSo how are the evangelists who have been speaking for years on panels about the need for national addressable inventory reacting to what seems to be a milestone achieved Matthew Kramer managing director advanced advertising at Omnicom Media Group acknowledges the accomplishment but warns against premature expectations given the timing quotWe applaud the achievement made in the industry finally having access to addressable TV on national inventory It is something that we and our clients have been anticipating for a while However the timing with this and anything quotnewquot during the core of the pandemic does mean that the runway of adoption will likely be longer than it would have been in a preCOVID environmentquotThe technology for national addressable TV has arrived It is no longer a quotcan theyquot But the question remains for marketers will they embrace this enhancement to legacy linearVOD or are all eyes now focused on OTT and other IP delivered video optionsClick 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 MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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National Addressable TV has Arrived. But is it Ready for Primetime?

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Jeff Minsky

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National Addressable TV has Arrived. But is it Ready for Primetime?

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