Television of Tomorrow Will Be Collaboratively Reinventive

The idea of amp8220coopetitionamp8221 among amp8220frenemiesamp8221 first surfaced in the 90s when telcos tried to overbuild cable companies Despite efforts at Next Century Media to consolidate MVPD addressable inventory and later similar attempts by David Verklin at Canoe coopetition didnamp8217t materialize MVPD top management preferred acting independently enjoying the freedom and success of doing things their own wayNCM warned that digital would eat TVamp8217s lunch if television didnamp8217t lead with addressability measurability and shopability They laughed Now the existential moment has arrived digital has eaten TVamp8217s lunch and dinner and only breakfast remainsamp8212with a dark shadow of threat looming over it Google Meta and Amazon combined account for about 55 of US ad spend and growingThis is a time when forming one TV gang feels better than fighting internecine wars over CPMs only to lose nickels and dimes to other networks and stations Why not pool resources to achieve the scale clout high tech addressability measurability shopability programmaticness and shininess of digital Why not create a digitallike infrastructure that allows advertisers and brands to buy the inventory they want targeted to their specific outcomes and optimize inflight against what the television industry controlsamp8212the placement of TV ads This could help reclaim tens of billions of dollars per year that digital has taken over the last decadeThis is the vision of UltiMedia which I presented as part of the panel on The Rise of the Television Platform More about that panel in a momentThe theme of reinventing oneself came through loud and clear in the panel entitled The Marketplace for Local CrossPlatform Advertising The moderator Rick Ducey Managing Director BIA Advisory Services asked for the definition of what television is and Sinclairamp8217s Rob Weisbord COOPresident of Local Media stated amp8220We define anything that has audio and video as televisionamp8221He went on to explain that Sinclair fully realizes that it has to not only give the younger generations all of the content they want on all of the devices they want to watch it on it has to turn over the newsroom to those younger generations to actually create the programming and to make sure they know that they are mandated to do it their way rather than conform to the older ways Remarkably this was echoed by Dean Littleton Executive Vice President of Media Operations Scripps Michael Page Senior Vice President of Digital Sales and FLX Fox Television Stations and Stephanie Slagle Chief Innovation Officer Graham Media That blew my mind was music to my earsStephanie said that the newsroom workflow itself was the mechanism that made innovation almost impossible Rob agreed and told the story of one youngster who had caved to the system and had to be corrected to break things I was in seventh heaven hearing these top leaders of local television reporting on how they are amp8211 as Rob put it amp8211 stretching their minds hard to reinvent themselvesMichael reported that FOX has been doing outcome measurement for all clients brand lift sales lift and winning in the results showdown against YouTube Meta and other digital competition He had been happily surprised by this but it is no news to me Iamp8217ve been doing TV vs digital outcome comparisons since TRA 15 years ago and TV rarely loses the showdown even when its CPMs are far higher than the digital platform being tested in parallel It did my heart good to know that this awareness has now reached across the television industry and even locally which in the past has often been a step behind national is walking the walk the way it should and mustIn a panel entitled From Readiness to Reality Planning and Optimization in the Transition to CrossChannel Distribution Monetization and Measurement OpenAP CRO Ashley Luongo made an impassioned appeal for greater collaboration in creating interoperability across television and reported on the impressive progress OpenAP has already made in that directionIn the same panel Larry Meistrich CEO Red Coral Universe explained that his new streaming channel is owned by filmmakers like himself who would like to get a fair share of revenues for the first time in history A great development and worth working with them to nourish the creator community at the high professional level as well as the prodigiesMike Bloxham moderated The Future of Video Monetization in which Hugh Scallon Senior Vice President Video and Head of Activation VaynerMedia and Ying Wang General Manager of Advertising Xumo revealed the innovative work they are doing to curate the best of shortform video into longform viewing modes on channels like XumoMedia Rating Council CEO and Executive Director George Ivie explained the work of the MRC and how the organization functions as a hub for collaboration and standardssetting across the industryCIMM Managing Director Jon Watts moderated the panel The Rise of the TV Platform in which the panelists were David Verklin Senior Advisor Boston Consulting Group and famous for the innovations he led as CEO of Carat Kym Frank Senior Vice President of Ad Sales Research at FOX well known for her leadership of the modern outdoor industry Howard Shimmel cofounder of datafuelX who had been Chief Research Officer at Turner and is a leading consultant to many companies on all sides of the business And meThe panel began with rollicking opening remarks by Jon who set a fast and hilarious pace for the entire sessionThe next act was for me to prevent a few slides Iamp8217ll be happy to share them showing all of the reasons including reach brand growth ROAS why television could win back tens of billions of dollars a year from digital if it were to become as easy to buy as fast to reoptimize in flight and equipped with MRC accredited and ARF counseled alwayson full funnel outcome measurement and ROAS and brand growth optimization via RMT Resonance and datafuelX I identified the opportunity to make all ads shoppable by networks making deals with retail media networks through UltiMediaJon asked questions designed to explore the feasibility of the idea of all of the television companies getting together to sell some of their inventory through a single dashboard like Google and Meta the idea of UltiMedia which my colleagues and I are proposing to the industryJon asked how I would encourage a critical mass of networks and stations and streamers and MVPDs to all work together and I explained that it would have to be done in steps starting with Proofs Of Concept and that the Spectrum tvbeat existing linear programmatic platform was the hub on which the POCs would be built adding more inventory from more directions as we goJon asked Kym if FOX would be in on this as she answered that unlike many other sellside entities FOX has very premium inventory that is not hard to sell but that FOX would want to be part of anything that could help television as a wholeJon asked David if the agencies would like to make TV easier to buy and David laughed and said that the agencies love how it is right now TV is so complicated the brands donamp8217t want to do it themselves Jon took this to be an indication that David was somewhat skeptical about the idea of a single universal TV platform and asked amp8220Bill I thought you had invited these other panelists because they all support your ideaamp8221 and I said amp8220Jon David was being sarcasticamp8221 This caused laughter and Jon said amp8220The Brits do sometimes struggle with American sarcasmamp8230amp8221 and I put a fatherly hand on his shoulder and said amp8220Donamp8217t worry AIs donamp8217t get sarcasm eitheramp8221 Which brought more laughsJon asked Howard if he thought this sort of plan was realistic and Howard answered amp8220Yes The ratings of the great majority of television shows have come down to low even levels itamp8217s now possible to aggregate and sell that through far more modern and efficient systems than the legacy workflow models Also because of the huge sample sizes we have from Nielsen VideoAmp and Comscore we can accurately forecast at a very granular daydate levelamp8221 Unfortunately due to time constraints Howard did not get a chance to get the audienceamp8217s reaction to his penguins playing hockey socks and whether they were an upgrade from the coolassed grampa socks he wore at CIMM EastJon acknowledged that there will clearly be a range of TV aggregation platforms as there are today1 but remained skeptical that UltiMediaamp8217s vision of a single platform remains realistic given the fragmented nature and complex dynamics of the US TV market This completed the story arc of the session only about a minute or two past its scheduled closing time and a good time was had by all1These programmatic aggregators have mostly just begun to spring up suddenly except for Magnite which has been around for some time and was originally called SpotXMagnite aggregating a number of television network streaming servicesITNMagnite aiming to aggregate local broadcast inventory inspired by TVBUniversal Ads aggregating local cable inventoryAudyns aggregating national cable long tail networksUltiMediaamp8217s idea is to aggregate these aggregators and the rest of the premium television industry most likely in stages based on the common observation that the buy side does not want to have to swivel chair among multiple dashboardstvbeat is not an aggregator but a unification platform which enables any program source to unify its silos of inventory linear FAST AVOD MVPD addressable MVPD VOD etc which serves 40 broadcastersMVPDs in 9 countries and growing rapidly amp8211 UltiMedia sees tvbeat as the best available foundation for unification across the entire television industry The tvbeat US beachhead is Spectrum covering one out of four US homesPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick 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 MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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Television of Tomorrow Will Be Collaboratively Reinventive

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