Why the Promise of Addressable Video Advertising May Also Be Its Downfall

You would be forgiven for thinking that we39ve learned our lesson when it comes to bright shiny things There was a time when all a tech business had to do was announce they had discovered the answer to some knotty and unsolvable problem and my social media feeds would along with the trade press light up with quotinformed expertsquot praising the solution to the skies Especially if the quotanswerquot was entirely devoid of detailMysteriously and all too frequently the solution would then either appear flare brightly and vanish or never appear at allToo many techdriven solutions start at the wrong end In other words they provide an answer to a nonexistent question and by quotnonexistentquot I mean in the mind of the enduserTake 3D televisions for example I39ve lost track of the pieces I39ve read where the answer to any question concerning viewers and how to attract them to TV was 3D televisions themselves Never mind that you had to sit wearing a pair of 3D glasses to get the desired effect or that trialists reported feeling nauseous Technology could do it so of course we had to have itExcept we didn39t Consumers didn39t want these things Just because we can produce a new type of technology doesn39t mean we should At least not until we39re really readyRight now addressable video advertising is the latest shiny object We need to be careful to avoid it flaring and burning out The issues lie in how we apply the technology and who are the early adoptersAddressable media forms much promise We can know far more about who advertising is reaching in addressable media as well as targeting far better and reducing wastage And there in those few lines lies the problemThe promise of addressable isn39t only with the media or distribution end of things where the greatest concentration of early adopters within the ad world are to be found In fact the greater opportunity lies with the creative sideFinely detailed targeting is all very well in theory but it ignores certain truths One of which is that brand fame sells People are tribal in the sense that they like to think that their behaviors are shared that they are not alone in thinking this or doing thatThere is truth in the influence of what used to be called quotthe watercooler momentquot in sharing experiences some of which are based around what you happen to have seen read or heard and some of those may well be adsThere is also the point that wastage doesn39t really exist amp8212 all human impressions have a value At an event I attended last week I heard someone from the agency responsible speak proudly of The Guardian39s quotPoint of Viewquot TV ad The ad is from 1986 amp8212 so 33 years ago Many present and they weren39t ad people let alone Guardian readers remembered the adWould that have been the case had it only been shown to a few likely buyers of the newspaper And would The Guardian have achieved the success it has recently been enjoying had they stuck to targeting some groups like recent or infrequent Guardian buyersThe opportunity with addressable lies less in fancyDan media plans and more in harnessing the data and the technology to ensure creative relevance amp8212 in harnessing the big idea remember that concept and executing it in such a way as to make it as relevant as possible to those exposed to itIt may very well be that an auto manufacturer39s big idea is something around technology delivered and that idea manifests itself via various ads for various models Ensuring that a household is sent the ad for the model of greatest relevance to them is a benefit Just sending them an ad for the overall brand because the household meets the media targeting criteria for that brand is less subtle and likely to be less effectiveThe real benefits of addressable media lie in collaborating to optimally combine strategic planning creative execution and media39s application of data and technologyClick 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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Why the Promise of Addressable Video Advertising May Also Be Its Downfall

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Brian Jacobs

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Why the Promise of Addressable Video Advertising May Also Be Its Downfall

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