Advertising’s ‘Mad Men’ panel heard Allen Klosowski, VP, advanced solutions group, SpotX, sum up the state of the industry. He said that the ad-path was already complex, but adding in the many options created by the shift to non-linear, plus discoverable devices, and programmatic, impressions and targeting along with the future prospects of true addressability, and you have a “really big deal” to solve.
Aswin Navin (CEO/Samba TV) agreed, adding that consumers today had unlimited access to content, but advertisers still needed to address those viewers
and users, and it was fascinating that TV is getting more addressable, and thus more measurable.
Automation tools and advanced analytics are all helping, said Jon Block (VP/EMEA, product & placement at Videology), who welcomed the prospects of dynamic
ad-insertion although cautioned that regulation and legal requirements could make life more difficult.
Those addressability options are already a reality for some of Liberty Global’s subscribers, said John Paul, MD, advanced advertising and data, adding that “data is key, but yield is everything” for advertisers.
“The world has moved on from the ‘spray and pay’ advertising methods,” said Les Carter, VP and chief architect, Cadent Technology, “and is shifting into data-driven TV.”
The panel welcomed the challenges, and recognised that viewers were shifting to OTT pretty quickly and thus creating additional headaches for the Mad Men. “But there’s no better way of reaching a large market than a well-crafted 30-second ad in the middle of a peak-time show,” said Block.
“Generally, broadcasters are only just becoming aware of the changes. ‘Talk to me in five years’ one player said to me recently, but we can do this stuff today.”
The panel agreed that the threat from FANG (“which we haven’t bashed enough yet”, said one), and a Netflix ‘freemium’ model could appear by 2019 “which might be very interesting”.
*Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google
