Addressable Advertising Takes Center Stage At RampUp Conference

RampUp is one of my favorite events because it’s one of the only conferences that focuses exclusively on data—how to get it, how to use it, how to interpret it.

With that in mind, I was excited to see one of the key TV-related panels of the event, “Beginner to Expert-Level Advanced TV.” It featured One2One Media’s Mike Bologna, a true pioneer in the field of addressable advertising, along with speakers from Comcast Spotlight, Viacom and Xandr.

The stated theme of the panel was:“Brands are at different maturity levels with advanced TV, meaning they are at different stages in the data they use and insights that can inform holistic marketing strategies. Hear from brands across industries as to how they are using advanced TV and what their next steps are for bridging the TV-digital divide.”

The description rang true, because for most brands and networks, “advanced TV” (an ill-defined bucket phrase that can include everything from addressable to OTT to interactive ad units to branded content) is still very much something that’s still in the experimental stage. Which makes sense given that, despite the hoopla, the vast majority (over 90%) of ad-supported viewing still happens on linear TV.)

That’s changing though, and brands are particularly anxious for the industry to figure out how to let them use data to deliver ads on an addressable basis, the way they do with digital.

Households vs Individuals

While the notion of only delivering ads to the people who might be interested in them sounds like a great idea on paper, it becomes infinitely trickier on a medium that’s measured in terms of “households” and not individuals. 

That’s because TV viewing is frequently not a solo activity. There are, as panelists noted, ways to predict who is watching and to then track if any of them took further action (visited a website, bought the product with a credit card) but those require a good deal of rigor and high quality data to pull off.

That said, linear addressable (addressable ads during the linear broadcast versus OTT or VOD) is growing and it’s getting easier to buy and sell. That’s due to several factors: a growing acceptance by brands, the rapid growth of vMVPDs like DirecTV Now that are technologically equipped to handle linear addressable, and a willingness by networks to trust that running addressable advertising won’t lead to a massive hit on their bottom line.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we are headed for an all-addressable future. As Mike Bologna noted during the panel, "Even if all TV were available via household addressable, it would still not be bought on an addressable basis.” 

Bologna’s point is that while addressable makes sense for some brands and for some types of ads, brands looking to run image ads (think Nike’s “Just Do It”) don’t really need to segment out the audience—their goal is to reach as many people as possible. 

Similarly, brands looking to reach a very small segment of the audience (say just 3%) may find that TV is inefficient—it’s expensive and in many cases they will not reach the bulk of their potential audience, but rather that percentage of the audience that’s watching TV and the total number of impressions will be too low to justify the cost. 

The Future Is Looking More Addressable

Overall panelists were optimistic about the future use of data to target ads with more precision. As data sets grow more refined as practices like automated buying become commonplace, more and more advertising will be bought on an addressable basis. That’s good for brands, who can reach their audiences more effectively, and good for consumers, who can expect to see fewer irrelevant ads.

Shereta Williams of Videa sums it up nicely in a recent op-ed for ADWEEK, “For buyers, addressable ads mean more sophisticated audience targeting, message creation and creative. For sellers, such easily accessible inventory furthers the maturity of television as a channel in today’s digital world.”