The Future of TV: Publica Discuss At RampUp.
Publica was recently invited to take part in the #RampUp20 event by LiveRamp last week and of course when we heard the topic of discussion was ‘The Future of TV’ we jumped at the chance!
Paul Gubbins, our recently appointed UK lead represented Publica alongside senior industry heads from The IAB, Sky & LiveRamp and the below are some of the highlights from what transpired to be a very engaging discussion about the future of TV.
Moderated by Steve Martin MD, International, TV & Data at LiveRamp the first question put to Paul was ‘Internet enabled TV has been rapidly adopted by consumers in the UK, a trend that has accelerated due to Covid containment. What additional data sets does this potentially make available and why could this be exciting for media investment?’
Paul responded with “There have been a lot of reports recently about the death of TV, I can say that is categorically not the case, we are just seeing the birth of a new type of TV, and that is data driven TV. The experience is still lean forward, it is still taking place predominantly in a family living room, however, for the first time, advertisers can make more informed targeting & creative decisions due to the data that is available to them.
Location, device type, Interests, demographic, gender are just a handful data points that are increasingly available to buyers that use the feedback loop from CTV campaigns to iterate creative in real time & to place more targeted TV ad buys… In fact, there is so much demand from advertisers for data in their OTT campaigns that Publica has just launched a solution with LiveRamp that enables CTV publishers to segment & surface their data to TV ad buyers”
| 🍿 Register & Watch full session replay here
Jamie West, Board Adviser, and Former Group Director at Sky stressed the point that “People are watching more TV than ever before” and that we should not become too focused on each of the different types of TV but instead better understand how we can holistically bring them together to better inform advertisers campaign objectives.
Dom Tillson Head of Industry Initiatives at IAB UK stressed that the CTV industry really needs to learn from the display ecosystem when it comes to the application of data & OpenRTB to OTT inventory. We need to ensure we don’t over complicate and make it easy for advertisers to invest transparently in the growing streaming ecosystem.
Steve then went on to ask ‘Audiences are continuing to migrate from linear viewing to connected TV devices, but what have we learned from years of TV advertising and how could that knowledge be applied and tested with more precision as data sets increase?’
Paul answered “when the practice of programmatic really scaled in display advertising, many in the industry were guilty of forgetting about the user experience and just focused on the cool new targeting features that OpenRTB supported. I think we need continue to remember the emotive power of TV advertising and although the evolution of CTV brings with it great targeting capabilities, we need to be cognizant that TV has been built around years of creative excellence, there is no point in targeting 50 audience segments if you are using the same creative to engage with each, let’s apply the the smart creative TV logic from linears yesteryear and adapt that to a modern way of engaging with consumers on connected televisions”
| Read more: Why Choose ORTB for CTV inventory?
“We are not seeing the death of TV but the birth of data driven television!”
Steve then asked ‘In the UK we see the ‘on demand’ services most widely viewed on TV screens dominated by local broadcasters and international subscription services; Are subscription services (no ads) a threat to the UK TV advertising industry?’
Paul responded “No, consumers want choice and the majority of reports actually show a healthy appetite for AVOD over SVOD from uk viewers”
Steve followed up and asked Paul ‘How can local ad funded broadcasters make their inventory more desirable to advertisers and buyers?’ Paul responded “by enriching their inventory with data. The more they can tell an advertiser about their audience, the more demand they will attract for their streaming inventory. Advertisers want to increase their CTV ad buys, but they can only do this if they are confident they are reaching the right audiences“
“SVOD services are not a threat to TV advertisers, consumers will always seek choice & global stats illustrate users are increasingly turning to AVOD services to stream content from..”
Steve then asked ‘Is there room for more Ad funded players in the market?
Paul replied “Yes, of course, so long as content is original or focusing on an area of special interest, viewers will engage. I believe it all comes down to content & then user discoverability. There are lots of new UK AVOD services that have great content, however, it has to be easy for CTV viewers to discover them either organically or via a paid for marketing push by the App”
Steve asked ‘Moving from targeting to measurement, what can we measure now that was not possible with Linear TV?’ Paul responded “Linear TV was not without its ability to measure, however, a lot of these features were built around panels & extrapolated to provide advertisers with an understanding of audience reach & in some cases, engagement. CTV now enables the buyer to truly understand what part of their ad budget is working & moves the yesteryear TV measurement on somewhat from educated guess to binary certainties..”
Steve then went on to ask ‘What are the key metrics for TV effectiveness that CMO’s want to take into the boardroom?’ Paul answered “CTV provides the data output required for a CMOs team to very quickly iterate their creative & targeting to ensure the best possible ROI in the moment of exposure rather than learning post flight to establish how the next burst of spend can be more effective. In a period in time when every marketer dollar spent has to be accounted for, CTV provides the granularity required to establish in real time what is & is not working for you”
Steve wrapped up the Q&A with one last question, ‘What are you excited about in terms of likely changes over the next 3 years? Paul responded with “The CTV market has emerged in the US and in the UK it is emerging, I am excited to see the continued evolution of standards around identity, attribution, measurement & I am looking forward to seeing how the UK fulfils the predictions of many to become the 4th largest AVOD market in the world”
| Read more: All the CTV / OTT Trends you need to know in 2020
