The upside: addressable TV advertising has now achieved decent scale -- around 65 million homes out of a total of 120 U.S TV households. The downside: cost, accessibility, and some consistent data metrics remain.
Research shows the results are there. First, addressable advertising does eliminate a lot of waste. And that begs the second question: Will advertisers now spend, say, four times more CPM (cost per thousand viewers) in order to deliver advertising specifically to that better, targeted audience?
Even if that isn’t a hurdle, there are other concerns. That includes a number of different multichannel video program distributors sellers -- such as DirecTV, Dish Network, Comcast Corp. Charter Communications and Altice USA -- which can have different functionality when serving those ads.
Here’s another: Different cable and satellite TV providers show that not all addressable homes are created equal, especially as it relates to specific consumer data preferences aligned in those homes.
In this regard, Open AP, a consortium of Viacom, Fox, Turner, NBCUniversal, and Univision, has intended to take a somewhat broader picture to easy entry. It wants to find new audience segments, maybe 100 or so, that can appeal to a wide range of TV marketers. It's not a perfect targeting of audiences, but reasonable.
Against all this is a recent survey of some 500 media-marketing senior executives (who spend $1 million or more in TV and digital video ad spending) by AT&T’s Xandr, its advanced advertising unit, which shows trepidation.
While 76% of media agencies and marketers believe media sellers efforts offering advanced TV advertising platforms is a good idea, 48% say it is
“very difficult to fully fund my media budget in order to achieve my media strategy goals.”
Also, 44% say “my current media buying-planning infrastructure is dated and not up to the task of effectively operating in the new media landscape.” Marketers and media agencies are leery about which direction to go.
But one area where there is little uncertainty: digital.
Digital media has always been the strong link when it comes to return on media investment and key sales outcome performance. But TV advertising -- especially advanced advertising -- still carries a comfortable ease of operation and large-scale promise for intended customers.
When will marketers give addressable a bigger chance? Or will they give more dollars to digital?
Source: mediapost.com
