LONDON — Making cash registers ring is one ultimate aim of TV advertising. But, in the new era of targeting, it can also be a starting point.

Sky, the UK’s leading pay-TV platform, is amongst the broadcaster platforms whose addressable TV systems now afford targeting based on the in-store purchase behavior of identified viewers.

Its AdSmart addressable TV system allows targeting of Sky subscribers identified using 1,200 available attributes. Some AdSmart head Graeme Hutcheson says those include:

  • MasterCard purchase behavior.
  • Dunnhumby‘s data about supermarket customers’s purchases.

“We’re able to offer advertisers a route to targeting ads based on purchasing behaviour,” Hutcheson tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Dunnhumby is another route in to an FMCG market which traditionally doesn’t use TV for an ROI per se.

Hutcheson says the Dunnhumby work will allow advertisers to target buyers of specific product categories – say, shampoo or cat food. That could strip out waste and make their ads more effective.

The greater refinement means Sky is selling advertisers against their business outcomes, not just tradtional proxy metrics.

“We’re talking to retailers more about business KPIs, rather than before the traditional TV sense was ‘what reach do you want to achieve?’, ‘what frequency do you want to buy at?’,” he says. “We’re trying to design campaigns around a business KPI.”

In the two and a half years since launch, Sky AdSmart targeted ads have spread across Sky’s many platforms:

  • live linear satellite TV via set-top box.

  • VOD via set-top box

  • Recorded DVR play-back

  • SkyGo mobile app, both linear and VOD

 

This video was produced in London as part of our Addressable & Advanced TV Summit hosted by Sky Media and presented by FreeWheel and Invidi. Please visit this page for additional segments from the event.