LAS VEGAS — The age of addressability is upon us, promising clients laser-targeted audience relevance – but the power will come at a price, and the potential must be carefully executed against imminent new European legislation.

That is according to one ad agency boss now helping clients understand and benefit from the changes.

“We are definitely entering an addressable age,” says Nikki Mendonça, OMD’s EMEA president, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “Personalisation at scale is the holy grail of marketing at the moment.

“We’re having a myriad number of conversations with clients at the moment about how to achieve that relevance for them. Using data … is the sweet spot.”

OMD has been helping clients use opportunities like AdSmart, the addressable TV offering from Sky, the UK’s pay-TV leader.

“The relevance is giving very good ROI, even though you pay inflated CPMs,” she says. But other markets are less developed. Already, France and Germany are behind due to national limitations on use of data in advertising. And a big challenge is imminent across the continent.

“In other parts of Europe, addressability at large is still quite fetal,” Mendonça says. “The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is coming in to force in May 2018.

“If you are seen, as an advertiser, to flout any data protection rules, your penalty is 4% of your global turnover. We have to exercise some caution going in to a world of being abel to leverage trillions of data points.”

This video was produced as part Beet.TV’s coverage of CES 2017 presented by 605.  For more videos from the series, please visit this page.