We may not yet have reached the point at which so-called “addressable TV”, the ability to target individual connected televisions with unique advertising, is mass-market – but we have reached a close second, thanks to a combination of dumb TVs and smart devices.

“Everyone would like to get in to … the dream of one-to-one advertising,” IPG Media Lab managing partner Chad Stoller agrees, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “But there’s a lot of components in the ecosystem that need to (align) … We’re not necessarily there yet. A second-best thing that you can do is synchronized digital advertising.”

TV-synced advertising is where brands can run ads in web or social media platforms, timed in sync with TV shows, to maximize the chance of reach.

“Consumers use the commercials as a time-out… heads go down in to the devices,” Stoller reckons. “So it’s nice to be able to run a display ad in an app. It doesn’t have to be the same ad that is on-screen – it could be a competitor’s ad.

“What I like most about it is the future retargeting aspect. If I know you’ve seen an ad five times, if I have a chance to reach you two days later at 11am, that’s where I have a chance to solidify that connection.”

In the interview, he describes the utility of TV-synch  platform  Samba TV, in which Interpublic Group invested a minority stake earlier this year.

This interview is part of a series of videos leading up to the DMEXCO conference in Cologne. The series is presented by 4C + Teletrax.