CANNES — The addressable TV company GroupM established to tackle the challenge of cross-screen audience targeting and standardized measurement is still planning to expand beyond is initial UK launch market later in 2018.

Last year, the agency launched Finecast, spanning multiple TV channels, pay-TV platforms, set-top boxes, video-on-demand services, over-the-top providers and game consoles.

Finecast offers advertisers access to 180 different targeting segments, from socio-economic to life stage, purchase and financial data. It is integrated with GroupM’s [m]Platform along with such major industry data platforms as Acxiom, Experian, MasterCard and Kantar to power audience discovery and targeting.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, chief product officer Rich Astley says: “We’re looking at some other markets. We’re going to hopefully launch later this year.”

Finecast CEO Jakob Nielsen first trailed the planned expansion to Beet.TV back in November.

But new territories are not the only item on Finecast’s agenda. Astley is also trying to embed addressable TV, as a new option and a new way of thinking, with the agencies he hopes will crete and buy ads through the medium.

“We are looking at how we integrate addressable into the communications planning cycle, so making sure that we understand the role that addressable can play in the comms mix,” he says. “(It’s about) building it into the agency planning process, but also educating both the agencies and our clients around technology.

“One of the things we’ve done is create virtual living rooms, where we’ve brought clients in to actually see the technology in action and all the different ways you can access and consume TV.”

This video is from Beet.TV Global Addressable TV Forum at Cannes Lions presented with Wavemaker.   For more videos from the event, please visit this page.