AdAge called him “the most quoted man in advertising” – but what does Brian Wieser call the impact of TV advertising technologies?

Underwhelming, it seems.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Pivotal Research senior analyst Brian Wieser, who opines on the media business, says advanced TV targeting opportunities will do little to arrest an overall US TV ad spend forecast that has turned marginally negative.

“I don’t believe it causes growth in advertising,” Wieser says. “Bringing digital-like concepts to traditional TV will not cause digital-like growth.

“The only thing that would cause growth above and beyond the trajectory that TV is on, is if TV can appeal to different kinds of advertisers.”

That conclusion will come as controversial to the many tech vendors now operating in the TV space, which are bringing targeting and programmatic trading capabilities to a TV market that has long revolved around buying ads against broad show audiences and demographics.

The new world, thanks to internet-enabled TV devices, instead offers the opportunity to buy individual viewers, no matter what shows they are watching, and to buy those ads with automated real-time bidding.

But Wieser says: “A lot of advanced TV technologies are really more about optimizing. They’re really more about making the workflows more efficient. They’re about load balancing, in terms of maximizing or optimizing reaching frequency.

“Maybe even one day they can help contribute to reduced commercial loads, because they can identify better ways to reach different audiences with different units, which then just allows the media owners to reduce their ad loads.”

Wieser sees scant potential for brands not already advertising on TV, like direct-to-consumer brands, to come in and add incremental spend.

But he says that is “the only thing that would cause any different growth for the industry”.

This video is part of a Beet.TV series on advanced TV produced at the WideOrbit Connect conference. WideOrbit is the sponsor of this series. Please find more videos here..