PHOENIX — If you want to know the part that data is going to play in the future of cable TV ad sales, ask the chief data officer at the consortium owned by Comcast, Spectrum and Cox.

NCC Media’s Bob Ivins says the industry is “at the beginning stages” of so-called household-level “addressable TV”, the collection of technologies which allows ad buyers to target, deliver and measure ads against individual households.

Why “beginning”? “The media owners, they have the reach, the programming reaches a lot of people, but they don’t have the first party relationships,” says Ivins.

“They don’t have the technology and the infrastructure to be out and execute. So they’re out there …. Viacom bought Pluto, or NBC has their own application. They’re trying to move their first party relationships into third party relationships.”

NCC Media launched in 1981 to provide a common way for ad buyers to get on to disparate and disconnected cable, satellite and now telco networks. Now it is setting out to repeat the trick in the new, internet-connected era.

Three of Ivins’ five last roles have had “data” in the name. He joined after stints as Mindshare’s chief data officer, comScore and Slice Technologies.

“The distributors, they’re the ones with the first party relationships, but they don’t really have the reach,” Ivins continues. “So I think they need to combine all their initiatives, they’re all kind of doing something as a one off.”

He says he wants them to “work together in an open environment and build a platform” to move addressable forward.

says Bob Ivins, NCC Media , in this video interview with Beet.TV

This segment is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2019, Phoenix.   This series is sponsored by Telaria.  Please find additional videos from the series on this page