Household-addressable television advertising spending will rise from $2.1 billion in 2019 to more than $3.3 billion by the end of 2020, according to a new guide for marketers released today by the Video Advertising Bureau. That represents a 343% spending increase from 2016, according to the VAB.
“I’d say it’s mature. It’s arrived. We did talk a long time for the promise. Now we’re talking about the delivery,” VAB President and CEO Sean Cunningham says in this interview with Beet.TV.
Forty percent of U.S. “addressable TV agency and marketing professionals” say they are now making a significant investment in the platform, according to the VAB. Seventy-one percent of these marketers have been buying addressable TV for less than one year, signifying a substantial growth opportunity for sellers.
“I think one of the key things that advertisers are realizing is this is a full-funnel medium where they’re going to get full-funnel outcomes,” says Cunningham.
To the VAB, the term “addressable” refers specifically to the platforms and technologies available through MVPDs only. It defines addressable TV as the use of technologies to enable advertisers to selectively deliver ads to individual households via cable, satellite, and Internet Protocol television delivery systems and set-top boxes.
The 60-page guide released by the VAB today is titled Address for Success and includes case studies in more than 10 different product and service categories, including travel and tourism, automotive, TV entertainment, financial, retail furnishings, appliances, beauty retailer and credit cards. Combining linear TV buys with the boost addressable TV offers delivered positive full-funnel outcomes for advertisers across the categories studied, according to the guide.
“What you’re seeing is consistent results in whatever the KPI’s are,” Cunningham says.
Asked about the supply of ad inventory available to target specific households, Cunningham cites 64 million addressable-enabled households, or 54% of total U.S. TV households. “Supply is not a problem. We have plenty of supply.”
The VAB guide estimates that the U.S. addressable TV audience “2 years of age and older” has grown 27% to 162.2 million over the past two years, a larger audience than Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, MSN, LinkedIn, Spotify and many other digital platforms’ monthly unique visitors.
In reference to the annual TV Upfront negotiations, Cunningham describes all of premium video as a 52-week proposition.
“There’s just some long-term prices that are struck at the Upfront and inventory lay-downs. Part of that lay-down is going to be some framework for addressable across a new high level of categories and advertisers. It’s going to be a staple part of what people do,” he says.
