CANNES—Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications have launched an industry initiative called On Addressability with the goal of uniting television distributors behind addressable advertising. “It’s a call to action,” says Comcast Cable’s President of Advertising, Marcien Jenckes.
“It’s really about initiating a process this year that’s going to scale addressability across television,” Jenckes adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
To achieve its goals, On Addressability must successfully bring together competitors across the majority of the TV landscape.
“The technology is in place and I think this is going to be the year for television to come into its own by delivering addressable solutions, in addition to the scale, quality and engagement that it has today,” Jenckes says.
By this time next year, “we aspire to have eighty percent of the television inventory as addressable capable.”
The initiative will “help solve issues not just around ad insertion but around yield and inventory management and measurement and planning and kind of creative delivery. The industry needs a playbook, so we’ve extended an open invitation to all of our partners to help us build that playbook and it needs standards and I think we are coming together around what those standards are.”
Enlarging the supply of addressable TV ad inventory will give brands more options to drive business results. Jenckes notes that while television “in its traditional sense is incredibly powerful and it’s something that’s always been part of their mix,” the medium has lacked some of the data that digital platforms offer to find audiences, “plus targeting capabilities to supplement reach or target creative and drive bottom-of-funnel transactions.
“And it’s missed that ROI measurement that you like to see to make sure that you’re spending money in the right way or transparently seeing what’s happening with your marketing budgets,” Jenckes says.
Underlying On Addressability is an all-or-nothing supposition in terms of the future of television, with broad cooperation being key to success, according to Jenckes.
“If just one person does it over here or one person does it over there, that’s not enough. Television has to work together as a platform to realize its potential,” says Jenckes.
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