“Addressable” TV technology promises advertisers the ability to precision-target ads at individual households. But, over the last year, Beet.TV has heard several executives say that nationwide roll-out must be solved if the opportunity can truly be unlocked at scale.
Now WarnerMedia is gearing up to make announcements on how it wants to unlock that opportunity.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Dan Aversano, WarnerMedia’s ad innovation and programmatic solutions SVP, explains the rationale.
“We operate eight fully distributed linear networks,” Aversano says. “They are national networks, but they’re not addressable. We put the ad in the spot, everybody in the country and our distribution footprint sees the same ad.
“AT&T owns one of the most integral pieces of technology in that space in a company called INVIDI, which is actually the ad serving technology that makes addressable possible in certain footprints – within DirecTV, within DISH, Altice, Frontier and a few others that they’re starting to work with.
“That’s really, really exciting. So we are pushing full-steam ahead around national addressability, we have a ton of work that we’re hopefully going to be announcing as we move into next year, but we think that’s one of the most exciting things that we can push from a technology standpoint by far.”
Addressable TV, which gives brands the ability to buy ads targeted at the household level, has made particular in-roads in certain local cable operators and in particular OTT services or TV devices.
But, whilst OTT devices now have considerable scale, there is also growing concern at the size of the footprint available to TV networks.
Back in the summer, Mike Bologna, president of addressable at Cadent told Beet Retreat in the City, “We’re Going Local!”: “National networks have to create some type of arrangement, relationship or deal with a MVPD or a smart TV because, for the foreseeable future, ads that are dynamically inserted into live linear programming are going to happen through either the set top box or through the smart TV.”
Aversano is clear why he wants to enable addressable. And it is not just about targeting.
“Addressable technology gives us a tonne of precision, so now we can put different ads in front of different people, at different times,” he says. “There’s a lot that we can do with that precision:
- “audience targeting
- frequency capping
- sequential messaging
- storyboarding.”
Beet Retreat In The City @ Horizon Media is presented by 605 and Spectrum Reach. For more videos from the event, please visit this page.
