Brian Lin can see the future – but the broadcast executive is helping advertisers act on it today.

The SVP of product management and advanced advertising at Hispanic broadcaster Univision just unveiled a new way for advertisers to understand the likely success of particular inventory moments, before they buy the ads.

In this video interview with Beet.TV , Lin explains why it is changing what Univision can do for ad buyers.

Driving outcomes

Univision has partnered with with EDO and datafuelX to use technology that “measures the spike in consumer engagement behaviors, such as online search, for a brand in the moments after a TV ad airs – the larger the spike, the more consumers are engaging with the brand, and higher engagement is predictive of higher sales”.

Says Lin: “This goes way beyond just age and gender, as well as audience-based advertising.

“What we’re doing is we’re being able to take search data from Google and partners in that regard, and be able to optimise and drive more of those business results.

“To tie outcome data, to campaign exposure with attribution partners to show the value of television, and that is not just a top of the funnel marketing medium, but it can drive business outcomes as well.”

Predictive performance

EDO is helping Univision advertisers through the Mediahub agency ensure ads are placed in the right contextual environment based on how consumers engage with their commercials — and those of competitors — across networks, programs, dayparts, genres and more.

“We’re using the signals back from the EDO team and predicting the telecasts that are going to drive more search engagement for both the category, as well as the vertical of the brand,” Lin says.

“We’ve seen really good results around telecommunications, as well as automotive.

“If we know that a Tuesday airing of La Desalmada will drive more search for Tracfone than a weekend premiere, then we’re able to better advise and give a lever back to the agency partners to be able to manage.”

Evolution of TV

The technique represents one more way that the new-look TV ad supply chain is endeavoring to make TV perform a little more like digital media.

For advertisers watching declining viewership of conventional linear TV but keen on sticking with the creative canvas TV represents, that could be a key draw.

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US connected TV ad spending has been growing healthily, although eMarketer expects annual growth from 2022 to be slower even than 2019.