At the start of a new year, some in the industry are coming back to work looking for a shake-up.
Bill Koenigsberg is one of them.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, the CEO of independent media agency Horizon Media says he wants the TV industry to re-think the whole way the medium works.
Radically different
“If you look at the way the traditional linear networks are programmed today, and the broadcast networks and the cable networks, it’s kind of the same way that they were structured back 15, 20, 30 years ago,” Koenigsberg complains. ” You have an hour drama, you have a half hour comedy, you got a pod and a break.
“I would love to see significantly more innovation and experimentation in terms of what things look like on the screen, from a format perspective, from a consumer engagement perspective.
“I don’t have the answer as to what that might be but I would love to see someone completely break the mould and try something uniquely different with the amount of inventory and the presence that they have in homes and in consumers every day and every night and try something radically different.”
Predicting Squid Game
Koenigsberg says the surprise TV hit Squid Game was not necessarily predicted, but he thinks future divergences off TV’s typical format playbook may well be testable.
“We’re working, actually, on a practise that may be of service to a whole bunch of content providers that would marry data, content, understanding human behaviour, with potential product out in the content marketplace,” he says.
“I actually believe that through the use of data and triggers and cultural moments and where the world is going, there could be more hits developed in the future, based on using that data.”
TV and beyond
TV is evolving. A significant portion of consumption has moved out of advertisers’ sight, to subscription platforms.
But a sizeable portion also remains in a reconstituted TV ad space, advertiser-supported video-on-demand (OTT).
Still, at the end of the day, both of these futures still represent, well, TV – time-shifted, platform-shifted, but essentially long-form passive-consumption programming.
Efforts at crossing over into the interactive territory occupied by gaming, for example, have been few and far between, although some ad formats do now invoke the kind of viewer selection once dreamed of in “interactive TV” fantasies and demos of the 1990s.
AVOD targets success
For advertisers, Koenigsberg wants more – but he is also happy with what he increasingly has available to him and his clients thanks to the AVOD services.
“These AVOD platforms are growing more and more in terms of subscribers,” he says.
“We know more about that consumer than ever before. Because of real-time attribution and real-time data that tells us if we’re driving a desired outcome, we can then optimise against those media investments in real-time and get smarter and smarter and smarter and more effective in terms of a cost per outcome.
“Today, success is not so much about mass reach, today success is about mass effect effectiveness.”
You’re watching “Engaging Stories, Impactful Innovation,” a Beet.TV Leadership Video Series, presented by WarnerMedia. To view more videos from this series, please visit this page.
