SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – If big national TV companies and brands had been struggling to move beyond linear television, spare a thought for local operators.

They have much to gain, but have typically been hampered by lagging adoption of key TV ad-tech and relatively more complicated systems challenges.

In this video interview with Beet.TV’s Robert Williams at the Beet Retreat San Juan, Joseph Marino, Managing Partner, MadHive, explains what he thinks local operators can benefit from.

Local trouble

Marino says they face a “huge adjustment” in the post-linear TV world.

“Linear has been the bread and butter of their business for decades and decades, and now they’re moving into now having to figure out how to adopt and adapt streaming,” he explains.

“These problems that the national marketplace experienced maybe three, five years ago, the local marketers are now starting to experience the same.

“Historically, the local marketplace, they do not have the same access to tools and tech as the national marketers do. Their systems are all pretty legacy systems that they’ve been working off of.”

The new toolbelt

MadHive works with broadcast groups to enable their salespeople to visit, plan, buy and measure across linear and IP-delivered TV, amongst other channels.

It offers a programmatic platform for all parts of the ecosystem – buyers, sellers and data partners – including supporting planning, buying, measurement and AI-based optimization.

“We provide our clients with tools to support their end clients, which ends up being the auto, the retail QSR (brands),” Marino adds. “So they now have the ability to hyper-target ads into households that are within mile radiuses or zip code locations of who they’re looking to reach.

“They can provide foot traffic measurement now to say, ‘Hey, these households saw your ad. And these households actually converted. Let’s continue to optimise the schedules’.

Local focus

With the national market maturing, plenty of focus is swinging toward unlocking the potential for local TV operators to sell advanced TV ad capabilities.

MadHive’s Marino thinks that will happen when operators and advertisers have better tools.

“In a market that did not have a lot of tools in their belt to go and hyper target or deterministically measure outcomes, or optimise and reduce all of the waste, we’re now helping all these folks start seeing it,” he claims.

“They are now able to reduce a bunch of waste. They can look at how their schedules are performing cross-screen, linear and connected TV or OTT. And they can also now consolidate all of that view into one platform, which makes their workflows much easier.”

Unlocking spend

BIA, a specialist US local advertising advisory, forecast that local ad spending in OTT would exceed $1.3 billion in 2021 and nearly double to $2.4 billion by 2025.

It says auto, QSR and healthcare would be key categories.

Local OTT Advertising Is An Untapped $137 Billion Opportunity

But enabling that won’t be straightforward.

“Local is more complicated, it’s more complex,” says MadHive’s Marino. “There’s a large volume of small campaigns, there’s hyper targeting going on with regards to audience, on top of zip codes, on top of content.

“To nail any one of those things is a big challenge. And even the top tech that’s out there today struggles to do so.”

“We have to continue to solve those challenges …”

You are watching coverage from Beet Retreat San Juan 2022, presented by AppScience, Infillion, MadHive, SpringServe, Univision & VideoAmp. For more videos, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on @robertandrews