Addressable TV—Six Ways to Address It

When I was grow­ing up, the tele­vi­sion held prime posi­tion in our fam­i­ly liv­ing room. While we weren’t addict­ed to the TV, it did bring us togeth­er when we want­ed to watch our favourite shows.

Late­ly that “col­lec­tive” view­ing expe­ri­ence has been an infre­quent occur­rence, as younger mem­bers of my house­hold pre­fer the flex­i­bil­i­ty of view­ing con­tent over IP-con­nect­ed devices and the per­son­al­iza­tion offered by new mod­els of TV adver­tis­ing, such as address­able TV. But, before I con­tin­ue, it’s impor­tant for me to clar­i­fy the dif­fer­ence between pro­gram­mat­ic and address­able TV in order to detail how address­able TV can be used as part of a broad­cast­ers’ toolk­it in the bat­tle for future adver­tis­ing revenues.

Pro­gram­mat­ic vs Address­able TV

Unlike pro­gram­mat­ic TV, which we define as the use of a soft­ware plat­form to auto­mate the pur­chase and opti­miza­tion of TV adver­tis­ing, address­able TV uses pro­gram­mat­ic tech­nol­o­gy and advanced audi­ence met­rics to deliv­er spe­cif­ic ads at a house­hold lev­el in real-time.

Address­able adver­tis­ing helps broad­cast­ers in their bat­tle for younger view­ers, as it ensures a more per­son­al­ized and enjoy­able view­ing expe­ri­ence. Broad­cast­ers ensure that ads are sent only to view­ers or house­holds with­in the tar­get audi­ence. In Europe, Sky’s AdS­mart prod­uct is a good exam­ple of address­able adver­tis­ing in action. Intro­duced in the UK in 2014, the prod­uct has since been rolled out across Ger­many, Aus­tria, Italy and Ire­land, with brands such as San­tander and British Air­ways report­ing increased brand aware­ness rates by 25%.

Sky AdS­mart allows dif­fer­ent ads to be shown to dif­fer­ent house­holds watch­ing the same pro­gramme. This means brands and busi­ness­es can now adver­tise on nation­al chan­nels, but to rel­e­vant audi­ences. Adver­tis­ers are able to cher­ry-pick their audi­ences using thou­sands of data com­bi­na­tions based on house­hold attributes.

Here are six tips for secur­ing suc­cess with address­able TV:

• Embrace engage­ment

Per­son­al­i­sa­tion dri­ves engage­ment. The more engaged con­sumers are with an ad, the more like­ly they will be to con­sume the prod­uct being adver­tised. Broad­cast­ers need to get smarter about the com­mer­cial val­ue of dif­fer­ent seg­ments of their audi­ence and hyper-tar­get to them in order to ensure con­tent being viewed at the house­hold lev­el is relevant.

• Build a direct-to-con­sumer relationship

In the lega­cy broad­cast mod­el inter­ac­tion with the view­er lay at the very end of the con­tent and sup­ply chain. The view­er rela­tion­ship now needs to come into con­sid­er­a­tion far ear­li­er in the address­able adver­tis­ing jour­ney, as plat­forms and tech­nolo­gies are built around data—UI design, con­tent rec­om­men­da­tion, per­son­al­i­sa­tion, sub­scriber man­age­ment and cus­tomer ser­vice must be dri­ven by audi­ence insight, data man­age­ment and audi­ence segmentation.

• Enact in real-time

The abil­i­ty to make deci­sions and act in real-time requires the tech­nol­o­gy ecosys­tem to be synchronous—content work­flows, video ana­lyt­ics, data man­age­ment and adver­tis­ing plat­forms must oper­ate on the same infra­struc­ture. By rapid­ly under­stand­ing audi­ence changes and con­sump­tion pat­terns, omnichan­nel broad­cast­ers can reach users with rel­e­vant and time­ly con­tent across the spec­trum of con­sumer platforms—search, social media, email, mobile and con­nect­ed TV.

• Exper­i­ment with new busi­ness models

As lin­ear audi­ence num­bers fall, the need to be agile and diver­si­fy busi­ness mod­els and rev­enue streams becomes more press­ing. It is clear that con­sumers are pre­pared to pay for pre­mi­um content—the increase in uptake on sub­scrip­tion “bun­dles” and direct to con­sumer appli­ca­tions is tes­ta­ment to this.

Con­sumers are frus­trat­ed with hav­ing to pay mul­ti­ple sub­scrip­tions and nav­i­gate across mul­ti­ple plat­forms to access con­tent. I believe tech­nol­o­gy, in the form of AI, will even­tu­al­ly help view­ers search, dis­cov­er and con­sume con­tent across mul­ti­ple providers, thus improv­ing the over­all TV con­sump­tion experience.

A new busi­ness mod­el needs to be cre­at­ed to make this work—for exam­ple, via the devel­op­ment of “metered’’ sub­scrip­tion mod­els, where users will pay for aggre­gat­ed and curat­ed con­tent from mul­ti­ple providers.

• Remain respon­sive to change

Address­able TV is evolv­ing rapid­ly. The adver­tis­ing indus­try is mov­ing away from tra­di­tion­al TV buy­ing mod­els towards pro­gram­mat­ic audi­ence-based tar­get­ing. For broad­cast­ers in EMEA, the chal­lenge will be how to mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of TV adver­tis­ing spend and how to enable audi­ence-based buy­ing across all TV inven­to­ry. Adobe is part of a con­sor­tium of like-mind­ed lead­ers in the TV indus­try to exam­ine these chal­lenges and deter­mine solu­tions. We’ll be reveal­ing find­ing from the ini­tial research, along with rec­om­men­da­tions on how the indus­try can adapt and change, lat­er this year – stay tuned!

• Exchange data with the adver­tis­ing community

Broad­cast­ers need to be able to cre­ate and pack­age cus­tom, high-val­ue, tar­get­ed audi­ence seg­ments that can be sold to adver­tis­ers at a pre­mi­um. But there are fur­ther oppor­tu­ni­ties. As audi­ence def­i­n­i­tions become stan­dard­ised, broad­cast­ers can take advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties for data licens­ing, sell­ing 1st par­ty data on to affil­i­ates, part­ners and oth­er adver­tis­ers and—potentially—creating an “audi­ence marketplace.”

For more infor­ma­tion on the state of the TV adver­tis­ing, indus­try, read the ini­tial find­ings devel­oped by the TV Adver­tis­ing Con­sor­tium, of which Adobe is a found­ing mem­ber. Vis­it us here to find out more about Adobe Adver­tis­ing Cloud’s capabilities