Guest post from Alexandra Huber, Account Manager at Kite Hill PR.
To celebrate the upcoming digital content NewFronts, the NY AdTech Group, organized by Kite Hill PR founder and CEO Tiffany Guarnaccia, hosted a Meetup on Wednesday.
The Meetup, which was hosted at Tremor Video’s offices in Times Square, featured a panel on the industry trends and what’s new in programmatic TV. Panelists included veterans and leaders of the advertising industry: Cordie DePascale, VP of Product Management at Mediaocean; Richard Hall, VP of TV Strategy at Videology; Tim Ware, VP of Advanced TV at Tremor Video; and Marshall Wong, SVP of Product and Market Development at Tapad. The panel touched on a number of specific topics related to programmatic TV, specifically, where the topic stands today, what companies are benefiting from it, and where the industry is going. The panelists’ varied backgrounds and expertise provided valuable, poignant answers to some of the biggest questions surrounding programmatic TV.
“The very term ‘programmatic TV’, is somewhat controversial,” said journalist Todd Wasserman, the panelist moderator, to kick off the panel. “We shouldn’t think of programmatic as a binary term,” said Richard Hall. “We should think about it as a spectrum.”
“Set the foundation, enable future technology to traditional systems and work with partners to push it forward,” said Cordie DePascale.
The panelists stressed the importance of attribution, specifically how both vendors and brands need to do a better job of gathering and filtering the wealth of data at their fingertips.
What’s holding up adoption of programmatic TV?
“It’s still in the early stages, a lot of people are still doing things the old way,” Tim Ware.
“Programmatic isn’t a revolution, it’s an evolution,” said Hall. “What’s happening is a market shift. The aggregators offer some great, exciting inventory. The issue that many of us encounter is, ‘what am I really getting from the aggregator?’ When it comes down to it, we’re getting a lot of opaqueness.”
He continued, ‘The smart aggregators are starting to see this, and starting to put their foot on more solid ground. There needs to be more definition because the measurements and standards aren’t as good as they need to be.”
“Aggregators serve as an excellent stepping stone to get the right information,” said Ware.
“90 percent addressable linear is unavailable because that understanding of the household is not being provided,” said Marshall Wong. “Until there is a change the pool of addressable linear remains incredibly small.”
Media convergence could be the key to unlocking programmatic TV efficiently. What needs to happen for convergence to be possible?
“There are too many silos,” said Hall. “The true value of TV advertising is being concealed. Now we have attribution connecting the dots and using the data more effectively. Now we’re connecting the dots and the data joins the dots. Data shines a spotlight on what was previously hidden.”
“Think about what kind of data you have with people watching TV on smart devices. It’s not just about the TV experience, its about the other apps they’re interacting with,” said DePascale.
It will be interesting to see where the world of programmatic TV goes from here but the consensus is that it will continue its exponential growth. IDC predicts extremely rapid adoption of programmatic TV advertising technology. In 2017, programmatic advertising spend in linear TV will outgrow that in streaming video. By 2019, programmatic TV spend will be bigger than RTB, the most important programmatic segment today.
Have any ad tech topics you’d like to see addressed at the next #nyadtech Meetup? Drop us a line at alex@kitehillpr.com.