Commentary
Four Ps Will Drive Future Of TV Advertising
- by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, January 15, 2015
This is significant, because it tells everyone in the market that the largest seller of TV ads recognizes that the future of television advertising will not be constrained by its past. In that past, virtually all TV campaigns were bought on the basis of programs, and the only notion of audience targeting was based on broad sex/age demographics. Thus, the “P” that defined TV ad’s past, program-based selling, is now going to be supplemented by a second “P,” people-based selling, where audiences will be guaranteed on metrics like the number of Fandango movie ticket purchasers reached.
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Will it end there, with just Programs and People? Of course not. Once you’re selling people-based campaigns, wouldn’t you want to add Pixel-based outcomes into the mix? For example, tying your TV campaigns to your Web analytics, to know how many people visited advertiser websites, possibly measuring how many people who received movie ads then viewed movie trailers on Fandango.
And once you’re targeting, measuring and delivering TV campaigns by Program, People and Pixel, who wouldn’t want to add Purchase to the list? So you would expect buyers and sellers of future TV campaigns to target, deliver, and measure campaigns all the way from the top to the bottom of the funnel, linking each and every TV impression (and digital impressions too, of course) to Programs, People, Pixels and Purchase.
TV’s past might have been defined by only one P, but its future will certainly be driven by at least four Ps. That’s certainly how the digital ad world works already.
What do you think? Is the future of TV advertising all about four Ps?
The "P" that ALL the networks are missing is PROGRAMMING....fix
that and the viewers will come to all their platforms, but it first starts with a well written and character developed show. And decent tune-in advertising (which currently is terrible on all networks...cable and broadcast)
Perception, presentation, plethora of ads, puppies
But how will advertisers know what TV shows Fandango ticket buyers watched ?
Ed, they will link it at the household level to set-top box viewing data, not only to the shows, but the ads viewed as well.
Thanks, Dave.
And what of that old standby, "Awareness?" There are a bunch of "P"s housed in that one, simple word: Perspective, Perception, Positivity, Predilection, Predisposition, pooh-poohing. We must be careful about turning all video outcomes into DR metrics. This is a bit facile, methinks.
Television by nature is a "one way" communication medium. So, in order to enable true consumer interaction via television it needs to be augmented with other supporting technologies. I think eventually legacy cable networks will merge seamlessly with newer technologies (web/mobile) and enable campaign measurement in a more useful manner. This has already started to happen with technologies like sending metadata from the TV Ad to your mobile device via low frequency sound. But there are still adoption problems because of the requirement of installing apps in your phone that enable such experience.
I think TV and related technologies geared towards pushing information to the masses have very good future. The question is not whether "TV" itself has future in advertising or not. Because I think it certainly does. The question is what TV technologies have great future in advertising?
Other than some key variables here (good programming, good ads, etc.), the real key is in the data (for the targeting purpose). So if "enabling NBC to package, sell and deliver audience-denominated campaigns based on third- and first-party data sets." is an important factor, then how do they get across the privacy issues? For instance, obviously a car manufacturer (who I have purchased a new car from) knows who I am, what type of car I like and most importantly, when it predicts I will be in the market for a new car - all data collected from the purchase. With digital (and my prior consent) it's very easy to create a one-to-one targeted message to reach me wherever I am (device or platform). For TV, the car manufacturer would have to share that data with the media buying chain which I believe they can't do (my apologies if that personal data is already shared via the set-top box channel). Can they?
With a lot of brands, that is a big issue as the customer is primarily owned by the channel (retailer) and not the brand and thus they primarily focus on awareness rather than target (think of the ubiquitous car insurance ad wars currently going on). So, yes, it would be great if Chevrolet shared it's data with NBC and was able to show me a commercial when I was watching ANY of it's media properties, but still, then I might receive a "generic" Chevy ad that might not fit my desire (pickup truck vs. sportscar). That's where the flaw in TV has always been: just because my friend and I are in the exact "audience profile", we are actually different because he prefers pickup trucks and I prefer sports cars. Sure, fishing with a net will generally get you more fish than with a line, but there's going to be a lot of waste with the fish that you have to throw back. Maybe the brand's answer is a trade-off of privacy to savings and brand loyalty - but it has to be taken seriously and done correctly.
Dorothy, I believe that fuzzy metrics like awareness are not likely to be nearly as important a part of advertising's future as it was in the industry's past. Now that advertisers can use data to measure long-term sales effects of ads against large numbers of actual people and households over periods of years, "hard" numbers like actual purchase matter so much more. Adding purchase data to brand ads on TV doesn't make it direct response. It just makes the impact of TV brand advertising measurable and accountable.
Guatam, great point. Probably a big issue in the future of TV technology is asking the question about how we define TV. I think that the term will become bigger than the screen and the multichannel package of today, and that "tele-visual" will define and support a much bigger consumer and advertiser experience in the future.
Jim, I totally agree. To make this work, managing - and protecting - consumers' privacy will be critical. Without it, there will be no trust, and efforts to make TV ads more relevant and more desired by consumers will fail.
Dave, there are a lot of ad campaigns that are not measurable by sales alone. For example corporate image campaigns as well as many financial and technology campaigns. Also, many national advertisers----those who collaborate with local franchisees, dealers, store chains, etc. ----are relying on their "partners" local advertising to help move product while they supply nationwide "support". I think that awareness will remain a key ad campaign metric for some time to come as it is useful not only for seeing whether you are getting your message across but also for correlating awareness build against sales and, ultimately, GRPs or ad budgets. Finally, many sales are repeats made by consumers already sold on the product. It's not a given that today's sales are all a function of today's----or recent----advertising. Often, you are seeing the result of past conversions, where the new brand buyer sticks with the product and continues purchasing it. Finally, most of the sales a brand gets tend to come from those who are already loyal brand buyers. This factor has to be accounted for and awareness----measured in some detail---can often be predictive. For example, how many brand loyals and buyers of rival brands are getting your message? How convincing was it to both types of consumers?, etc.
Great points Ed. However, now in an era of highly-measurable social media, there are a lot of pixel-based measurements (like, tweets, web visits, online comments, etc.) available to know how well an image campaign is doing. It's still early, but I have a lot of confidence we'll get to some strong, reliable metrics there. On the national/local brand/franchisee issue, the availability of large numbers of credit card purchase data sets that can be matched at the person & household level in a de-identified, privacy safe way against the accounted-for delivery of digital ads, shopper marketing coupons, loyalty programs and, most importantly, TV set-top box ad viewing data means that it is becoming possible to parse and compare ad sales effects between loyal, light and new customers across multiple media channels, with full visibility into competitive ads and competitive purchases by the same customers. I've seen the latter type of work in action and it's pretty incredible what's now possible. The days of just correlating GRP's against sales retroactively will be numbered.
Please, please, please, please, enough already!