Commentary
Data's Vital Role In Programmatic TV
- by Brad Smith , Op-Ed Contributor, April 12, 2016
It starts with leveraging data sets of various television suppliers and turning their existing information flow into a powerful tool that allows them to grow and differentiate themselves within the marketplace.
Using data to drive more value for both the buyers and sellers must begin with the supply side effectively aggregating and packaging their inventory in ways never before possible. This isn’t an issue given in the digital world, given industry standards imposed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and others that drive standardization on every transaction for both buyers and sellers.
Television is different. While limited standards exist, some of the biggest suppliers of television inventory worldwide have multiple divisions with numerous products (network, cable, broadcast TV and online video), each with its own set of data, processes, practices and businesses as well as the inability to properly scale these sets of inventory in an automated fashion.
It is for this reason that data management and usage are the most crucial building blocks in this new media environment. This can be the difference between attaining efficiency and increased value of inventory for suppliers, and being bogged down in overly complex manual processes that result in lost advertising opportunities.
Focusing on the many ways data can be applied—whether it’s looking at the customer’s spending behavior, traditional ratings and measurement units, or intelligence garnered for the first time—can help accelerate adoption in the marketplace, benefitting the larger TV ecosystem.
Taking this approach requires starting with the supply side, enabling both buyers and sellers to unlock value previously not attained. This approach optimizes broadcasters’ inventory in a way that could not previously be achieved, by allowing them to compete at scale and apply outside data to their scaled inventory.
Transformation in the programmatic TV marketplace continues, with effective data usage being the catalyst.
Another catalyst for the further development of programmatic buying for TV will be convincing the sellers that they should give up control over their audience GRP "inventories" and allow the buying side computers to pick whatever shows that are deemed suitable---based on "data"--- at the lowest CPMs. No more upfronts, no more bundling of good and not so good TV shows to maximize the seller's total schedule ad dollar yield, no more negotiations, just transparancy in all pricing and who cares if the sellers are only 50% sold out, which means that they must operate in the "red". Until sellers are sold on this basic departure from what they have been doing, you can mobilize all of the data you can find and it wont get you anywhere.
Brad, really informative piece, thanks. For those who'd like to get more information on some of these topics, our free white paper gets into a lot of what Brad addresses. See http://www.biakelsey.com/Data-Driven-Audience-Planning-and-the-Local-Market-Advantage.asp.