FORT LAUDERDALE — The potential to target individual TV viewers using one of an array of pre-prepared custom ads will fundamentally change the way the business works – but the people who make those ads are going to have to catch up first, a panel discussion heard.
Asked if the current wave of new advertising technology just amounted to introducing a set of new acronyms whilst not intrinsically changing the business, Bank Of America media SVP Lou Paskalis replied he “violently disagreed”.
“It is a massive paradigm shift … that allows us to use advertising inventory for a much larger sweep of use cases,” he says. “I’m going to take a CRM mindset and modality in to paid channels.”
Today, there are an estimated 43 million US homes that can receive such adverts, and the prospect got a short in the arm from last week’s partnership between GroupM addressable unit Modi Media and Cablevision. But Paskalis sounded a warning.
“The creative people are still marching to different music. They’re making 30-second stories, little ad-like objects – but they don’t understand what the targeting modalities allow us to do now. I don’t know how that works. We have to march them back in to this.”
Eyeview CEO Oren Harnevo agreed, saying: “The creative is completely separate. They made 30 seconds two months ago and that’s it.” That’s where Eyeview comes in. “We’ll make hundreds of thousands of different video ads, and then we’ll provide the different video ad for a person who likes this type of food,” Harnevo said.
In the panel, Modi Media targeted television director Joanna Thissen said most first-wave advertisers used the technology for “bottom-of-the-funnel” ads, those which can achieve sales return – but a coming second wave will be “moving up-funnel”.
Meanwhile, Comcast Media 360 VP Andrew Ward explained offering addressable TV ads gives Comcast access to customers that had never bought spot TV ads.
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
The panel was moderated by Furious Corp CEO Ashley J. Swartz.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.