Bringing Addressable To Local TV: Premion’s Vilade

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Originally published by Beet.TV Beet.TV •

When the industry talks about advanced ad targeting, it is often the big national networks and publishers that get first-look.

But spreading the benefits of targeting and measurement in streaming and connected TV is important for local TV operators, too.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, John Vilade, head of sales at TV proprietor TEGNA’s Premion division explains why.

Pandemic progress

“Streaming had been accelerating and the pandemic really accelerated it even further,” says Vilade, whose Premion is a premium CTV/OTT advertising platform for regional and local advertisers.

“I think we got probably three to five years worth of growth in a year’s period of time.

“Ad-supported OTT is just continuing to grow with more offerings, we’re seeing the major media companies obviously invest in buy fast services. We’re seeing a lot of testing with regards to hybrid models, SVOD plus AVOD.”

And the growth is filtering through to Premion’s own performance.

“In 2020, we saw a 40% growth, this year we’re expecting 45 to 50% growth,” Vilade adds.

AVOD slowdown?

Data released by Omdia analyst Maria Rua Agete this week paints an intriguing picture, however.

It shows:

  • Overall AVOD consumption did not rise during the pandemic, and has actually fallen by 10% between November and April.
  • “A significant number of users are eschewing AVOD and instead increasingly consuming content via paid alternatives.”
  • “The average number of US video services (SVOD and AVOD) taken per VoD user has also fallen for the first time, from 7.23 in November 2020 to 7.06 in April 2021.”

Wiring-up local

For Vilade, TEGNA and Premion that will likely underscore the need to wire-up local television to exploit over-the-top streaming.

TEGNA owns more than 60 television stations in the United States.

Premion aggregates supply, and brings it back out to national spot buyers and local buyers.

Its works with premium publishers like Discovery, A+E and Viacom as well as FAST services like Tubi and Xumo.

Going large on sales

“Right now, Premion does not have a programmatic offering,” Vilade says. “We do all of our business directly with our advertisers and our agencies.

“We come in, we create media plans for them that give them very wide distribution across all 210 DMAs with advanced targeting and advanced reporting, and create terrific value propositions and terrific measurability and accountability within that streaming marketplace.

“I think we probably have the largest ad sales team in the local streaming space right now between TEGNA stations and Gray stations and our Premion direct national spot sales teams.”

Measuring up

He says it is important to educate customers on what is an environment of complexity, with many viewing channels, and many different ad-buying nuances.

Premion recently partnered with Polk Automotive to get sales data that could prove the effectiveness of CTV car ads.

It teamed with Arrivalist to leverage real-world visitation data that could be linked back to CTV ad exposure.

You are watching “Convergent TV: Driving Addressability Across Traditional and Connected TV,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Beachfront. For more videos, please visit this page.