Mapping the Mainstreaming of Addressable TV at DISH

It is a given that television has been on an accelerated path of evolution with greater complexity, fragmentation and choice -- offering both opportunities and challenges. To better understand the current and future ecosystem of television and the role that addressable plays in it, DISH Media and several other industry players commissioned a study conducted by Forrester Consulting titled The Transformation of Television, the results of which clarify the underlying issues, mechanics and attitudes that impact addressable video's multi-level adoption and expansion.

"Addressable TV advertising is a transformative product" explained Tim Myers, GM of strategy, products and business development at DISH Media. "[It] provides opportunities for both the buyer and the agency to respond to the trends that began to emerge and accelerate during the pandemic. It offers better accountability, different forms of measurement, and the ability to go after high-value audiences that reach consumers in new ways."

In short, the study revealed first and foremost that buyers understand the need to prioritize addressable going forward. It also helped clarify the challenges. "We definitely need to simplify the buying and managing of addressables across suppliers, provide more scale and a larger footprint, increase interoperability among MVPDs and technology partners, and solve some of the measurement issues," Myers said. In the vein of measurement, the sell-side specifically needs to think about "the differences in how people have traditionally planned and measured television, how these new impressions-based models work and, ultimately, how you can tie this into attribution and other techniques to measure the performance," he added. All of this is not impossible but will take a coordinated full industry effort and commitment.

Myers acknowledged the challenges that need to be addressed across all sectors of the ecosystem. On the sell side, scale continues to be a challenge as well, he pointed out. "Making sure that we remove some of the complexities that create headwinds and lead to a lack of confidence about integrating addressable into a brand's annual campaign strategy is imperative," he asserted. However, he admitted that building universal adoption of addressable means having concrete solutions, agreeing that "the industry needs to adopt a mainstream approach and help fund the work that needs to be done to scale."

It takes a village or, in this case, an industry, to facilitate the mainstreaming of addressable. For their part, DISH Media has been focused on this exact approach for some time, advocating for an open and collaborative way of doing business. "We've been working with other distributors as well as platform and technology partners that we directly interface with to begin making changes," Myers said. "That includes partnerships with companies like DirecTV, Comcast, Charter and Cox. We are also beginning to partner with the programmers themselves and offer addressable services," he added, which brings addressable beyond the two-minute local avails and into the 14 minutes of national inventory. "It's now available through many buying channels," he explained. That enables the mainstreaming of addressable by solving for scale.

As Myers looks to the future of addressable, he is optimistic. "We will continue to see addressable build in terms of its importance in the execution of TV advertising," he said. "We will be able to provide a simple and interoperable means of planning and executing these transactions. Measurement will make it easier to tie it all back to the sales activity. Attribution will become more seamless and easier to execute.

"In three to five years addressable will absolutely be a mainstream part of the TV advertising mix," he concluded.

To download the full study -- The Transformation of Television: Embracing the Era of Addressable TV -- click here.

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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.

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