Latest from Next TV in Atandt-adworks

AT&T AdWorks Offers 60-Second Addressable Format for Linear TV

Jeff Baumgartner — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 15:49:00 +0000

AT&T AdWorks, the company’s advanced advertising division, said it has launched the option to serve 60-second ads to its base of about 14 million addressable TV homes, which includes a subset of DirecTV subscribers.

AT&T said it’s adding this new option because advertisers often require more than a 30-second ad to deliver their message on TV.

AT&T AdWorks now offers 60-, 30- and 15-second linear addressable ad capabilities.

“A 60-second linear addressable ad is a game-changing addition to our platform,” said Rick Welday, president, AT&T AdWorks. “Advertisers, across all different industries, are looking for additional time to engage their target audience, while taking advantage of innovative addressable TV solutions that minimize waste. We’re excited to address this need.”

AT&T AdWorks hosted its first “Addressable Upfronts” earlier this year, and recently launched trade ads touting its addressable ad platform.

AT&T AdWorks Sets ‘Addressable’ Upfronts

Jeff Baumgartner — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 14:15:00 +0000

Highlighting the growing importance and availability of targeted advertising, AT&T AdWorks said it will host what it’s billing as the first “Addressable Upfronts” starting in April.

AT&T AdWorks said the plan is to host more than 100 customized Upfronts nationwide to help clients get a better fix on the company’s addressable targeted advertising capabilities. Of that mix, its New York City event will be held at the AT&T AdWorks Lab.

The ad division noted that the events will highlight its linear Addressable TV offering and its new cross-screen addressable capabilities. Last week, the company noted that it already offers a linear TV addressable advertising solution in its live and playback modes in approximately 13 million households nationwide.

“Our addressable advertising offer maximizes the return on ad spending by matching the right ad with the right household and audience. It’s a more meaningful way of doing advertising. We wanted to apply that same strategy to our upfront events,” Jason Brown, vice president of national advertising sales, AT&T AdWorks, said in a statement. “Our Addressable Upfronts will maximize the time agencies and advertisers invest with us throughout a busy upfront season.”

TiVo Names Head of Research/Analytics Unit

MCN Staff — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 15:00:00 +0000

TiVo has tapped Frank Foster as senior vice president and general research of its TiVo Research and Analytics subsidiary.

Foster, to be based in the company's New York offices, will head up TiVo Research's strategic development in research and analytic solutions, audience measurement, data provisioning and programmatic advertising efforts.

He most recently was president and general manager of Crossbeam Media, a unit of Comcast, that focuses on TV, online and mobile advertising platforms. Foster also previously served as VP advanced media sales and planning at Comcast Spotlight, and was head of television advertising sales and television product development for AT&T AdWorks. Prior to AT&T, Foster was the CEO at EVAD Consulting and co-founder and president of television audience research pioneer, erinMedia. Foster also assisted in the sale of Cheetah Technologies to Acterna, and, before that, held sales and marketing positions at USRobotics.

"The work TiVo Research is doing to provide advanced audience research and targeted data services and solutions is of utmost importance to TiVo's future and is of increasing critical importance to the advertising industry," TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said in a statement. "Frank brings with him tremendous experience in advanced advertising and deep insight into multi-platform entertainment that will be put to immediate use at TiVo Research. We are extremely pleased to have Frank leading this team."

"TiVo Research is in a unique position to couple the industry's largest single source, cross-platform data set with unrivaled experience in set top box data analytics,” Foster added. “When combined with TiVo's significant investment in state of the art big data technology, TiVo Research is in a unique position to shed light on how advertisers' media spend drives consumer behavior and more importantly product sales.”

Mining for TV Gold With Big Data Tools

Jeff Baumgartner — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 12:00:00 +0000

While Nielsen ratings remain the central currency for measuring TV audiences, the process of gathering second-by-second data from millions of set-top boxes has rapidly become an alternative option that can help programmers and their advertisers learn much more about their viewers — and target them.

There’s no shortage of companies that have access to this massive flow of raw data and sift through it all to find these valuable nuggets of information, among them FourthWall Media, AT&T’s AdWorks unit and Rentrak.

Going beyond sex and age demographics, set-top data can dive several layers deeper to help ad buyers target their products more precisely and bring a digital-style approach to TV advertising.

Among this group, FourthWall collects box data from about 2.1 million homes (and roughly 4 million set-top boxes) across 90 demographic market areas.

As with other companies that collect such information, it’s all kept anonymous, but Fourth- Wall does use unique household identifiers to provide a full picture of how those homes change over time. With that data in hand, it is then free to layer it with demographic information from sources such as Acxiom. The company’s information is also used by outfits such as AOL’s Adap.tv, a unit that specializes in automated programmatic advertising online and, increasingly, for TV, and Starcom Mediavest, which taps in to make smarter media buys.

“We help a lot of companies facilitate their particular services,” Bill Feininger, president of FourthWall’s MassiveData division, said.

Feininger said he views FourthWall as both complementary and competitive to Nielsen, where he was previously employed for about 16 years. “We don’t build products that are measured products that compete with them. But on the other hand, we certainly have the data that could be used for that purpose.”

FourthWall also has the ability to collect similar data from mobile devices, which will grow in importance as TV Everywhere and other over-the-top services continue to attract eyeballs.

FourthWall’s “plumbing” has the ability to do that kind of collection. “We don’t implement that for ourselves and collect [that data], but the pieces are in place for our partners that license that technology,” Feininger said.

Rentrak, meanwhile, has a movie business that measures every time a movie ticket is sold in real time on a census basus. That information helps studios plan and shift their TV and digital media strategies practically on the fly. At the behest of programmers, it followed that years ago by measuring set-top box data as it became clear that video-on-demand would become an important extension of movie consumption. It went even further as on-demand viewing of TV shows became popular.

Rentrak now gathers information from 115 million TV sets, and, out of those VOD homes with a return path, is also measuring a subset of about 30 million, taking a look at live TV, DVR and VOD viewing, said vice chairman and CEO Bill Livek.

That kind of information enables Rentrak to precisely define who’s watching a TV show and who might also be BMW or Audi owner, and consumers “who have a propensity to buy brands when it comes to the products inside a grocery store,” Livek said.

Tapping big databases against TV viewing “helps the ad agencies and the brands become more efficient,” Livek said.

Rentrak, like FourthWall, is also keeping tabs on TV viewing on mobile devices.

“It’s still a tiny piece of the puzzle,” Livek said, noting that Rentrak is presently looking at that kind of data on a proprietary basis, “but soon it will be syndicated.”

In a similar vein, AT&T AdWorks is helping its partners tap set-top box data, poring through data generated from more than 16 million boxes across the U-verse TV universe.

There’s been a “big shift” as advertisers become increasingly interested in using digital- style methods that bring more accountability to TV advertising and are far more effective than traditional linear TV buys, Maria Mandel Dunsche, vice president of marketing at AT&T AdWorks, said.

Interest in those models is now attracting “some serious dollars,” she said, noting that the process is enabling a “digital currency to move to the TV” ecosystem.

“The set-top box can be a powerful [tool] to model potential new ways to reach a more targeted audience,” she said.

Looking ahead, AT&T Ad Works expects to expand its current TV-focused capabilities with mobile, a move that could help the company target and measure advertising across platforms. AT&T expects to announce more details later this year.

AT&T AdWorks Drives Targeted Auto Ad Deal

Jeff Baumgartner — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:15:00 +0000

AT&T AdWorks, AT&T’s advanced TV ad arm, said it has inked a deal with IHS Automotive that aims to help marketers measure the effectiveness of their TV auto advertising campaigns.

AT&T AdWorks said it will use Polk statistical data from IHS Automotive to measure – on an anonymous and aggregate basis -- the effectiveness of TV automotive advertising on vehicle purchases. This new offering does not target individual consumers, but rather the TV shows they’re most likely to watch, AT&T AdWorks said.

The deal also gives automotive advertisers the ability to use data-optimized audience-targeting capabilities with AT&T AdWorks TV Blueprint to target commercials to specific audience segments, boiled down to consumers who are interested in luxury cars, SUVs or a specific model or a particular vehicle.

AT&T AdWorks TV Blueprint uses anonymous and aggregate proprietary viewership data from more than 15 million U-verse set-top boxes to develop custom, data-optimized media plans.

“We will provide automotive advertisers with the necessary tools to sell more vehicles through our agreement with IHS Automotive,” said Mike Welch, president, AT&T AdWorks, in a statement. “Automotive advertisers will obtain greater insights about when to air their advertisements on TV and the resulting purchases at local dealerships. The advertisers will also get value by using AT&T AdWorks’ advanced advertising solutions to serve commercials to TV audiences most interested in buying a new vehicle.”

“Establishing the link between vehicle preferences and television viewing is critical in making the right advertising decisions,” added John McBride, VP, digital and media solutions at IHS Automotive.