While addressable TV advertising — the notion of being able to send specific spots to individual viewers depending on their demographics — is becoming more popular than ever, much of that popularity is tied to the rise of streaming.

Streaming, by its nature, is built for addressablity. With the exception of some linear-like channels on the free ad-supported streaming TV platforms (FASTs), it is almost exclusively on-demand.

Linear, though, is a different story.

The U.S. has had a linear addressable market for some time, led by satellite-TV providers Dish Network and DirecTV (now AT&T), which had national audiences and the right software in their set top boxes to allow linear addressable to happen. 

While advertisers liked the Dish and DirecTV solutions, the satellite providers did not have the scale to make linear addressable anything more than a niche solution.

Project OAR and Nielsen’s linear addressable solutions set out to rectify the scale issue by allowing for addressable overlays on smart TVs, regardless of which provider the viewer was subscribed to.

Ready to Scale Up

Now the addressable universe is poised to gain even more scale.

Invidi, long a powerhouse in this space, has recently launched two initiatives that hold great promise for increasing the scale and scope of linear addressable.

The first is a collaboration with middleware provider Irdeto to create a solution that allows set-top boxes running on Irdeto to deliver addressable ads. This opens up the addressable linear market around the world, especially in Europe, where Irdeto has a sizable footprint. 

Just as important, it allows for all distributors — cable, satellite, telco as well as broadcasters and operators (pretty much anyone with a set top box) — to offer an easy and complete linear addressable solution, one that agencies and brands should find much easier to buy at scale, as it eliminates any concerns about compatibility across distributors.

The Irdeto deal builds on the momentum of recent news that Invidi has been certified by Project OAR (Open Addressable Ready) to deliver addressable ads from WarnerMedia via Vizio smart TVs.

Project OAR uses smart TV’s ability to recognize what programming the (opted-in) viewer is watching and then deliver a more targeted spot as an overlay. For networks, it’s a way to sell and deliver addressable spots directly, without having to go through the multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs). 

Scale is the big takeaway here too: Invidi is now able to deliver WarnerMedia’s addressable ads across not just Vizio TVs, but across Verizon, Dish and DirecTV set-top boxes as well. By increasing the size of the potential audience, the deal makes it easier for buyers to justify running addressable ads on WarnerMedia’s networks as they can reach a larger audience across both set-top boxes and smart TVs.

The goal is to expand this arrangement to other networks and other set-top boxes and OEMs so that the linear addressable buys can easily be made across a much larger potential audience. This will be key as the shift to streaming will not happen overnight and brands will need to continue to have a strong presence on linear for the next five to 10 years.

Two Definitions of Addressable

While addressable advertising is indeed hot right now, we’re also seeing the development of two somewhat different definitions of what addressable actually means. For many brands, “addressable” involves bringing in either their own first-party data (e.g., their loyalty program members) or buying that sort of data from a third party and then targeting ads to only run against that audience.

That setup is in line with how digital advertising is sold and for a long time has been the primary way that linear addressable was sold too.

But as viewers are shifting from linear to streaming, an alternate definition has cropped up where, rather than buying against a specific target, brands are buying against the same Nielsen demo they’re targeting on traditional linear (e.g,. women 18 to 49) as a way of extending reach.

These buys are mostly being made on streaming, as brands use streaming as a way of extending reach, hitting audiences they are missing on linear,  while still casting a fairly broad net. Because the ads are not going to the entire audience, they are frequently called “addressable” as well, though it seems clear that a new term is needed for these types of reach-based buys. 

Another item for the to-do list. 

About 39% of respondents to a recent survey said that they don’t care about the financial damage that video piracy inflicts on studios and other segments of the media industry.

And a sizable portion – about 32% -- of consumers admitted that they watch pirated content, according to a survey of 1,190 U.S. adults by YouGov that was commissioned by security specialist Irdeto.

Per the study, just 19% said the financial damage caused by piracy would stop them from watching purloined content altogether.

The study also found that 69% believe that streaming or downloading pirate content is illegal, meaning that a 31% think it’s totally above board.

Those findings, of course, are good for Irdeto, which believes that they indicate that content owners, movie studios and service providers should invest in additional content protection strategies to prevent pirates from stealing shows and movies and cutting into their legitimate businesses. Irdeto also believes that these issues cut even deeper.

“The negative impact that piracy has on the content creation industry extends much further than lost revenue,” Lawrence Low, VP of business development and sales at Irdeto, said in a statement. “Piracy deters content creators from investing in new content, impacting the creative process and providing consumers with less choice. It is becoming increasingly important for operators and movie studios to educate consumers on the tactics employed by pirates and to further promote innovative offerings that allow consumers to legally acquire content.”

Among other findings, 24% of consumers who watch pirated content are most interested in watching TV series, while the same percentage were most interested in prirated movies that are currently showing in theaters.

According to TorrentFreak, a site focused on file-sharing and privacy and copyright issues, HBO’s Game of Thrones was again the most-torrented TV show. Deadpool, it said, was the most pirated movie of 2016, ahead of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

The Irdeto/YouGov study also found that consumers are likewise interested in pirating DVD and Blu-ray movies (18%), live sports (10%), and originals from OTT services such as Netflix and Hulu (9%). 

Ninety-six percent of pay TV and OTT operators see a majority of both consumers and video service providers adopting 4K Ultra High-Def (UHD) by 2020, and a vast majority of service providers also believe consumers will pay a premium for content delivered in 4K.

That’s according to a new survey from digital content security company Irdeto and research firm SNL Kagan, which asked nearly 500 video service providers and content producers about their 4K industry forecasts.

The results saw 64% of video service providers and 73% of content producers saying consumers would be willing to pay up to 30% more to subscribe to 4K UHD content. Nearly 90% said they will offer 4K UHD content by 2020, with 78% saying they’ll have 4K content ready by 2018. Nearly two thirds of respondents said live sports will be the No. 1 driver of 4K content for consumers.

Read more at B&C.

With Halloween just around the corner and consumers increasingly likely to tee up some scary movies and TV shows to amplify the mood, digital security specialist Irdeto took a look at what titles from the horror genre are most attractive to pirates.

AMC’s The Walking Dead has the dubious honor of being the most pirated TV show in the field, generating 44% of total TV downloads, Irdeto said in its report, based on its tracking of BitTorrent and OTT piracy traffic from October 14-23.

Following The Walking Dead was FX’s American Horror Story (28%), Showtime’s Dexter (10%), NBC’s Grimm (9%), The CW’s iZombie (7%) and Netflix original  Hemlock Grove (2%).

But zombies didn’t lead the way by piracy category. Ghost-themes titles (54%) led, then came zombies (27%) and slasher movies and TV shows (18%).

On the movie side of the digital piracy ledger, Insidious (16% of horror-genre downloads) was tops, Poltergeist (10%), The Shining (9%), 28 Days Later, Hotel Transylvania, The Exorcist, Saw, Shaun of the Dead, and Paranormal Activity.

Oh, and Irdeto did all of this with a message in mind for pay TV and OTT service providers– this data can help them put forth content that consumers are seeking during this frightening period, and perhaps put a damper on piracy.

 “As scary as this sounds, piracy data can help pay TV and OTT operators understand what their customers demand and may not have legal and affordable access to,” said Rory O’Connor, VP, services at Irdeto, in a statement.  “By looking at spikes in piracy, you can determine the most advantageous content, timing and format for your video service offerings in specific markets. For instance, consumers in the United States gravitate to older horror flicks that generate nostalgia around Halloween. It is quite possible for older video content to rise from the dead during key points of the year.”

O’Connor also reasons that Hemlock Grove isn’t a big target for piracy due to Netflix’s binge-friendly approach of releasing all episodes in a season at once.

As millions of movie-lovers prepare to fill out their ballots ahead of Sunday night’s Academy Awards, Irdeto checked in with some fresh data showing that piracy picked up sizably after the films nominated were announced. 

Irdeto, the content protection specialist, monitors such things, and found a 385% increase in piracy worldwide for nominated films when the announcement was made in mid-January. Irdeto said it figured that out by tracking illegal download data from those titles across the U.S. and more than 200 countries using the company’s automated crawlers, which use special software to identify users and files on the BitTorrent network.

While Gone Girl held an early lead, American Sniper surpassed it, with more than 1.38 million downloads during the period tracked -- January 15 through February 14. The report is available here.

Irdeto said about 36% of pirate copies came from retail Blu-ray and DVD discs during that period, while 31% came way of Hollywood screeners.

On that note, Irdeto said the six nominated movies (American Sniper, The Imitation Game, Wild, Selma, Whiplash and Still Alice) not available yet for retail purchase on Blu-Ray, DVD, VOD or legal streaming/download sites saw the highest levels of piracy from screeners. It further estimates that more than $40 million in retail revenue could have been captured if those titles were already available to consumers.

Irdeto cares about this in large part because it provides the kind of security that could support earlier digital distribution windows, something it’s in favor of and believes Hollywood should be as well.

“In the world of internet re-distribution, the window between theatrical release and worldwide market availability may simply be too long, leaving room for pirates to take advantage and offer consumers alternative means of instant gratification,” Rory O’Connor,Irdeto’s VP of services, said in a statement about the company’s findings. “Today’s consumers simply refuse to wait to access these movies through legitimate services.”

During the timeframe monitored by Irdeto, the U.S. led the way in illegal downloads, followed by Russia, Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, India, Australia, Spain, South Korea and the Netherlands.

This heat map (partly shown above and available in full here) offers a more granular view, breaking down by the top three Oscar-nominated movies downloaded on a country-by-country basis.