Another reminder of the popularity of ad-supported connected TV comes in a survey by Premion and Advertiser Perceptions which found that 61% of the marketers that advertise on CTV and over-the-top TV plan to increase their spending on those channels.

On average, those advertisers expect spending to increase by 21%.

According to the study, 83% of CTV/OTT advertisers believe that CTV/OTT’s value is greater than, or equal to, that of primetime TV, with 36% saying that CTV/OTT is more valuable.

Premion released a similar study last year.

“Advertisers are increasingly shifting dollars from other channels to boost their CTV ad budgets,” Daniel Spinosa, president of Premion, the Tegna unit dedicated to selling CTV and OTT to local and regional advertisers, said. 

“Our study validates that CTV is a valuable channel for achieving KPIs, and advertisers are increasingly prioritizing it as part of a complete TV strategy to drive full-funnel brand goals,” Spinosa said. “They are harnessing sophisticated targeting and measurement capabilities to effectively measure its impact and drive significant business outcomes.”

The study found that advertisers were spending more because of CTV/OTT advertising’s ability to achieve full-funnel objectives; reach a highly engaged, opted-in audience; and conduct precision targeting.

The incremental spending on CTV/OTT advertising was overwhelmingly the result of budgets reallocated from digital advertising, social media and linear TV. Only 26% said they were tapping new ad budgets to increase CTV spending.

Among those increasing their CTV/OTT ad spend in 2024, a notable 74% are reallocating budgets from digital, social media, or linear TV, while one in four (26%) are tapping into new ad budgets to fuel this growth.

Eighty percent of CTV/OTT advertisers see ads on those platforms as an extension of their linear TV strategy, while around seven in 10 advertisers agree that integrating linear TV with CTV/OTT advertising improves full-funnel return on investment, boosts ad recall and enhances brand awareness.

Nearly all of the advertisers said they work with more than one CTV/OTT provider, with 40% using an average of more than five providers on a typical campaign. 

Half of all CTV/OTT advertising is expected to be purchased programmatically in 2024, the survey found.

Advertiser Perceptions was hired by Premion to conduct the April study, an anonymous online survey of 150 ad agency or brand-side marketers who spent at least $250,000 annually on CTV/OTT advertising in 2023 and 2024. 

Tegna said it named Tom Cox, the president of its Premion advertising unit, to the new position of chief growth officer.

The company also said that Daniel Spinosa, Premion’s CFO will succeed Cox as president.

Cox, who had also been senior VP, business development at Tegna, will report to CEO Dave Lougee. In his new post he will lead efforts to accelerate Tegna’s digital business and oversee Tegna’s technology and digital product divisions.

“As we look to the future, Tom’s extensive experience leading transformative transactions and scaling early to mid-stage businesses will be instrumental as we chart our future trajectory,” said Lougee

Cox joined Tegna in 2011 from Fox Digital.

“This is a pivotal moment in Tegna’s history and media overall. I am eager to work with our digital, technology, and Premion teams to drive innovation and further growth across the business, leveraging the strength of TEgna’sgreat assets,” said Cox.

Before joining Tegna, Spinosa was with Comcast, where he was general manager for Xfinity Store and Entertainment Services. Before Comcast, Spinosa spent 12 years with AOL.

Tegna said its Premion over-the-top advertising unit has acquired Octillion Media, which runs a demand side platform focused on connected TV advertising.

The deal will boost Premion’s CTV ad capabilities, the companies said.

“Octillion is precisely the type of smart bolt-on acquisition we have long considered to accelerate our already successful, organically-grown Premion business,” Tegna CEO Dave Lougee said. 

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Tegna said the cost of the acquisition will be covered with available cash on hand.  The transaction is expected to be accretive in terms of free cash flow and earnings per share within 12 months and is not expected to have a material impact on Tegna’s 2024 financial results, the company said.

Also Read: Premion Campaign for Florida Auto Dealer Wins Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Data

Octillion was founded in 2019 and was the first local OTT platform to be certified by TAG for providing transparency.

Gabe Greenberg, CEO and co-founder of Octillion, and the company’s other employees will join Premion.

“With our shared belief that transparency, quality, and brand safety are the key pillars of success for local CTV advertisers, bringing Octillion together with Premion is a natural fit,” Greenberg said. “We’re excited to continue to build and develop our innovative CTV/OTT product offering and activate the platform’s capabilities backed up by quantified business outcomes across Premion’s network of sellers and clients.”

“We built Premion with a local-first mindset from the start,” added Tom Cox, president of Premion and senior VP, corporate development for Tegna. “The acquisition of Octillion Media provides us with a proven purpose-built local CTV platform to further enable product innovation, improve operational efficiencies, and drive accelerated growth.

“Local relevance remains a top advertiser priority, and the addition of Octillion’s technology will enhance our ability to meet ever-evolving customer needs and drive value for our clients,” Cox said.

Premion, Tegna’s local streaming ad sales company, said it named Al Behmoiras as head of political sales.

Behmoiras had been North American head of sales, demand ad tech, at FreeWheel.  He replaces Keith Norman, who moved to LG Ad Solution in July.

“As we gear up for a busy 2024 election season, we anticipate substantial growth in both total political ad spending and the share allocated to CTV,” said John Vilade, head of sales at Premion. “As we continue to compete and win in a convergent linear + CTV marketplace across direct and programmatic sales, Al is a valuable addition and will play a pivotal role as we set our Election 2024 strategy in motion.”

Before FreeWheel, Behemoras was with Strata and Reuters.

A campaign submitted by Premion for Ken Ganley Kia New Port Richey won the 2023 Advanced Advertising Innovation Award for Best Use of Data.

The campaign helped make the Florida auto dealership No.  2 in new car sales among people exposed to its ads, up from No. 6 the month before the campaign aired.

The award will be presented at the Advanced Advertising Summit on September 11 in New York.

Premion said it developed a CTV strategy built on precision audiences and geographic targeting and reinforced message frequency with over-the-top retargeting.

The campaign employed four commercials that emphasized the low prices at the dealership and specific spots promoting Kia’s Sportage, Sorrento and K5 models.

Premion used data from Polk Automotive Solutions to target auto intenders by body style, while also aiming at owners of competitive brands.

Using Polk Signals, Premion measured attributed new car sales occurring within 30 days of exposure to the campaign.

The Premion campaign drove 17 new car sales, a 112% lift in vehicle sales versus non-Premion exposed audiences.

The campaign drove both interest and qualified leads to the website at a $7.61 cost per website visit. There were 969 exposed website visits with 594 (62%) taking further action to visit individual new and used vehicle description pages in November 2022.

The results spurred the Kia dealership to increase its spending by 50% the following month.

"Thanks to our data-driven CTV campaign and measurement solutions, Ken Ganley Kia achieved their new car sales goals and elevated their sales rankings against local competitive dealerships,” Erin Pisarkiewicz, account executive, at Tegna. “The insights we provided Ken Ganley Kia gave them the confidence to continue their future marketing campaigns with Premion.”

The Advanced Advertising Summit is part of NYC TV Week, which is produced by Broadcasting+Cable publisher Future plc.

Advanced Advertising Innovation Awards will also be presented for Best Target Definition, Best Use of Branded Content, Best Use of Multiple Platforms and Best Campaign Overall.

 A new survey found that 62% of advertisers are shifting their ad budget from digital, social media and linear TV to increase their spending on connected TV and over-the-top advertising.

According to the survey, conducted for Premion by Advertiser Perceptions, 46% of advertisers said they were spending more on CTV to capture declining TV audiences, 44% to get the benefits of TV with digital capabilities and 39% said they wanted to achieve full-funnel marketing objectives.

"Advertisers have not only embraced CTV advertising but are shifting even more dollars away from other channels to bolster their CTV ad budgets," said Tom Cox, president of Premion. "Our study  unequivocally affirms that CTV has evolved into an essential channel for marketers to achieve their full- funnel brand goals. The proven effectiveness of CTV in precisely reaching target audiences, delivering  personalized ads in engaging content through premium inventory, and driving business outcomes has cemented streaming TV as a winning strategy for advertisers."

The survey found that three out of four CTV/OTT advertisers view CTV/OTT advertising as an extension of their linear TV strategy — and two out of three advertisers agree that combining linear TV with CTV/OTT advertising increases brand awareness and improves overall ROI performance throughout the entire marketing funnel.

Key priorities for advertisers turning to CTV include the ability to run messages in premium video content, maintain brand safety and avoid fraud.

The survey was produced by interviewing 151 ad agency and brand marketing executives involved in decision making for CTV and OTT advertising. The interviewees were conducted in March.

All connected TV ad inventory is not created equal.

According to a study conducted for Tegna’s Premion advanced advertising unit by TVision, commercials placed by Premion score higher in co-viewing and attention than norms for CTV.

Premion said the high scores were the result of Premion’s focus on serving directly sourced premium content and precisely targeted audiences.

“Proving the efficacy of CTV ad spending is a top advertiser priority and co-viewing is an added value that gives advertisers meaningful insights on audiences and outcomes,” said Dave Marquard, head of product at Premion. “The TVision study underscores that co-viewing is a valuable metric.”

Even as marketers shift more ad dollars from linear TV to CTV in order to reach the growing number of viewers who stream TV content, measuring CTV audiences has remained a problem for buyers. Most viewing data reflects how many TVs and other devices are tuned in, not how many people are watching those devices.

TVision, best known for its measurement of how much attention viewers are paying to what’s on the screen, also uses its panel of 5,000 homes to determine if more than one person is watching, or co-viewing.

TVisision found that Premion inventory came in 19% above CTV normal for the average number of viewers present in the home when content is on the screen. The average views per viewable household (VPVH) for Premion was 1.5, compared to an average of 1.26 for ad-supported CTV.

Viewers paid 3.5% more attention to Premion ads than to the average CTV ad. The different was particularly large in prime and overnight dayparts. attention, and our studies show that attention is closely correlated with both aided awareness and ad recall — two fundamental brand metrics,” and Yan Liu, CEO of TVision. “Premion scored high in attention and views per viewer household which validates the power of premium content. This maximizes value for brands by getting the ads in front of a larger audience without them having to increase ad spending.”

In conducting the study, TVision measured CTV attention, views per viewable household (VPVH) and CTV viewability. Premion inventory was placed on more than 125 streaming apps, providers and networks from September 1 through November 30, 2022.

Premion, Tegna’s connected-TV advertising platform for regional and local sponsors, said it has received the Brand Safety Certified Seal from the Trustworthy Accountability Group.

In 2020, Premion got the Certified Against Fraud Seal from TAG,  formed by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (the 4A’s), the Association of National Advertisers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

“Brand safety is a top advertiser priority,” Premion president Tom Cox said. “We built Premion since inception as a trusted platform for advertisers by only sourcing inventory from premium, reputable publisher partners that people know and trust. We’re proud of achieving this second and distinct recognition from TAG. Premion was already certified against ad fraud, and now we are also brand-safety certified, which requires a separate and rigorous vetting process.”

Premion said it prioritizes knowing and understanding its source inventory and never purchases inventory from open exchanges — and provides full transparency of every impression delivered across content partners down to the network level for advertisers.

“Our TAG Brand Safety Certified Program serves the digital advertising supply chain by providing transparency, choice and control for buyers, enabling them to buy advertising inventory with confidence and creating a brand safety framework that increases the value of certified sellers' inventory,” TAG CEO Mike Zaneis said. “We commend Premion for its commitment to building a safe and trustworthy supply chain by adopting the industry’s best practices for brand safety and ad fraud protection.” ■

Most advertisers buying connected TV and over-the-top inventory plan to increase their spending on streaming by an average of 22%, according to a new study from Advertiser Perceptions and Premion, Tegna’s local OTT/CTV ad unit.

Among those responding to the study, 25% called CTV/OTT the most important or valuable media type in 2021, topping linear TV, paid search and social.

Also: NBCU Says 30%-40% Of Campaigns Should Be OTT Based

“Advertisers have embraced CTV and they’re shifting bigger budgets to the medium as an essential buy for driving brand awareness and performance marketing,” Premion president Tom Cox said. “Our study validates that CTV has become an invaluable channel for brand marketers and agencies to follow their audiences, plan with data-driven targeting, and measure with outcomes-based performance. New data capabilities make CTV even more compelling for advertisers to gain a complete understanding of audience behaviors and to connect viewership to direct business results.” 

In the study, 56% of advertisers said the ability to precisely target audiences was the top reason for increasing CTV/OTT spending in 2022. Other key benefits include extending the reach of linear TV ad campaigns, capturing declining TV audiences and reaching a highly engaged, opt-in audience.

Nearly 70% of advertisers agreed CTV/OTT allows them to target local audiences in ways that are not possible with traditional TV. 

Advertisers said challenges using CTV and OTT included getting transparency in terms of where ads were running, managing ad frequency across publishers and platforms, cost, fragmentation and inconsistent measurement standards.

The money being spent on CTV and OTT is most often coming from linear TV budgets, the study found. In fact, 84% of respondents said CTV/OTT inventory is at least as valuable as primetime TV. Funds were also coming out of budgets for other types of digital video, digital display and social media.

In conducting the survey, Advertiser Perceptions was commissioned by Premion and surveyed 151 brand marketers and ad-agency decision makers. The study was fielded in March. ■

We’ve now reached an inflection point with streaming TV advertising. While the shift toward cord-cutting and streaming was well underway, the surge in streaming audiences during the pandemic has forever changed TV viewing habits. And as streaming growth spiked, so did the proliferation of ad-supported OTT (over-the-top) services and platforms — bringing more media buying options and more complexity for marketers to navigate.

By every measure, streaming TV saw astronomical growth. Connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) have become the fastest-growing advertising channels — and we’re now beginning to close the gap between viewership and advertising spend. CTV continues to outpace other formats, and shows no signs of slowing down, according to IAB’s Video Ad Spend 2020 and Outlook for 2021 report, which finds that nearly three-quarters (73%) of CTV buyers plan to shift budget from broadcast and cable to CTV in 2021; advertisers, on average, spent $20 million on CTV in 2020; and more than one-third (35%) of buyers expect to increase CTV video ad spending in 2021. Moreover, eMarketer projects that U.S. CTV upfront spending will double to $4.5 billion this year and $6 billion in 2022, with overall CTV ad spending hitting $13.4 billion this year and $21.4 billion by 2023.

Consumers have embraced ad-supported OTT and ad-based video-on-demand (AVOD) offerings in a major way. In fact, 76% of those who regularly stream video have watched ad-supported OTT, according to IAB. The major media owners are investing significantly in free ad-supported television (FAST) services, such as Tubi (Fox), Pluto TV (ViacomCBS) and Xumo (Comcast), and an ad-supported HBO Max just launched in June joining recent entrants, Peacock, Discovery Plus and Paramount Plus. As such, the U.S. is expected to triple AVOD revenues by 2025, reaching $24 billion, according to Digital TV Research.

As marketers attempt to make sense of the growing array of CTV and OTT advertising options available across many different streaming platforms, the priority should be on understanding the nuances of buying direct versus working with premium aggregators, the role of attribution and the differences in the valuation of impressions between OTT and linear TV. Amidst the increasing fragmentation, it’s important to consider the structural differences between sellers when it comes to inventory quality, targeting, frequency management and measurement approaches.

With that in mind, here are three prevailing buying myths surrounding CTV/OTT advertising and how marketers can navigate them for the post-pandemic era. 

Myth 1: Buying directly from a publisher is efficient for local OTT

While there are perceived benefits of buying directly from a publisher, such as content control and delivery prioritization, a media buyer would need to work directly with many publishers to achieve the necessary scale to reach their desired audience. As such, a brand or agency ends up making disparate buys with many walled gardens. Beyond the issue of crossplatform frequency management and reach limitations beyond their subscribers, delivery pacing becomes a continuous challenge. Rebalancing underdelivered impressions between publishers is time consuming and often unachievable mid-flight with multimarket local campaigns.  

A more effective approach is to work with a trusted aggregator that has curated many direct connections to premium and prioritized inventory to achieve the advantages of reach and scale. Agencies and marketers need to achieve audience scale for targeting, ensure proper frequency capping and consolidate reporting under one dashboard. More importantly, focusing on trusted providers with established premium content relationships ensures campaigns run in brand-safe and fraud-free environments. 

Furthermore, as the OTT ecosystem becomes increasingly crowded, it’s important to vet providers thoroughly, as there are some aggregators that may claim to have premium content and prioritized reach. Instead, they may, in fact, be bidding on remnant inventory from open exchanges where there is little control over where ads may run — and thus presents greater brand safety and transparency risks. 

Myth 2: Only performance marketers need attribution

While CTV and OTT have become proven customer acquisition and brand-building channels, there’s a misperception that only performance marketers need attribution. Beyond video completion rates as a key metric of success, the advent of closed-loop attribution capabilities allows advertisers to connect CTV and OTT viewership to direct business results. This could be as granular as running a quick-serve restaurant ad on CTV and then determining how many people visited the restaurant or website after viewing an ad, or an auto dealer matching the outcome of a campaign with verified car sales.

For advertisers solely focused on driving brand awareness, having outcome metrics such as website or in-store traffic can offer real-time feedback on creative responsiveness. Since a brand can run multiple pieces of ad creative in different markets, they can determine campaign creative effectiveness, as well as audience engagement, by geography. Marketers are now A-B testing approaches with audiences and creatives to reach maximum awareness.  

Attribution insights can also be used to measure brand favorability and purchase intent. For instance, we conducted a brand lift study for a leading home furnishings retailer that measured the impact of our OTT campaign on consumers’ attitudes toward the brand. The study revealed that adults aged 25-54 reached by the campaign were three times more likely to be aware of the brand and almost half would consider purchasing furniture from the retailer after exposure to the campaign.

Myth 3: The shift to impressions-based buying puts local TV on par with OTT 

While media buying is largely moving from linear gross rating points (GRPs) to impressions, measurement systems are still catching up to the emerging impression-based ecosystem. With the shift to impression-based buying in local TV, it’s important to understand how the valuation has changed. Today, not all impressions are created equal since inventory environments may differ. CTV and OTT offer higher value impressions as it’s not just about audience desirability but the value of audience engagement. 

As such, marketers should consider the differences between OTT and linear TV in the specifications that go into the valuation of impressions. For instance, most co-viewing of CTV is not always calculated, ads are non-skippable in OTT, length of ad breaks are shorter in OTT and OTT measurement is based on ad server measurement of delivery and not probabilistic panels. Furthermore, OTT audiences are not passive channel surfers but are highly engaged viewers watching on-demand content. As advertisers increasingly combine OTT and local TV buys to extend their reach, the adoption of impression-based metrics will further accelerate the effective measurement and optimization for crossplatform campaigns.

As ad dollars follow the consumer, streaming TV is now entrenched as an essential marketing channel. With the continued proliferation of OTT services and platforms, and to overcome the prevailing buying myths, marketers should partner with trusted aggregators that deliver brand-safe premium content, local audience targeting at scale and outcomes-based measurement for long-term advertising success.

Over-the-top advertising has become a surprisingly important business for companies that have been stockpiling local television stations.

Early in his remarks during Tegna's first-quarter earnings call about its success as a “pure-play broadcasting company,” CEO Dave Lougee gushed about the growth of Premion.

“Premion, our first-to-market over-the-top advertising platform, has continued to evolve and expand to best serve the needs of regional and local advertisers,” Lougee said. He said Tegna was increasing its 2021 outlook for Premion, forecasting a 45% to 50% increase in revenue over 2020.

Also Read: How Gamut Got OTT Results

OTT advertising is more than a growing source of revenue for station groups following a COVID-caused recession from which the local ad market is still recovering. Streaming revenue is letting broadcasters, including Cox Media Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and the NBC- and Fox-owned and operated stations, claim a foothold in the technology field and create advanced advertising products for clients enamored with digital and social media.

A Way to Offer Advanced TV Ads

“OTT is a way to get to the future,” said Steve Pruett, executive chairman of Cox Media Group, whose OTT advertising company is Gamut. “It’s a way to move advertisers and our viewers into advanced TV.”

Even more opportunities for advanced advertising will be available as local stations transition to the ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV format. 

Premion and Gamut offer local clients the advantages of digital advertising, such as better targeting by geography, demographics or purchase behavior, which are difficult for broadcasters using current technology. Adding OTT and CTV advertising to a campaign can also help advertisers grow reach, a crucial aspect for marketers.

Locally targeted OTT ad spending will total $1.13 billion in 2021, per BIA Advisory Services estimates, up 19%. For 2022, BIA has forecasted another 49% jump to $1.64 billion.

On top of that, getting into the over-the-top space transforms broadcasters from old media Luddites into high-tech whizzes, which makes them more attractive to Wall Street and their investors.

Daniel Kurnos, analyst at the Benchmark Co., called Premion a big part of Tegna’s future, its OTT strategy and its ad-stack development.

“It’s also a potentially growing piece of Tegna’s own valuation,” Kurnos said. “Remember that Premion is currently all local inventory, though, so it’s differentiated. I would also argue that they did it first, so they have a nice first-mover advantage, and Gray has invested in the platform as well, which gives them nearly full-country coverage, especially once the Meredith transaction closes.” (Gray agreed to purchase Meredith’s 17 local TV stations in June.)

Tegna agreed to sell a stake in Premion to Gray Television in February 2020.

Gray president and co-CEO Pat LaPlatney said the broadcaster was looking to form a commercial relationship with Premion when it decided to invest instead.

“There’s significant demand for digital video and in doing our homework, we decided Premion was the best,” LaPlatney said. 

Unlike other tech or digital businesses Gray could have invested in, Premion is generating real money.

“The business of selling digital video impressions is really, really strong,” LaPlatney said. “I would guess that it’s far and away the strongest piece of the media ecosystem right now. And so we’re happy to have a very good product set in that world and happy to have some equity in a company that we feel is the best.”

Wells Fargo media analyst Steven Cahall in May noted that Premion “supercharges” Tegna’s ad revenue growth. 

Cahall estimated Premion would have sales of $215 million for 2021, including more than $50 million in the second quarter. That would be about 15% of the $1.4 billion in advertising and marketing services revenue he expects Premion to generate this year.

“We’re in a similar growth trajectory here at Gamut,” said Soo Jin Oh, president at Gamut. She expects to see more growth because many digital advertisers are starting to shift dollars into OTT.  

Tom Cox has been president of Premion since early 2020, but he was one of the business development executives at Tegna when Premion was created.

“We have a variety of strategic initiatives we look at on a regular basis, and identified that dollars were moving from a variety of different buckets into OTT and streaming advertising, and realized we had some pretty unique assets given the strength of our local stations,” Cox recalled. “We started the business in 2016 and never looked back.”

Cox said the pandemic was a factor in Premion’s growth, accelerating consumers’ move to streaming by three to five years. “I believe, as TV viewers continue to suffer subscription fatigue and option overload, we should anticipate the growth in AVOD [ad-supported VOD] to continue,” he said.

Advertisers Like It

Over-the-top TV and connected TV are popular with advertisers because they combine the targeting and performance metrics available with digital advertising with the lean-back experience for viewers. Advertisers also can reach viewers who have cut the cord or simply don’t watch traditional TV.

With its head start, Premion was able to develop scale, which it has used to invest in the business.

CTV advertising commands a high price, and that has attracted fraud. Premion offers security by working directly with inventory providers rather than working through open exchanges. Among its inventory partners are Discovery, Fox and A+E Networks. 

“We focused on creating an inventory product that looks very similar to a replacement for the traditional cable model,” Cox said. Premion’s product was a good fit for Tegna because, like TV advertising, the messages show up “on the same piece of glass, in the same type of programming. It’s just delivered differently.”

Between the Tegna stations and the Gray stations, Premion has “feet on the street” in markets representing about 75% of U.S. households, Cox said.

Premion has developed a set of fairly robust sales rules designed to separate the local clients pursued by Tegna and Gray station ad-sales teams from national clients looking to activate locally, targeted by Premion’s sales force. 

“It took us a while to figure out how best to codify those roles,” Cox said. “But now that they are in place, it works seamlessly across the groups and the level of sales-channel conflict that we experience is considerably less than even a year and a half ago.”

Cox said Premion’s business is built around providing the best inventory, the best customer experience, by integrating with agency and client buying systems, and the best results. Those results are being quantified through deals with a number of data and analytics providers.

Premion recently signed up with TVSquared, which helps provide crossplatform, closed-loop measurement and attribution for local linear and OTT campaigns.

Tegna Attribution is working with IHS Markit to employ Polk data to identify the most valuable targets for auto advertising and connect Tegna and Premion campaign performance to dealer sales.

Tegna Attribution also has an arrangement with Arrivalist, a travel-and-tourism intelligence company, to help measure how many people arrive at various destinations, where they came from and how long they stayed.

While it works with the TV stations, Cox said, “the Premion business is focused on OTT and CTV. There are a number of other competitors in the space that offer a panoply of digital marketing services. That’s not what Premion is. Premion is entirely focused on OTT and CTV and I think that singular focus allows us to really execute and drive that business.”

Competition Will Come

But with OTT advertising growing so fast, competition is inevitable.

Apollo Management Group in April agreed to acquire Verizon Media, whose assets include both digital content and ad tech. There will be ways Verizon Media will be able to work with Cox Media Group and Gamut.

CMG’s Pruett couldn’t comment on what synergies might exist between Verizon Media and CMG, because the deal hasn’t yet cleared regulatory review and closed. “What I can tell you is that Apollo strongly encourages their portfolio companies to find synergies and to work together,” he said. “So you know that is an Apollo desire.” 

Premion, Tegna’s connected TV advertising company, said it expanded its relationship with IHS Markit to use Polk Automotive Solutions data to target ad campaigns and measure their results.

Automotive advertisers using the Premion platform to create regional and local streaming campaigns will be able to incorporate Polk audience segments and data on sales, make and model, price and vehicle type. 

“Automotive marketers have been among early adopters of streaming TV advertising, which has quickly evolved as a priority customer acquisition and performance marketing channel,” said Dave Marquard, head of product at Premion. “With Polk Automotive Solutions, we’re accelerating the power of streaming TV advertising to empower our advertisers to reach high-value audiences and measure true sales performance by matching OTT viewership with verified vehicle sales.”

Tegna said it expects Premion to finish the year up between 45% and 50% in revenues for the year in its most-recent earnings report.

Also Read: Premion to Use Cadent Identity Graph for Cross-Platform Ads

IHS Markit’s Polk data includes 30 years of vehicle ownership history, more than 125 million households and more than 49 million new and used vehicle transactions (in 2020) to deliver an end-to-end CTV and OTT advertising solution for automotive advertisers.

“Today’s auto intenders are OTT viewers. As automotive marketers follow their audiences on streaming TV platforms, they need timely data-driven insights to target, optimize, and measure campaign spending,” said Joe Kyriakoza, VP and general manager, Polk Automotive Solutions at IHS Markit. “With this integration, we’re further empowering automotive advertisers with a more complete understanding of audience behavior and connecting OTT viewership to direct business results by driving new vehicle sales.”

Premion, launched in 2016, delivers billions of impressions for thousands of clients in more than 200 DMAs with inventory directly sourced from about 125 premium publishers.

Cadent, the advanced TV platform company, said it expanded its relationship with Tegna’s Premion OTT advertising unit, under which Premion will use Cadent's Viewer Graph to activate cross-screen campaigns against custom audience segments.

Cadent’s advanced TV platform will provide Premion with audience tools and services including first-party data onboarding, audience building, insights, analytics, reporting, and campaign deployment.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Also Read: Cadent Teams With Liberty on Addressable in Europe

“True audience-based targeting tied to real-world business outcomes is critical for marketers today,” said Tom Cox, president of Premion. “Our agreement with Cadent allows us to better understand the value of our audiences so that we can provide best-in-class solutions to advertisers.”

Premion will use Cadent’s proprietary, location-based, syndicated audience data as its primary dataset for targeting. In addition, Premion will have access to other third-party behavioral datasets from leading data partners within Cadent’s Data Marketplace to help advertisers build a fully comprehensive view of their audiences.

“For years, Cadent and Premion have partnered to bring incredible, innovative OTT solutions to market,” said Tim Jenkins, executive VP, head of audience & identity solutions, Cadent. “Through this new agreement, we can enable Premion’s advertisers to unlock even greater value from their OTT campaigns by helping them unify disparate media audiences and get a more complete picture of how to best reach their target households.”

Premion, Tegna’s over-the-top advertising company, hired Amanda Dunlap as southwest regional sales director and Tracy Kalfas as midwest sales director, expanding its sales leadership team.

Dunlap comes to Premion from NBCUniversal, where she was west coast regional sales director for NBC Spot On and digital sales director for NBC and Telemundo broadcast properties in Los Angeles. 

Before NBCU, Dunlap was with Univision and CBS Radio.

Kalfas was with media agency Initiative before joining Premion. At Initiative, she severed as group director of investments in the agency’s Chicago office, managing local media strategies. 

“OTT is the fastest growing ad-supported category in the media industry, and it continues to accelerate in both consumer and advertiser demand,” said John Vilade, head of sales at Premion. “Premion is the local OTT leader and we're fortunate to continue to attract best-in-class talent to take us to new levels. Amanda and Tracy join our team with track records of success in digital, linear and OTT. Their additions will enable Premion to continue our rapid expansion, provide greater access to coveted OTT audiences, and drive business outcomes for advertisers. We’re thrilled to have them on board.”

Premion, Tegna’s connected TV and over-the-top ad platform, said it had been certified for its efforts to prevent fraud by the Trustworthy Accountability Group.

Premion said it was the first local OTT platform to receive the TAG seal.

According to a recent report from Pixalate, over-the-top and connected TV ad spend rose 70% between the first quarter of 2020 and the third quarter. Ad fraud has been running at about 20% throughout the year, the report said.

TAG was created by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

“Brand safety and performance outcomes are at the forefront of advertiser priorities and we’ve invested in our capabilities to combat ad fraud since it first emerged in the OTT ecosystem,” said Tom Cox, president of Premion. “This recognition validates what we’ve been doing from the onset — directly sourcing inventory from premium, known publishers and using cutting-edge technology to detect and filter for fraud. We’ve taken proactive steps early and remain committed to providing our advertisers with the highest level of accountability as the trusted and secure OTT advertising platform.”

Premion was certified for complying with TAG Standard including sourcing inventory from premium OTT content providers in a direct, “server to server” relationship with partners and through invitation-only private marketplaces. 

“As more ad dollars move to follow the rapid growth in streaming TV audiences, ad fraud is a growing reality and challenge in the OTT ecosystem,” said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG. “Our 2020 Fraud Benchmark Study has shown TAG Certified Channels which include multiple TAG-certified companies have 90% less fraud than the industry average. We commend Premion for its dedication to treating ad fraud as a strategic business priority and achieving the TAG Certified Against Fraud Seal.”

Fraud has been a concern as media buyers and their clients look to connect with the growing number of consumer streaming video content.

“Fraud prevention is so important in the OTT space and it is excellent that Premion continues to advance their offering,” said Nicole Torres, senior VP, managing director, local investments of Havas Media.

Tegna said it plans to launch its streaming apps on Amazon Fire TV by year's end.

It also said it has enhanced its Roku apps as it expands the digital footprint of its news and entertainment programming.

“TEGNA is capitalizing on the growing popularity of streaming and over-the-top services by expanding our offerings across digital platforms, driving audience growth and diversifying digital revenue streams,” said Tegna chief digital officer Adam Ostrow. “Our latest rollout of station apps and the True Crime Network app, as well as new features on web and mobile, gives consumers even more ways to watch local news and entertainment programming.”

Tegna has also launched Daily Blast Live on its station Web sites and mobile apps to "create a unified video consumption experience."

It's True Crime Network is also available on Roku--it launched on Amazon Fire in August.

Tegna owns 63 TV stations in 51 markets, as well as its OTT advertising company, Premion.

Tegna said it is relaunching its Justice Network multicast channel on July 27 as True Crime Network, which, in addition to broadcast, will offer its programming as an on-demand streaming service.

A promotion campaign debuts Monday to let viewers know about the brand.

Tegna’s stations and other affiliates will continue to carry the 24-hour, seven-day a week, linear network on secondary digital channels, while the company tries to cash in on the fast growth of over-the-top viewing. 

Premion, Tegna's OTT ad company, will manage the ad sales for the streaming platform, which will include a mix of Premion’s direct sale inventory and programmatic ads. 

With True Crime, Tegna is diving deeper into a competitive arena already populated with networks including Discovery’s ID, E.W. Scripps’ Court TV and Dan Abrams' Law&Crime Network.

“True Crime Network capitalizes on the rapid growth of several distinct segments of media and entertainment: over-the-air television viewing, on-demand and binge streaming, podcasting and the true crime genre,” said Brian Weiss, president and general manager, Tegna’s entertainment multicast networks. “Our audience has spoken passionately about their desire to binge true crime mystery content. True Crime Network serves our highly-loyal, growing audience of true crime enthusiasts,while our streaming service will offer a free, easily-accessible and exciting experience for all true crime fans.”

The service will launch with hundreds of hours of on-demand content from the network’s library. True Crime Network's programming will include Cruise Ship Killers, Poisonous Liaisons, The Last 24, Dr. G Medical Examiner and Handsome Devils, according to the promo.

The promo promises “more suspenseful moments that will shock you and make you wonder why,” and describe the new brand as “the only 24/7 true crime broadcast network plus free episodes online, podcasts, news and more, all in one place.”

The network will also continue to air its popular BeSafe Safety Tips. Hosted by Atlanta Police Sergeant Ralph Woolfolk, the segments provide helpful tips to keep viewers’ families and neighborhoods safer.

"In recent weeks, consumers have accelerated a change that was underway in the streaming world. CTV/OTT has become THE universal form of media consumption and more consumers are embracing ad-supported streaming TV options." -John Vilade, head of sales, Premion

With the nation’s attention turned to the reopening, advertisers are considering how quickly to pivot their messaging and determining the right media mix to prepare for the restart. They also have to shift to a local marketing approach in response to the phased state-by-state reopening for retail stores, restaurants and other businesses. To underscore that notion, a recent IAB study found that more than a third of advertisers are already adjusting their in-market tactics to increase audience and connected TV (CTV)/ OTT device targeting. With local campaigns reigning over national ad buys, the combination of OTT and local linear is proving to be invaluable for advertisers to execute locally for the comeback.

In recent weeks, consumers have accelerated a change that was underway in the streaming world. CTV/OTT has become THE universal form of media consumption and more consumers are embracing ad-supported streaming TV options. An IAS ‘Streaming Wars’ report finds that nearly nine in 10 consumers have access to a CTV device; 76% are willing to see ads in exchange for watching free streaming video, and 55% plan to watch free video streaming services in the next 12 months. At the same time, more viewers are tuning in to their local newscasts as the trusted news source and those newscasts are also attracting a younger audience, per TVB’s analysis.

As consumers have grown accustomed to contactless, remote and digital behaviors in their day-to-day lives, brand messages will be important to convey how businesses are adopting new safety practices as they reopen. According to The Harris Poll Covid-19 tracker, pent-up demand is building ‘revenge spending’ among consumers who are planning for major purchases once things return to a semi-normal state, albeit with a focus on safety across the customer journey. A CivicScience study finds that half of consumers are ready to resume life and prefer not to see ads that talk about sheltering in place. As consumers emerge from being home-bound, they are also more receptive to entertaining and uplifting messages. As such, brands that tap into the resiliency of local communities with campaigns that are engaging, informative and hopeful will resonate with their audiences.

Here are three advertiser priorities as we enter the reopening phase:

Prioritize Addressable Advertising and Geotargeting

Advertisers across industry categories will need to take a localized approach by aligning local spot buys with the regional reopening timeframes. As such, geotargeting and dynamic creative are ever more important. From a linear perspective, communities and audience identities that have been formed around TV markets remain incredibly relevant to businesses and consumers. Furthermore, as national advertisers shift their focus to local campaigns, they’re seeking more granular insights at a national to local level to be able personalize, localize and deliver more relevant ads to reach their desired audiences with on-brand messaging.

Addressable OTT enables advertisers to target local audiences at scale. They can target by designated market area (DMA), states, zip codes and combine this geo-targeting with interest categories. With addressable targeting, viewer data is captured and analyzed into audience segments, such as auto intenders, and applied to campaigns. Brands also need to adapt and tailor their messages to communicate how they’re serving their local customers differently. With dynamic ad insertions in CTV, advertisers can easily swap out creative to deliver a personalized and relevant advertising experience.

Optimizing OTT and Local TV

Advertisers that leverage ad-supported OTT to complement linear as a ‘reach extension’ are able to capture shifting audiences by engaging with viewers that they wouldn’t reach with linear alone. As such, it’s important for advertisers to compare OTT and linear TV usage by asking: Where are you finding viewers exclusively on OTT? Without OTT in the mix, advertisers are potentially missing out on a huge local audience segment. The potential for optimizing OTT and linear campaigns is significant. Additionally, advertisers are looking for greater simplicity and scale in planning, buying and measurement, and they’re seeking unified packaged solutions – thus the need for tighter integration and packaging between ad-supported OTT inventory and broadcast TV inventory.

New innovations for managing incremental reach and frequency across OTT and linear are available to deliver more effective results for advertisers. With automated content recognition (ACR) technology embedded in smart TVs, advertisers can now measure the effectiveness of both OTT and linear ad campaigns to allow for better planning of media spend. For instance, access to this data can show an advertiser whether they’ve gained a higher percentage of incremental OTT reach that they perhaps would have missed on linear to prove the efficacy and ROI of their campaigns. Essentially, combining OTT and linear TV inventory can drive increased business outcomes for advertisers by extending both reach and engagement.

Pay Attention to Attribution

As consumer behaviors evolve with the reopening, brands will need to stay laser focused on their marketing spend effectiveness. While our industry is still working towards delivering unified measurement, the value of CTV / OTT advertising for driving audience engagement is undeniable – given the non-skippable ad formats, reduced ad loads, industry-leading completion rates and targetability. Moreover, OTT attribution capabilities can prove to advertisers whether their campaign performance drove business outcomes.

During the lockdown with stores temporarily closed, measuring website attribution was the priority. With the reopening, advertisers will resume the need to track footfall traffic again. Moreover, we can expect to see more industry innovation that can deliver greater specificity in the return in marketing investment, specifically with closed loop attribution and the ability to measure offline purchasing behaviors.

Our world will look and feel differently as many businesses will have to adapt and reimagine themselves for the reopening. To that end, brands and agencies that take a ‘flight to quality’ approach to working with proven, premium, trusted partners are well positioned to make smart, informed media buying decisions to reach their desired local audiences for a new era. Like the Dorothy awakening in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, in our comeback, we’ve found OTT to be our new friend in reaching critical mass and there’s no place like home – akin to the familiarity of local.

Premion, part of Tegna, is the leading premium CTV/OTT advertising platform for regional and local advertisers.

Extending a bridge to the over-the-top world for local and regional advertisers, Tegna has launched Premion, a new division of Tegna Media.

Premion, Tegna said, supplies a platform that enables local and regional advertisers to buy inventory on premium long-form content, and gets there by aggregating advertising inventory from more than 80 sources. Possible candidates include Roku, which has seen advertising become a significant contributor to its revenue mix, as well as Sling TV, Xumo, and major TV programmers that support OTT and authenticated video apps such as NBC Sports, FX and Discovery.

Ads supported by the platform will be either 15- or 30-seconds in length, are fast-forward disabled, and placed in pre-roll and mid-roll pods. Premion said its national rollout is underpinned by a sales force of more than 700, and can connect more than 14,000 local and regional advertising clients to the new platform. 

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“The OTT market is growing rapidly and channels are proliferating,” Jim Wilson, president of Premion, said, calling the offering a “great addition to our broadcasting and digital portfolio.”  “There’s an opportunity for Tegna [because] consumers are spending an increasing amount of their time watching OTT.”

He said the Premion will bring scale and a one-stop-shop for partners that are seeking opportunities to tap the regional and local ad market.

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Early on Premion is working with partners such as WideOrbit and Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) to enable its OTT platform, but will also seek out opportunities work with partners using a direct connection.

“Automation and programmatic is absolutely where we’re headed,” Wilson said, calling Premion’s target a “white space opportunity.”

Premion’s commercial launch follows trials and pilots conducted in July in Dallas and Houston.

Wilson said the new platform can get campaigns up and running between three and five days, or as little as 48 hours, if need be.