Understanding and executing addressable television is a key priority for brands and agencies plotting media strategies, according to a new study.
At a time when marketers are under more pressure than ever to demonstrate returns on advertising investment, addressable advertising represents a massive opportunity to combine the scale television traditionally offered with the precision of digital media, the study, The Transformation of Television: Embracing the Era of Addressable TV, said.
But demand for addressable TV is being held back by operational complexity and a lack of education, the report said. In fact, every respondent from an agency or brand reported experiencing at least one challenge in pursuing addressable TV strategies.
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“The study confirmed our belief that addressable has the potential to transform the industry, but also renewed our sense of urgency to create an aligned and open ecosystem of distributors, measurement platforms and media companies,” said Kevin Arrix, senior VP, Dish Media. “We now know that the best way to scale addressable is to have widespread industry collaboration, so we must all rapidly evolve to help advertisers optimize addressable for years to come."
The study was commissioned by Dish Media, Cadent, Canoe, Comscore, Invidi Technologies, LiveRamp, Verizon Media, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia and conducted by Forrester Consulting.
“Many brands are using initial rollouts of addressable TV campaign to learn the ropes of buying, measuring, and optimizing their addressable TV programs,” the report said. “They often encounter challenges with understanding and mastering the landscape of platforms, distributors, tools and measurement standards that operated within the addressable landscape."
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The report noted all participants in the media ecosystem can drive addressable TV forward. But to fully realize its potential all must collaborate and behave in an interoperable manner.
Addressable TV was seen by those participating in the study as being able to help improve the effectiveness of targeting capabilities for TV campaigns (62%), improve the ability to tie TV spend to business/sales outcomes (47%) and deliver more personalized and relevant ad experiences to TV viewers (44%).
In order to increase addressable TV budgets, brand and agency executives said buying needed to be made simpler, that there had to be more demand from other advertisers, return on investment needed to be substantiated, scale needed to be improved and there had to be more guidance from agencies and tech partners.
The most important thing media could do to push addressable TV would be to define and promote a single measurement standard, demand interoperability across partners and technologies, and enable the buying of national minutes.
The study concluded with four key recommendations:
- Examine your media mix through a consumer-first lens;
- Evaluate the technology and data you need to power your media planning and strategies;
- Broaden your picture of what it means to “buy TV'; and
- Test addressable TV programs to build a business case--and prepare for a learning curve.
Forrester surveyed 522 media-buying decision makers at agency and major brands. It also conducted six interviews.
