Broadcasters See More Potential in Programmatic Advertising
‘Broadcasters and streaming providers are under growing pressure to bridge the gap between linear and digital operations’
More Engagement, Less ‘Ad Fatigue’
In the streaming market, and particularly for live sports, Nicholson said operators are personalizing new ad formats, such as L-shaped double boxes (a form of nonlinear addressable TV advertising), squeeze backs (where the program is minimized to give prominence to the ad) and overlays (nonlinear ad banners, tickers and scrolling text alongside the main program).
“And they’re all opting to do this server-side,“ he said. “These new ad formats are really all about increasing ad loads while maintaining new engagement and avoiding ad fatigue.”
The coming together of linear and streamed (digital) platforms—at least in the minds of viewers—is also highlighted by Dan Walsh, senior vice president of product management at Imagine Communications.
“Broadcasters and streaming providers are under growing pressure to bridge the gap between linear and digital operations,“ he said. “Audiences don’t distinguish between platforms; they simply expect access to content wherever and however they choose to watch. But many broadcasters are still managing these environments separately, which creates inefficiencies and limits their ability to fully monetize inventory.
“To address these issues, the industry is shifting toward a unified advertising approach, often referred to as ‘Total TV,’ which focuses less on delivery mechanisms and more on audience value,” Walsh added.
This, he explained, is being driven by automation across ad sales, trafficking and optimization: “That reduces costs, improves yield and frees teams from the manual processes that have long defined traditional ad sales.”
With streamers now delivering linear programming as well as their core services, David Dembowski, chief revenue officer at Operative, said everything is now about a viewing experience, including the ads.
The reason why streamers chose to use a digital platform is primarily because of impression-based sales or, put another way, addressable offerings,” Dembrowski said. “We have a client that was adamant about break-based ad sales, but recently has gone to impression-based sales. There are a lot of reasons for this, but it is mostly because of targeting and measurement.”
‘Unprecedented Opportunities’
Through the introduction of impression-based sales on what Dembowski describes as “the big screen” approach, TV has become a “full funnel advertising platform.” This, he says, goes from a broad approach—high-profile, big automobile or movie launches—to something based more on buying behavior.
“And it shows what’s so exciting about CTV,” he added. “Take the example of Amazon [Prime Video], which was an SVOD streamer, always on-demand, up until about three years ago. Then they signed the relationship with [NFL] “Thursday Night Football.” What they’ve been able to do is expand the TAM [total addressable marketplace] of advertisers that had never even considered buying the NFL on prior platforms. It’s created an unprecedented opportunity for new advertisers to get exposure to an audience that was out of reach for years.“