Here is an excerpt from an IAB Webinar in collaboration with Videology, Adobe and AOL:
From apps to OTT to mobile devices, new advances in technology and content delivery have blurred the delineation between TV and digital video. TV is beginning to embrace and gain access to what has traditionally made digital so powerful – the application of precise data segmenting and measurement. TV buyers can now apply massive data sets to their strategy, understanding much more about a consumer than the traditional “age and gender” demographics.
In Canada, 2018 seems like the year for large networks like Rogers, Corus, Bell and Videotron to start rolling out a more serious Data Enabled TV (DETV) offering in the market. This model has falsely been labeled by some as programmatic. In fact, for now, there is nothing truly programmatic about DETV, at least not on the advertiser side. The inventory is not in real time, and there are neither bid engines nor bid requests in the buying process.
What characterizes DETV is simply the possibility of targeting your TV ads with much more advanced audience segmentation. For example, instead of only buying your GRPs in terms of demographic, age and geographic data pulled from well-established traditional sources like Numeris, we can now add interest, behavior patterns, purchase intent, etc. This also opens new possibilities for advertisers to sync their first-party audience data with DETV networks through their DMP.
In essence, the way it works is that TV inventory from players like Rogers is now integrated with video ad tech infrastructures like Videology. This integration allows us to connect the television ad with new data sources like third-party data vendors or Rogers/Bell/Videotron’s own first-party data, which can be combined across devices to map out what an audience segment ‘really’ watches on TV. Given the huge amount of data in the hands of telecommunications companies, the potential targeting capabilities of this channel should not be taken lightly by marketers.
As such, your TV media plan may end up having less ‘Prime’ inventory. However, the upshot is that now you can target a much more specific audience, i.e. Fashionistas, Entrepreneurs, Travel enthusiasts, etc.
This is all very similar to what happened with display about a decade ago. Back then, we targeted every user on contextually relevant websites. For example, Air Canada served ads on TripAdvisor. Now, display is audience-driven and we target specific users in whatever brand-safe environments we find them. Today, TV is undergoing a very similar transformation, with all the attention power that comes with this multi-billion dollar channel. Exciting!