Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
“The DDL Difference”
The TV industry says addressability is the future. But there’s more to the picture.
This upfront season, Warner Bros. Discovery is combining its addressable and data-driven linear (DDL) tech stacks. These offerings were previously separate prior to the merge of WarnerMedia and Discovery, “which wasn’t ideal,” Steve Silvestri, SVP of audience solutions, tells AdExchanger.
Unlike addressable, DDL targeting is not one-to-one, though it is a way for advertisers to reach a more advanced audience at a broader scale than through basic demos.
Programmers host upfronts for a reason: It’s an opportunity for advertisers to secure that “first chunk of reach” when planning their commitments for an entire broadcast year, Silvestri says.
Even though big data that informs one-to-one addressable targeting is the future of TV advertising, according to Silvestri, addressability and DDL work better in tandem.
For example, advertisers can use big data to build custom audiences and then target them more broadly, rather than only by household.
Warner Bros. Discovery sees better midfunnel results – as in, purchase consideration – for campaigns that use both DDL and addressable, as opposed to addressable alone, Silvestri says. “That’s the DDL difference.”
A Measured Approach
But it wouldn’t be upfront season without yet another TV measurement update.
On Thursday, NBCUniversal announced plans to transact against Comscore ratings in 31 US markets that include 42 NBCU- and Telemundo-owned local stations. The network is also adding InnovidXP to its measurement slate for impact and attribution metrics. (InnovidXP is Innovid’s cross-platform TV measurement solution.)
NBCU already certified Comscore as a measurement partner last year, but it wasn’t transacting on the Nielsen alternative as currency for local TV buys until now. NBCU will still support transactions on Nielsen for clients that ask for it, but it expects the transition from Nielsen to Comscore to help local TV advertisers target more advanced audiences, NextTV reports.
The announcement comes on the heels of Comscore’s recent expansion of its 48-hour reporting to include all US DMAs. Plus, Comscore’s audiences are more advanced than Nielsen’s basic age/gender demos.
According to NBCU, Comscore measures one in every two to five households per local DMA, whereas Nielsen measures one in every 1,600 to 2,000 homes. Hence why NBCU is pushing for the industry to get more comfortable with alt currencies.
The Chat That Leads To You
Google isn’t the only Big Tech company bringing ads to AI chatbots. This week, Microsoft announced an API that facilitates ad placements within its Bing chat interface and native AI-generated content on non-Microsoft sites.
Publishers and advertisers told Digiday what they’d like to see from Microsoft’s chatbot API.
Those that have been dabbling in AI-generated content are eager to add a new revenue stream with ads that are as customizable to individual users as the content itself. BuzzFeed, for example, has been experimenting with choose-your-own-adventure chatbot games and AI-powered quizzes, and is interested in placing ads inside these AI experiences that change based on user input.
But some publishers are concerned about their content being used to train Big Tech’s AI, even if they’re compensated with ad revenue.
Advertisers, however, are optimistic that search prompts given to AI chatbots will become powerful new targeting and optimization signals.
Summaries of a user’s search journey, their conversation with the chatbot and a sentiment analysis for their query would be more valuable than current attribution signals, says Jeff MacDonald, social strategy director at ad agency Mekanism.
But Wait, There’s More!
IAB says 2022 US podcast ad revenues were $1.8 billion, and the podcast market’s 26% growth rate made it last year’s fastest-growing channel. [The Hollywood Reporter]
IHeartMedia launches Ruby, a content studio dedicated to producing branded podcasts. [release]
The Athletic partners with StubHub on a native sponsorship deal that will allow readers to buy tickets for the sporting events they read about. [release]
NBCU head of advertising Linda Yaccarino is reportedly in talks to take over as Twitter CEO. [WSJ]
