Addressable TV Has Reach Problems; Ad Blocking May Get Third Party Measurement

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Unaimed Arrows Never Miss

It’s early days for addressable TV, but there are already complications beyond the technical difficulty and inefficiency involved in matching digital or personal data to a live viewer. TV wants digital’s microtargeting capabilities, but “just enough to minimize waste, [and] not so much that you reduce reach,” says AT&T AdWorks VP Maria Mandel Dunsche. ConAgra has been experimenting with addressable TV for three years, reports Jeanine Poggi of Ad Age, and results show targeting too tightly actually decreases return. Scalpels are very useful tools, but hey, so are jackhammers. More.

Ad-Blocking Police

BPA Worldwide is interested in providing ad-blocking data in a monthly report for advertisers in response to this blog post published Monday on MediaPost. The post called for an independent third party to step in and monitor ad blocking after GroupM’s Interaction 2016 report found ad blockers were installed on 22% of consumer devices this year. [AdExchanger coverage] “It’s about who’s supplying money to fuel the system and that’s the advertisers. They’re the ones that have to put their foot down and take a hard line. … These are the people who are writing the checks,” says Peter Black, SVP at BPA Worldwide. The monthly report would estimate the volume and value of ads blocked each month. More.

Header Bidding Ain’t Waterfalling

The programmatic waterfall isn’t a true auction, it’s a daisy chain “typically comprised of blind buys, wide net casting, minimal control, unknown pricing, masked inventory [and] little transparency,” writes Intermarkets VP of programmatic strategy Erik Requidan in a column for The Drum. Header bidding represents a dramatic change from that state of affairs, and Requidan details all the ways this latest shiny object is changing what both sides of the exchange think of as “quality.” More.

Speaking Of Headers…

After opening up its DoubleClick for Publishers to outside exchanges last month [AdExchanger coverage], it remains to be seen how Google will manage supply partners and maintain cost transparency. “When you open your ad selection process to a third party claiming what they are going to pay, you want some assurance they will really pay that,” Google’s Jonathan Bellack tells Ad Age. “Part of what we are trying to achieve with the exchange bidding solution is giving publishers confidence that their reports and earnings matchup.” More.

But Wait, There’s More!