On average, broadcast television channels typically air about 16 minutes’ worth of commercials for every hour’s worth of TV content.
But usually, about two minutes of those spots are usually set aside for affiliate networks, who can then offer that inventory to local advertisers.
Streaming, of course, disrupted all of that. Ignoring the fact that early pioneers in the space didn’t plan to have ads in the first place (looking at you, Netflix!), even with targeting and personalization, most major players are still thinking of national reach as their default.
All of this explains why the CTV industry has been trying to create more opportunities for small and mid-market local businesses in recent years, as it is a relatively untapped market. But even national advertisers are interested in delivering their campaigns on a more granular, geo-targeted basis as well.
Because, as Locality president Keith Kazerman told me at Advertising Week in New York City earlier this month, every purchase decision happens on a local level.
“If you’re a national advertiser, like a big-box store, someone’s either going on your website on their sofa to go make a purchase, or they’re driving their car to your parking lot and walking into your store,” said Kazerman.
Think global, buy local
Locality was formed three years ago, when private firm One Equity Partners bought two brands under the Cox Media Group umbrella – CoxReps, which handled broadcast inventory, and Gamut, which focused on streaming and OTT media – and combined them into a single company.
On the advertising side, the merged entity takes all kinds of different kinds of advertisers as clients, including mid-market independent agencies and mom-and-pop small businesses, but also big brands looking to engage on a local level.
Meanwhile, on the publisher side, Locality works with 150 streaming publishers and 400 broadcast stations to fill local advertising inventory across all 210 of the country’s “designated market areas” (which, fun fact, is a trademarked term coined by Nielsen to represent specific television-viewing regions).
Initially, most of the data at Locality’s disposal was outsourced from third parties, said Steve Silvestri, Head of Data Strategy & Innovation. Over the past few years, however, they’ve worked with partners Databricks and Lovelytics to collect and store the “billions of aggregated local signals” that go through their system. Using that data, they’ve developed an ID infrastructure that can better support functions like measurement, data matching and even frequency capping.
The last six months have been especially busy for Locality. In April, the company launched LocalX, a media buying and measurement platform that allows for direct access to streaming inventory from publishers.
Then, September marked the release of the Audience Engine, which uses generative and automated AI technologies to help marketers analyze data and plan future campaigns – sort of a “ChatGPT for the media market,” as Silvestri put it. (Regular ChatGPT has too much data to be able to generate responses that are actually useful from an advertiser’s perspective, Silvestri added.)
Advertiser, serve thyself
But despite all these new advancements, Locality’s leadership team doesn’t think of the platform as being truly self-serve yet, even though that might be the company’s eventual goal.
After all, “self-serve” can mean a lot of different things, and people don’t always know what they mean when they ask for it, said Kazerman.
Advertisers aren’t exactly forking over an individual credit card for CTV campaigns just yet – at least, not at scale, he added. That business model might work for social media walled gardens like Meta, but there’s a lot more to know when it comes to the TV landscape.
“We’re still doing a lot of that lifting that a lot of folks don’t realize happens behind the scenes,” Kazerman said. “When you think about creative and messaging, there’s a lot of expertise that goes into that that can’t really be that self-serve.”
Questions? Comments? Drop me a line at victoria@adexchanger.com.
Update 11/03/25: A previous version of this story misattributed Steve Silvestri’s quotes to Chief Advertising Sales Officer Steven DeMain.
