Home On TV & Video Convergent TV Is A Mirage Until We Have Scaled Infrastructure

Convergent TV Is A Mirage Until We Have Scaled Infrastructure

SHARE:
Chris Maccaro, CEO, Beachfront

On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. 

Today’s column is by Chris Maccaro, CEO of Beachfront

“TV is dead. Streaming is the future.” Chances are you’ve heard these statements many times over the last 20 years – and neither of them is true.

Yes, linear cable TV subscribers are falling. But according to eMarketer, 70 million US households, or 54%, still pay for it. Boxes are going to be in homes for quite some time.

TV has incomparable reach; streaming has incredible targeting. Neither is a panacea. Advertisers will need to manage a presence in both mediums in order to achieve their objectives. Convergence, at its heart, is about becoming proficient and fluid across channels.

The problem for marketers is that the sell side is not built to help manage convergence. The entire infrastructure of TV and streaming media is still very siloed across ad sales teams, agency buying teams and measurement practices. Sellers need help building this infrastructure to make it easier for buyers. 

In short: There’s still a lot of work to be done.

Digital convergence requires fluidity in buying and selling  

It’s easy to believe that streaming is a more sophisticated media buy because it’s inherently digital. But that’s just not the case yet. When it comes to video ads, the legacy technology in streaming is pretty good at mid-roll, pre-roll and post-roll delivery. However, it’s not very good at handling the complexities of television, where well-curated ad pods, competitive separation rules and deduplication are table stakes.

The CTV experience needs an overhaul.

Subscribe

AdExchanger Daily

Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.

Media buys should be smart – and context sensitive: There are practices that are table stakes in linear TV buying, such as forms of point-of-purchase placement, competitive adjacency and so on. There are also basic contextual understandings, such as dayparts and genres, that often aren’t included in streaming offerings, but should be.

The viewer experience must be pristine: Advertisers buy based on certain parameters and commitments. The technology needs to be there to uphold those commitments, including legal and contractual obligations.

Automation is a requirement: Lastly, competitive separation and deduplication in an automated world means not having to mediate between hundreds of advertisers and manually take insertion orders. The process must be seamless.

Out with old tools and in with the new

In theory, a convergent TV and digital landscape promises a fluid, interoperable buying and selling process across any kind of inventory on a national scale.

Realizing this potential requires overcoming old technology and entrenched processes. And even with the right intentions, it’s still too hard for sellers to make their inventory available in the seamless ways that the omnichannel marketer expects.

Until those supply pipes are equipped for automation, convergence is a hollow concept. Without viable infrastructure to support cross-channel buying, all convergence really brings is complexity.

Follow Beachfront (@beachfrontmedia) and AdExchanger (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

Must Read

Exercise people in the park for a healthy life vector illustration, flat design. People jogging in the city park. The guy on the bike, the girl and the guy on the run, spring landscape.

Exclusive: Lance Armstrong’s VC Firm Invests In AI-Powered Ad Tech For Health Care

BranchLab, an AI startup for healthcare marketers, just added a new high-profile backer: Lance Armstrong’s Next Ventures, which invests in health and wellness startups.

Comic: Gamechanger (Google lost the DOJ's search antitrust case)

Judge Mehta’s Remedies For Google’s Search Monopoly Won’t Cure What Ails Publishers

Remedies in the federal search antitrust case against Google landed with a thud earlier this week. Most publishers and ad industry pundits were sorely disappointed.

Conversion APIs Are Becoming Table Stakes – But Not All Brands Have Bought In

CAPI integrations have moved from a nice-to-have to a necessity for anyone operating within walled garden environments. Now they’re laying the groundwork for an outcomes-driven ad ecosystem.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Peppa Pig

The Media And Retail Deals Behind The Peppa Pig Franchise Expansion

Peppa Pig is everywhere. Whether or not you have children, you likely know the little girl pig from the kid’s cartoon show. But the Peppa media franchise is just getting started.

How A For-Profit College Is Using CTV Ads To Win Over New Students

The American College of Education partnered with performance TV company MNTN to better reach its audience of adults seeking higher education.

Critics Say The Trade Desk Is Forcing Kokai Adoption, But Apparently It’s Up To Agencies

Is TTD forcing agencies to adopt the new Kokai interface despite claims they can still use the interface of their choice? Here’s what we were able to find out.