We’re well into the Hollywood writers’ strike with no end in sight. And now that SAG-AFTRA has joined, Hollywood has ground to a halt.
The fundamental economics powering video are broken, and all sides continue to search for common ground in a world upended by new distribution models, industry contraction and low-cost content.
These strikes will impact content generation for the foreseeable future. Media buyers need to think about how that will impact their jobs.
How will audiences divide their attention if their regular programming is nowhere to be found? Will fragmentation and independent creators fill the gap left by premium TV and movies?
Instead of making commitments based on the next big movie or series, advertisers need to follow their audiences. The uncertainty ahead requires an audience-centric approach rather than a content-centric strategy.
Invite-only auctions
Many buyers are familiar with programmatic guaranteed (PG) deals. But PG deals do not allow for audience-based decisioning on an impression-by-impression basis. Rather, a bulk of impressions are provided by the pub/SSP with relatively limited targeting (and no control over the source for this targeting).
Instead, media buyers should focus on invite-only auctions, which allow them to guide campaigns according to carefully defined audience criteria and optimization levers (f-caps, dayparts, device targeting, etc.).
While invite-only auctions tend to have a higher floor CPM compared to programmatic guaranteed, they remain a more advantageous setup for marketers to ensure each impression is serving only to their target audience at the right time and on the right screen.
The campaign’s overall eCPM might be somewhat higher than a PG deal, but that higher eCPM will yield a more efficient campaign in terms of impressions and frequency.
With greater control comes a greater level of responsibility. While PG can almost be considered a set-it-and-forget-it proposition, invite-only auctions will require more hands-on work – continuously making tweaks to targeting sources, inventory sources, frequency, dayparts and performance KPIs.
Double down on first-party data
As the industry moves to an audience-centric approach, there will first be a rush into third-party audience targeting segments. Savvy marketers will use some volume of third-party data as a means of testing and additional scale, but the greater emphasis should be on first-party data.
The variety and breadth of third-party audience targeting segments can be astonishing. But marketers rarely have full visibility into the taxonomy that makes up an audience segment, as well as how many competitors are buying the same data and serving impressions to the same audience.
In contrast, first-party data ensures a proprietary audience. The marketer can rest assured of the quality, recency and taxonomy of the data.
The trade-off with first-party data is that the data set tends to be small compared to third-party alternatives from the likes of Experian and Oracle. Buyers will need to activate their first-party data while also modeling it for increased scale. And they’ll need to invest in third-party data to enrich, append and test against their own.
Plan for fragmented audience journeys
Given the shortage of new long-form TV and film inventory, we should expect users’ time and attention to be more fragmented than ever before. Marketing strategies should account for this fragmentation by following users’ viewing habits across different screens, apps and content.
To remain omnipresent in front of their target audience, marketers will first need to establish invite-only auctions with as many CTV content publishers and their SSPs as possible.
Invite-only auctions enable holistic activation and measurement across all media properties within the deals. And a retargeting strategy will make it easier for brands to engage with users across disparate screens and ecosystems.
Rethink tracking and measurement
An audience-focused campaign is naturally going to have different goals and metrics than a campaign focused on content.
Media buyers should establish what can be measured ahead of their campaign, ensure that their targeting strategy and KPIs align with their creative, and then use these new metrics to guide future activities.
A flipped future
The disruption of established content consumption patterns and the shift to audience-based targeting will benefit some stakeholders while harming others.
The Trade Desk will benefit as it’s best positioned to capitalize on the activation of invite-only CTV auctions. TikTok and YouTube (and perhaps Instagram Reels) will benefit from audiences shifting to user-generated content on social platforms. The free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) apps like Pluto, Tubi and Freevee will be the beneficiaries of the change in buying behavior.
Disney+, Max and the other premium-priced services will suffer when subscribers log in to find there’s nothing new to watch and head over to the FAST services instead. Suddenly, the ads on these free platforms won’t seem like such a nuisance after all – and advertisers will flock to their rapidly growing audiences.
“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
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