Addressable has come a long way in the last few years.
When industry-initiative-turned-nonprofit Go Addressable first launched in 2021, one-to-one TV ad delivery was just a small portion of overall media buys.
But according to new findings released by Go Addressable and Advertiser Perceptions on Wednesday, adoption of addressable TV advertising has increased significantly. Just over half of advertisers now call addressable TV a “must-buy” – up from 35% last year – and 63% say it played a role in their 2024-2025 upfront negotiations.
This steady growth comes courtesy of all the usual disruption-causing suspects, said Larry Allen, VP and GM of addressable enablement at Comcast Advertising and a member of the Go Addressable board.
Allen, speaking at the organization’s fourth annual summit, also on Wednesday, cited signal loss, ad fraud, the “whiplash in cookie crumbling” and concerns over cross-screen measurement – and that’s just for starters.
But more importantly, he said, the ongoing migration from linear to streaming content is now giving way to a rise in ad-supported streaming content, making it possible for marketers to reach their consumers in new ways.
That difference between streaming and ad-supported streaming “makes using addressable in a multi-screen environment a reality and a requirement,” he said.” It’s no longer an option or an add-on.”
Linear comparisons
Steady growth in addressable advertising aside, there are still holdouts in the traditional TV ad world.
High costs are still a concern, said Dentsu Chief Investment Officer Cara Lewis. But part of that comes from incorrect framing; compared to the average CPM for adults ages 18-49 in linear TV, of course data-driven, addressable CPMs will seem high.
Instead of “just applying a linear TV metric and methodology,” added Spark Foundry CIO Lisa Giacosa, addressable TV requires marketers to be more precise with their methodologies and their clients’ goals.
“We shouldn’t be launching if we don’t know what we’re trying to achieve and we don’t have the right KPI,” Giacosa said.
Historically, data was another barrier to addressable TV adoption. But according to GroupM CIO Jen Soch, that’s not the case anymore, particularly for advertisers with greater access to their own first-party data sources.
“Now you have people coming to us and saying, ‘I’ve got this data. Does it make sense for addressable? How big is the audience?’” said Soch.
Narrowing the lens
Brands that focus on broad reach also hesitate to go all in on addressable, because they want to narrow their audience. But addressability can also be a proxy for whether someone is engaged with the content. Like, did they sign into an app and actively choose to watch this show?
“If you’re a new brand, you might have more to communicate, and therefore you need a highly attentive audience in order to really digest what your product is,” said Sara Grimaldi, who leads the audience impact and intelligence team at Paramount.
Addressable ads can also make a brand feel “much bigger than it is,” noted Giacosa. The viewer often sees a targeted ad on their TV set and assumes it’s going out everywhere, as cable ads have historically worked.
All that said, addressable TV probably still works best as a use case for hyper-targeted audiences. Which makes it particularly useful for the pharmaceutical industry, said Erin Echter, Genentech’s director of marketing for ophthalmology patients and caregivers.
Without proper targeting, linear pharmaceutical ads can cause undue strain on actual physicians, because it drives people into doctors’ offices asking about products for diseases they don’t actually have, Echter noted.
Working with media agency Wavemaker US, Genentech has now shifted some of its linear TV advertising to addressable television audiences. As evidence of the new tactic’s success, Echter pointed out how many doctors have told her about patients seeing their ads – compared to how few of the doctors had actually seen the ads themselves.
“We’ve got a whole field team educating our physicians on the science behind the efficacies of our therapies. The TV ads don’t need to reach them,” she said. “If it’s landing there, it’s not landing on a patient that can truly be impacted by our ad.”
