Addressable TV – officially a ‘thing’; Gary the Shirt is gone

As it takes centre stage in new pitches and is wholeheartedly endorsed by WPP, Dominic Mills looks at the implications of addressable TV hitting the mainstream. Plus: A sad farewell to ITV’s Gary Knight…and his amazing, technicolor dream shirts.

After years of hanging around banging on the door to be let in, I think we can say that ‘addressable TV’ is – officially – a proper ‘thing’. Welcome to the party.

Here’s the evidence that the party, far from running out of steam, may get a second wind:

Exhibit #1: Some time this week or next Sky Media will announce that it has hit a milestone number (in the thousands, I think) of AdSmart campaigns. AdSmart, for anyone who doesn’t know, launched three and a half years ago and allows advertisers to target individual households at postcode level and by a multiplicity of attributes. Sky has already licensed the technology to Virgin and, it made clear last month, is now talking about the same to C4 and ITV.

Exhibit #2: A major media account is currently being pitched. Four agencies are pitching and, according to someone close to the action, no less than all of them have placed addressable TV front and centrepiece of their bids.

Exhibit #3: GroupM last week launched Finecast which, in somewhat bombastic/Trumpian manner, it claims will provide a “tremendous upside for broadcasters”, as well as a “platform for industry collaboration on new products and measurement standards.”

Ok, I’m being a little churlish there – and we’ll come back to that – because as one major broadcaster put it to me last week: “When someone that is a third of the market [i.e. WPP] wholeheartedly endorses addressable TV in this manner, then that has a huge impact.”

Indeed. It seems to me that what we are seeing represents a move for addressable TV from the margins to the mainstream. Although AdSmart has clearly pulled in many advertisers – and a return rate of around two thirds suggests it works for them – by far the largest category comprises SMEs for whom TV advertising has in the past been a luxury.

GroupM’s involvement means we will see more big-number, mainstream advertisers move in. This in turn means that addressable TV will become a core component of many TV campaigns. Sure, it will still – as now – be used to top-up reach or hit frequency targets with light viewers.

But it may also open up other opportunities to advertisers: more localisation; more demographic nuance; more segmentation; or more varied use of creative treatments.

Finecast’s other big upside is that it now offers those big advertisers a single access point across what it suggests is a sufficiently scaled amount of non-duopoly inventory – Sky, Virgin, Samsung smart TVs, YouView, Amazon Fire, Roku and Xbox.

Note that caveat – non-duopoly inventory. With a coded reference to the threat to broadcasters from Facebook and Google, Finecast portrays itself as on the side of traditional TV – how decent of it.

Here’s the actual quote from Finecast boss Jacob Nielsen: “With the rapid growth of digital advertising, TV budgets may be at risk from new competitors, particularly as digital video improves in quality and ease of access. Finecast’s offer of scaled cross-platform addressable TV solutions is a win-win for TV providers blah blah…”

Yes, of course. But Finecast is as much about GroupM cutting its dependency on the duopoly – or giving itself a stick with which to beat them – as it is the former.

One more thing: interviewed here, Nielsen and his tech sidekick Rich Astley [sic] offer Finecast’s services to a) do the cross-device measurement stuff that BARB isn’t doing but should and b) develop a common currency for addressable TV.

To b) I say: Whoever defines the currency controls it, so the industry should be wary of what might be a Trojan Horse offer.

To a) I say: BARB does the cross-device viewing measurement – as you can see here – but does not currently do it by demographic. This, I understand, is the next phase of Project Dovetail. If GroupM’s involvement helps and accelerates this, all well and good.

However, there is one area GroupM could do even more to help in. Some of the broadcasters and platforms Finecast intends to advertise on are not covered by BARB, and Nielsen and Astley might ask why. Here’s a piece by BARB boss Justin Sampson explaining that it’s not for want of trying.

So a little nudge (or threat) from Finecast might do the trick if it wants parity of measurement across all platforms. And while it’s at it, it might as well do the same for YouTube and Facebook.

So long Gary, and thanks for all the shirts

I don’t think I ever met ITV’s Gary Knight, sadly set to depart the broadcaster after 40 years, without asking myself two questions: 1) That hair – where does he get it cut? 2) Those shirts – what does he wear when he really wants to stand out?

You can check out more images here.

Magnificent, utterly magnificent, and pretty much unchanged in the 20 years from when I first met him to the most recent time a year or so ago.

It’s easy to think keyboard player in a 70s prog rock band, but Gary was a great ambassador and salesman for ITV. Once met, never forgotten.

It also makes me think: how many people in adland adopt a personal branding style of that kind? You know…where you just have to show a partial image and everyone knows who it is. Management Today once did a cover featuring just Maurice Saatchi’s specs, and everyone got it. Gary’s shirts have the same power.