Critics say TV's efforts to modernize its advertising have bogged down



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The TV giants will launch their first advertising campaign this week, in hopes of impressing buyers with the glitz and emotional power of their talent and their shows.

For the moment, however, some major buying and measuring initiatives have run into difficulties or gone bankrupt, threatening the $ 70 billion television sector.

Take Open A.P., for example. In 2017, Turner, Fox Networks and WarnerMedia from WarnerMedia and Viacom created the consortium to help advertisers buy more audiences on these competing networks. The industry leader, NBCUniversal, joined him a year later.

Read more: People are fed up with TV commercials. This is how NBCUniversal tries to solve this problem.

But Open A.P has lost two of its original champions, Joe Marchese and David Levy, who have left their advertising roles for Fox and Turner, respectively. Earlier this year, Turner retired when his new owner, AT & T, decided to start selling his own game, Xandr.

Open A.P. still has three major networks. He has just installed his first CEO, former Fox Networks executive David Levy, which responds to a criticism that he lacks dedicated leadership. Open A.P. also promised to develop and expand the platform to simplify large-scale audience purchases.

Some agencies claim that Open A.P has not exploited its potential. They say that this was designed for networks, not for advertisers, who still have to negotiate network-to-network agreements and can not easily compare their performance. Open A.P currently generates only about 5% of the expenses.

There were other setbacks on the front of the measure and purchases. Last year, the agencies were enthusiastic when the big giants of media measurement, Nielsen and Comscore, put in place a new leadership from the marketing world. cord cut and digital display.

But the president and CEO of Comscore and his president left earlier this year, less than a year after arguing with the board about the direction of the society.

As part of another high-profile initiative, NBCUniversal has deployed CFlight, an ambitious effort to run ads across the platform. But to succeed, rival networks had to adopt it, which was slow.

The agencies also have their account. By taking into account multiple people simultaneously viewing a show, CFlight uses a proxy audience rather than the actual person level measure, which buyers usually do for digital campaigns, while asking for advertising rate up to 1.5 times higher, said Jonathan Steuer, director of research at Omnicom Media Group.

"That's what makes us mad and all our customers crazy," he said.

What happened to the reduction of clutter?

People watching less traditional TV, NBCU, Fox and Turner have promised to reduce the clutter of commercial commercials in hopes of improving the quality of listening and avoiding cable breaks. The networks also broadcast short six-second ads that are popular in digital. But in practice, the time spent on advertisements actually increased last year, and some insiders said that six-second ads were not as good as the longer ones.

"Seeing the industry kill itself is incredible," lamented a prominent insider.

Some insiders said that the ads were not as good as the long ones.

"Being able to communicate a message in six seconds is incredibly difficult," said Dave Morgan, founder and CEO of Simulmedia, who helps advertisers buy a targeted television. "In 15 seconds, you could say something to get them to act, but it needs to be really understood."

Reducing advertising time only works if advertisers will pay more for the rarer ads (NBCU would require 40-70% more), which they hesitate to do if they can not be certain that ads will work better .

While networks can not get advertisers to pay more for rarer ads, addressable TV ads targeting smaller audiences have the potential to make more use of television. Advertisers are excited about this as it would allow a builder to display an advertisement for a minivan, for example, only for minivan buyers, rather than for all potential buyers of vehicles. But addressable TV has not taken off for a host of reasons, both on the side of the measures and advertisers than on the network side.

In the meantime, advertisers can already do this targeting in many other places.

"I can go to Hulu and use an advanced target," said Ed Gaffney, managing partner and director of research on implementation and market analysis at GroupM. "I can go to Amazon and Target to find the people most likely to be in the market.There are many opportunities to show video ads in front of people."

All this means that buyers are embarking on unambitious projects.

"I did not know we were going to have that great moment" aha, "said Gibbs Haljun, head of total investment for Mindshare US, initial presentations of the networks. "There will be many recurring themes, and none will be new." Live programming always leads the audience. Brand security. We provide you with complete transparency. "We want to hear more about research and how we are moving the industry forward."

Does the TV industry even want to change?

Some buyers are wondering whether the television sector really wants to modernize. After all, there are powerful forces that force television to act in the same way. It is designed to allow advertisers to serve ads to a mass audience, and not targeted in a targeted way. If television channels let big advertisers buy addressable ads, they may be aware that they do not need to buy as many.

The networks know that their heavy commercial expenses are likely to scare away viewers. Reducing the time spent means potentially sacrificing revenue, as advertisers do not want to pay more, unless there is evidence that rarer ads are performing better.

And if media sellers measure themselves in the same way as everyone else, then it is harder to argue that they are special and that they are worth paying more.

"Everyone is trying to do things to differentiate themselves from their competitors," said Haljun.

Keeping with old methods could mean missed opportunities, however. Direct consumer businesses like Casper and Harry's, which started online, are revolutionizing the way people are marketed. DTC companies are starting to migrate beyond Facebook and spend on TV advertising.

But they are unlikely to be represented by an agency holding company, their budgets are relatively modest for television and they expect real-time reporting on campaign performance that the TV companies are not configured and cost more to manage.

Not selling addressable ads also means missing out on all medium-sized advertisers flocking to Facebook because they can target specific neighborhoods, which is not possible on TV.

Television changes, but not as fast as agencies would like

Agencies are optimistic that television will begin to change as advertisers get enough audience on digital platforms to make linear TV less essential. The linear TV market declined slightly in 2017 and again in 2018, as people turned to digital viewing.

Buyers are not without sympathy. People like Steuer give credit to efforts like CFlight. They also recognize that television companies do not fully control their destiny, as their programs are increasingly watched on platforms like Apple TV and Hulu.

"Regardless of its size, CBS will not have complete data on Apple TVs," said Chris Wexler, senior vice president of media and analysis at Cramer-Krasselt. "But more and more, collective management organizations are digital natives and will require the level of control they are used to in digital."

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