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AT & T on Tuesday launched a new advertising activity aimed at disrupting Google's and Facebook's control over the sector.
The division has a new name, Xandr, and is mandated to create a market for targeted online TV and video advertising.
The idea, said Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT & T, is that "if you can make the high-end video side work and behave more on the digital side, people will be investing more and more." will be excited about the advertising model on this side. "
In the not-too-distant future, according to AT & T, television commercials on channels such as CNN will be adapted to viewers watching, so a mother with kids will see messages different from those of a student.
Many other companies are also working on so-called addressable television advertising. AT & T is unique because it has a basket of cable channels, thanks to its recent acquisition of Time Warner, and has established many relationships with its customers through its wireless division. Time Warner, now renamed WarnerMedia, includes CNN, TNT, HBO and other brands.
"We have data, we have great content, we have direct distribution to consumers and we have the technology," said Brian Lesser, CEO of Xandr.
Lesser, who joined AT & T a year ago to launch this advertising division, unveiled the new name at a conference on Tuesday.
The name Xandr is a nod to Alexander Graham Bell, the founder of the telephone company that eventually became AT & T.
Lesser said his goal is a "premium market" for buying television and web ads.
In the media sector, AT & T projects aroused a lot of curiosity as Google and Facebook became the "digital duopoly", gaining power at the expense of other actors.
Lesser's argument, reiterated on stage Tuesday, is that a strong advertising company is needed to fund television production – to "feed content under development."
Improving the state of television advertising was one of the pillars of the acquisition of Time Warner, which came into effect in June. "Up to here everything is fine," Stephenson said in an interview with CNN's Poppy Harlow on Tuesday morning.
Stephenson said WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey was working on plans to increase investment at HBO, one of the portfolio's flagship brands.
Stephenson followed up on his recent comments that Netflix is appearing at Walmart, while HBO is apparent to Tiffany.
He said Walmart's CEO, Doug McMillon, "called me the next day" to find out what he meant. "They are a very big customer," said Stephenson as the audience laughed.
"Look, if I go shopping for something, anything, I want to go to one place," said Stephenson, referring to Walmart and Netflix.
As a streaming service, Netflix has accumulated a huge amount of content.
But the HBO brand is to be the "premium" option, he said, citing "Game of Thrones" as an example.
At the same time, he said that AT & T wanted to ensure that there is always something new and new in HBO, thus reducing the number of people who are unsubscribing and getting re-subscribe to the service.
"I think we should aspire to daily engagement on these platforms," he told Harlow.
Stephenson also said the media world is "opposed and reluctant to change" when it comes to new ways of doing business.
"It's fascinating for me," he told Harlow. "You think about the media and entertainment, and their rapid evolution, but in terms of business models and changing the way you deliver the product, this industry has as much inertia as any industry. in which I was involved. "
He cited past experience with companies like Boeing. He said the media is "a very slow industry", and he said he would like to speed it up.
CNNMoney (Santa Barbara) First published on September 25, 2018: 10:12 ET
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