It’s also adding Nielsen measurement
Adobe is hoping to further expand the growing market of programmatic advertising for connected devices with audience targeting for TV.
Today, the company is launching a cross-screen planner for TV ad formats, which could help digital marketers better identify audiences alongside desktop, mobile and social campaigns. As part of the Adobe Advertising Cloud, Adobe says the tool will help understand how viewers interact with TV ads and how they perform compared to other channels. With the new tool, Adobe is applying the tenets of programmatic digital advertising to television.
According to Phil Cowlishaw, head of special operations consulting for Adobe Advertising Cloud, the planner will be able to either executive a linear TV buy, a digital buy or a mixture of both, which will identify and target audiences at the household level using both first- and third-party data.
As part of the launch, Adobe is also partnering with Nielsen, both for planning and also for audience demographic reporting. On the TV partner side, Adobe is launching with A&E Networks, Discovery Communications and Vudu.
“Nielsen is the currency of television,” Cowlishaw said in an interview. “It’s also for a lot of agencies and brands the currency of digital.”
The market for addressable TV advertising does seem to be growing, showing signs that the technology advancements and brand demand might finally be catching up with interest in digital. According to eMarketer, addressable TV ad spend in the U.S. for broadcast and cable will reach $1.26 billion this year—an increase of 65.8 percent over 2016. Forecasts increase to $2.25 billion in 2018 and to $3.04 billion in 2019.
Adobe says it’s seen ad-supported connected TV opportunities increasing as well, growing around 30 percent month over month. Overall investment on a year-over-year basis is up 300 percent, according to Cowlishaw.
One of the brands trying the new product has been 3M, which has been running test campaigns over the past few quarters while quadrupling its overall percentage of connected TV spend. According to Chris Luna, digital marketing manager for 3M, premium video content is already becoming “pretty scarce.”
“That’s a big win for us,” Luna said. “Something that kept us from pushing harder into TV was the lack of frequency control.”
In terms of measurement, Luna said 3M looks at viewability is based on the Media Ratings Council’s standards. However, he said the MRC’s current standard is “the bare minimum,” equating to nothing more than a “just a blip” on the screen.
“We’re not super pumped about the MRC’s definition of it,” he said. “I think the industry will move that way over time.”
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