The 13-letter F word permeating many a discussion of the TV and advertising landscape during events in New York City last week: Fragmentation. This may come as no surprise to some in the industry as it touches most facets. However, Justin Rosen, SVP at MVPD-owned addressable TV company Ampersand, had a word of advice to stakeholders working to advance a large, complex, and sometimes slow-moving ecosystem: Don’t try to boil the ocean.
TV and advertising leaders convened in New York last week, which was host to Advertising Week New York and NAB New York, as well as the Coalition of Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) Summit.
Sessions at the events left the impression of a TV advertising ecosystem where there are many silos, ingrained operational ways of doing things, and a reliance on decades of human capital and expertise that may not be swift to make overhauls in the face of complex and far from cohesive or consistent solutions. Agencies seem to increasingly be prioritizing outcomes and performance-based metrics to measure and show the value of their clients’ media investments. But even agencies and brands, as well as publishers, seeking new ways of doing things must contend with a lack of transparency and consistency and various data sources around measurement – at a time when consumer habits are also shifting but not altogether changed. Yes, cord cutting continues but traditional cable and broadcast still account for a sizable, albeit shrinking, share of US TV viewing – with ad dollars shifting even less quickly. Not to mention social digital video giants like YouTube (increasingly viewed on CTV) and TikTok competing for viewer attention and therefore ad dollars.
In January, eMarketer forecast that combined traditional linear and CTV U.S. ad spend will continue to grow every year through 2027, nearing $100 billion at that time. While CTV is expected to account for the growth, traditional linear cable and broadcast TV is still projected to capture nearly $55 billion in U.S. ad spending by the end of the forecast period - meaning both existing and the need to navigate simultaneously, for at least a while.
Many are trying to figure out where the puck will go, but instead of waiting on a far from certain future where all of the disparate parts work together in harmony, Rosen believes stakeholders should focus on what they each do best now and work together to start to make dents in the massive industry challenge that is fragmentation. For Ampersand, he sees a roadmap, as well as hurdles.
Consistent cross-measurement desires, operational frictions
While the topic came up in multiple sessions, a panel at CIMM was dedicated to the challenge of navigating media market fragmentation, where there was consensus among speakers as to just what an issue it is.
During the panel, Ampersand’s Rosen noted the scope of media fragmentation touches just about everything - from screens, to media tactics, technology, identity, regulation, privacy and so on.
“To navigate that is among the hardest things for anyone that is a veteran professional on the agency side, on the publisher side or on the brand side,” he said.
From a buyer’s perspective Mariel Estrada, head of video currency at Omnicom Media Group, described her biggest existing frustration related to video ecosystem complexity.
“It is really the lack of cross-platform, cross-programmer, cross-publisher measurement,” Estrada commented. “We’re not just talking about stitching together linear and CTV and linear and digital, but this is how, as a buyer, I need to understand the ecosystem as a whole.”
She noted that media companies, on an individual level, have made great strides on identity, building out data capabilities and the ability to measure reach and frequency of advertising to have better understanding about what’s happening in their own ecosystem. However, from an agency perspective, Estrada has to take things as a whole and look at all of those disconnected pieces – something that she said her and others are unable to do at this point.
“At OMG we build the tools, partner with the right folks, license the right data to allow us to come close, but there’s nothing that exists in the marketplace right now that’s accessible in a way that’s equitable to all the other players,” Estrada said.
Also on the panel was Matt Miller from AWS, who works in customer data applications with a lot of focus on clean rooms. Tech and retail behemoth Amazon is somewhat of an outlier in the traditional TV advertising space but made a big impact when it jumped into the ad-supported streaming video world with Prime Video earlier this year.
In Miller’s view, entrenched ways of doing things in traditional TV advertising is one of the main points of friction to advancing the industry. He noted that publishers have done a lot of work to curate first-party data, with ambitions for what can be done when combining those with datasets of advertisers, agencies and other partners. However, he thinks operational processes need to change.
“As an industry we’re a little bit hung up on maybe moving away from what I think of as the status quo,” he said. Meaning hesitation to change the way people have potentially been doing TV advertising for many years, Miller noted, as staying the course is easier than upending processes and there’s no need to prove out a business case to make a shift.
“I think the principles of marketing and advertising are changing as we build these data assets. As an industry we need to change our processes along with that to a new paradigm,” Miller commented, which he suggested involves being deliberate, confident and arriving at more operational consensus.
Things don’t happen in a day, he added, saying the most logical way to dip a toe into new operational modes is to pick the most important use case to try and a small subset of partners.
“Really scope out that use case and move forward with that conviction or that consensus. As a business, prove that out and make a playbook and then that then becomes repeatable,” Miller said.
On the positive side, Rosen believes the industry is starting to see some progress on fragmentation this year. Some of which he attributed to just general M&A activity that helps consolidate the industry. But he also believes all sides can do more now to help move the needle, saying there’s more within players’ control than they might think, by focusing on what’s achievable using respective differentiated assets.
For Ampersand, that’s around the scale of its data and inventory and trying to make a more seamless connection between the two.
“Focus squarely on that, don’t try to do things outside of that expertise,” he advised regarding players own strengths, adding Ampersand has seen success with the approach.
Collaboration and partnerships are another positive trend Rosen’s seen a lot of, noting the right melding of clients, third parties and tech partners is a way “that you can take a bigger step forward in navigating that [fragmentation] challenge.”
Why crawl if you can run?
While acknowledging it’s a large ecosystem to move, Rosen, somewhat rejects the idea of “crawl, walk, run,” to make advancements, preferring instead to focus on what can be done right away when it comes to moving the ball down the field to address TV advertising and measurement fragmentation.
“Because maybe you can do a lot right now, and if you can, then let’s start running,” he said.
CIMM’s Tameka Kee moderated the session and noted that the industry seems to have made better progress on ad targeting than on the measurement piece in terms of fragmentation.
Rosen attributed this to a higher level of methodological inconsistency for measurement because of increased fragmentation and of all the different inputs that can go into a media plan, at a time when advertising clients are also demanding speed.
“So you've got to work together to try to put your foot on the gas, to bring together the data more quickly, and do it with rock solid methodology that takes into account the inherent differences in the data, the ad exposure, the viewing environments where your media plan is occurring,” he said.
For OMG, Estrada said understanding measurement and methodology is all about ensuring clients get the value they pay for. “And how that measurement delivers value is incredibly important, because it could oscillate depending on what partner you’re using, what KPI you’re using.”
That said, she emphasized an audience-first approach and noted that how advertising is bought and sold is less important to the agency’s clients as the return and performance of their media spend.
“We care about performance. We care about context. [Advertisers] want to understand the cost savings and all of that amazing stuff,” Estrada said.
Clean rooms are one way different sides of the TV ad buying and measurement equation are coming together to pool and glean insights from the intersection of their respective, often first-party, datasets.
It’s an example Rosen pointed to as a way to simplify different sides working together that let’s each flex and protect their own strengths– be it first-party identity data from publishers or business intelligence from brands - for the betterment of both.
“That gives us a really nice framework for each of us to focus on what we know best and work though a clean room environment to actually build something that works for everyone,” he said.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t hiccups.
When it comes to trying new things, Estrada acknowledged “you have to be willing and accept the breakage” that will sometimes come, emphasizing a mentality of fail fast, fail forward.
Addressing linear TV fragmentation with data, scale
For Ampersand, navigating fragmentation is one of the things it was built to do, Rosen told StreamTV Insider.
Owned by three of largest U.S. MVPDs – Charter, Comcast and Cox - part of Ampersand’s purpose is to unify inventory that traditional linear TV providers have access to across national and local. It serves as a one-stop-shop for local and national advertisers, including planning and reporting functions. That purpose has since expanded to include collective data from the MVPDs around identity and viewing, with a 65 million household footprint that enables targeting and the ability to tie-in identity in a privacy compliant way. One of its key strengths is bringing together data, with harmonized methodology, that’s connected to scaled linear TV inventory.
“That becomes a pretty powerful value proposition to navigate fragmentation across geographies, across screens and across data inputs in as manageable of a way as we can offer,” Rosen said in an interview.
In terms of not trying to boil the ocean, one of the things he said Ampersand is focused and can do right now to help address fragmentation is show “pretty specifically” how a campaign is performing across all different tactics within traditional TV. That includes local on MVPDs and broadcast stations, national with major programmers and addressable TV at the local level.
“We can put together that total story. Inventory we’ve sold, some inventory that we haven’t sold, to show ‘this is what’s happing in your traditional TV investment’.”
And now it can also start to pull in addressable and streaming inventory that’s part of the Ampersand portfolio to get visibility across screens.
“If you can get really good at that, that gives you a superpower, more intelligence than many others have right now,” he said.
Roadmap isn’t without hurdles
What’s next? For Ampersand, it’s to do that across streaming inventory that the company doesn’t sell.
“That’s very hard,” Rosen acknowledged. Still, it’s something he said clients really desire. And while he understands the want, it’s one that still falls in the “under development” category.
“We have to work with our identity capabilities, we have to work with third parties to help do that at the kind of scale that they would need,” he said.
It’s part of the roadmap, where the company is leaning into its strengths, seeing what else it can build up and figuring out the rest from there.
Rosen cited two elements that present hurdles or near-term friction to that progress.
One revolves around finding ways to combine the different type of first-party identity data traditional linear versus streaming have. Traditional TV data, he explained, is more of a household-based metric, whereas streaming tends to be more device-level.
“Crossing that bridge accurately can be a challenge. I think all of the streaming pure plays struggle with that,” he said. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he sees Ampersand as in a solid position to create that bridge.
In partnership with its MVPD owners, the company “can bring together name-address-based privacy identity matches and IP address privacy compliant matches to try to bridge that household-to-device, and back again, gap.”
The second element making it challenging, in Rosen’s view, is many streamers’ like to keep their own data close to the vest for competitive purposes. The SVP said they don’t want to be as transparent as companies like Ampersand or some of the other competition is. While there are ways to navigate it, he believes major streamers will need to be convinced to be more transparent.
“I think they’ll have to be, because they can’t offer the scale for any one platform alone without collaborating with, I think, other media providers,” Rosen commented. “And I think their clients will demand that.”
Addressable a steppingstone to transact TV advertising more like digital
In a separate panel at CIMM the topic of addressable TV came up, where some speakers voiced the sentiment that making linear addressable can serve as a steppingstone towards being able to transact TV advertising in a more digital-like way. It’s a notion that Rosen agrees with.
If done right, he said, what addressable TV and streaming brings is the best of what TV and digital have each always done, respectively.
“Digital has aways offered you targeting and it’s offered you transparent reporting. TV has offered you scale and TV has offered you really great, quality viewing environments that are great places for brands to be,” he commented. “So now you can put those together.”
But it's worth repeating, in a double-digit multi-billion dollar TV ad industry the pace of change can be slow. While Rosen noted any one company can try to fix things in their own silo, he warned, “I don’t know that that’s going to be good enough for where marketers want to be.”
And again, streaming and linear living side by side in some capacity for a while, creates “a very challenging environment for everyone to navigate.”
As the consumer shift to streaming continues, he thinks this will become easier, but that might not soothe minds of marketers that need to move product or promote their brand now.
“We can’t wait to get to this future world,” Rosen said. “Business needs to still operate today.”