AT&T is finally revealing its new tools to reinvent the way TV ads are sold - but it needs other networks to play along
- AT&T is introducing new data tools that allow advertisers to pull together set-top box data, stats from Turner and data from Xandr, its ad and analytics division.
- Xandr wants other networks and publishers to adopt its technology, including Open A.P., a consortium between Viacom, Turner, NBCUniversal and Fox that lets advertisers create cross-network targeting segments.
- However, both NBCUniversal and Viacom have their own data tools for advertisers.
- Buyers say they want to see networks work together on more long-term efforts like measurement and attribution.
When AT&T's acquired Time Warner's properties including Turner, HBO and Warner Bros., the media giant promised advertisers access to troves of valuable telecom data to target and measure TV ads like they do with digital ads on Facebook and Google.
For decades, TV advertisers have bought advertising through upfront, negotiated deals. In turn, networks have pitched advertisers on specific programming and shows, promising them prominent placements within premium content. But a rise in cord-cutting and concerns about how effective TV advertising is for driving sales has some marketers concerned that the TV industry cannot keep pace with changes in how digital ads are purchased and targeted with sophisticated technology.
Now, advertisers are starting to get a peek at AT&T's lofty goal of shaking up TV advertising, specifically when it comes to matching up AT&T's first-party set-top box data, Turner's own audience demographic data, and Xandr, AT&T's new advertising and analytics division.
"Clients are coming to us and choosing the audience targets that they would like to buy on Turner across our entire portfolio," Donna Speciale, president of Turner ad sales, told Business Insider.
AT&T is rolling out a few new ways for advertisers to buy and eventually measure TV ads:
- Advertisers can pull data from AT&T's 40 million set-top boxes and Xandr's mobile data to set up audience segments (like people in the market for a car or horror movie buffs) for TV ad targeting.
- Xandr's first-party data can be plugged into Turner's digital advertising on its sites like CNN and Bleacher Report.
- Branded content campaigns purchased with Turner can be distributed across Xandr's addressable TV market to more than 15 million homes.
AT&T wants to speed up how long it takes advertisers to run targeted-TV ads
One of the challenges with running targeted TV campaigns is that it can take weeks or even months to organize the data that an advertiser is using (like CRM or third-party data) before a campaign runs, meaning that deals are often labor-intensive and specific for one brand. Turner's goal is to get the turnaround down to a couple weeks.
"The challenge and opportunity with this is that each client has their own individual audience segments that they want to target," Speciale said.
While still limited to a wide group of advertisers, the initial results have been promising. In a test with a campaign for AT&T Mobility, the brand's ads zeroed in on military homes using the combo of set-top box, Xandr and Turner data. Turner says that AT&T Mobility reached 30% more of its audience than it did through a traditional advertising buy.
David Campanelli, co-chief investment officer at Horizon Media, has heard Turner's pitch in recent weeks and said that it could speed up how clients experiment with data-based targeting.
"Theoretically, it's a much more streamlined process and they're not going to a third party to do it," he said. "The promise of the new Xandr and Turner set-up is that they have a matching ability to their database of information and it becomes much quicker, easier and flexible."
AT&T also seems to be willing to fork over plenty of data for advertisers to play with, he said.
"It sure sounded like it was all available," he said.
Some buyers warn that if ad buying fully moves towards programmatic buying, the TV industry risks the brand-safety and transparency challenges that advertisers face when buying digital ads through programmatic technology.
"There's a lot that the tools and the data can tell us, but because it's new, networks and agencies need to really understand how the sauce is made," said Mike Law, EVP and managing director of U.S. media investment at Dentsu Aegis Network. "If we go down the road of associating audience-based buying with automation, I'm afraid that we will run into a lot of things that make consumers and brands say, 'Whoa, that's not what I wanted to get out of this.'"
AT&T wants the rest of the TV industry to adopt its tools
Turner's Speciale also suggested that her network's data play could eventually be licensed by rival networks.
"This needs to be scalable - it cannot just live within Turner's walls," she said.
Along with Fox, Viacom and NBCUniversal, Turner is part of a network consortium called Open A.P. that pools together some of networks' resources to help marketers manage their spend across multiple networks - like the ability for an advertiser to fine-tune audience segments using for targeting with all of the networks' data.
Open A.P. is a media-buying platform that buyers log into to set up campaigns. Buyers first create audience segments using the tool and the software then recommends which networks and time slots their ads should run in.
Xandr has big ambitions to use its data outside of AT&T and plug into competing networks. Some advertisers are skeptical that Xandr will treat all networks equally because of its ties to AT&T, but its initial tests with AT&T could be intriguing to other networks.
"We want to make it easier for sellers - in this case programmers - to achieve better yield, better results for their advertising inventory," said Mike Welch, Xandr's SVP of corporate strategy and development. "We would love for Open A.P. to be a part of that and would welcome that. Our goal is to build this marketplace for all publishers."
In theory, advertisers could use the data that Xandr collects on AT&T phone users' location and web browsing to see if a TV ad that ran on any TV network that was seen by the mobile user actually drove the user to a store, for example.
"It's very compelling," Dentsu Aegis Network's Law said. "It's about this opportunity to increase the fidelity of the data, the personalization of the data and to be that much more accurate with our targeting on a mass platform like television."
AT&T's pitch to sell rival networks on its technology could be easier said than done. NBCUniversal and Viacom already have similar analytics technology that they pitch to clients.
At the same time that AT&T is beginning to tap into its set-top box data, NBCUniversal has used similar data from Comcast set-top boxes for ad targeting for several years. NBCUniversal is in the process of making Comcast data available to its rival networks through Open A.P. by the middle of this year. Similar to AT&T, Comcast allows advertisers to match the first-party data collected from set-top boxes to marketers' own data.
"The audience graph and Comcast set-top box data were things that we held closely for the first few years in terms of building out that innovation, but now that we believe that it has benefitted our own portfolio, we believe that additional scale through the ecosystem will pay a dividend back to us," said Krishan Bhatia, EVP of business operations and strategy at NBCUniversal.
Bhatia did not say if Open A.P. is open to working with Xandr but said that the group is currently "in the process of selecting technology partners that we're agreeing to."
Viacom also has its own technology called Vantage that helps marketers find audiences and then buy ads against them through TV, OTT and digital ads. Fox became the first network to license Vantage in August.
According to Gabe Bevilacqua, Viacom's SVP of product management and advanced advertising, Open A.P.'s work to share audience segments is a "bigger driver in increasing overall advertiser investment" than selling or licensing the technology behind advertising.
"There is a lot of value in partnering with folks that you used to think were your competitors, coming together around standards and looking at how do we draw the line between how we compete and partner."
Advertisers want the TV industry to band together
Given how competitive networks are with each other, some advertisers are skeptical that their promises to work together will come to fruition.
"I think they consider each of their datasets the competitive advantage to the marketplace," said Lisa Herdman, SVP and director of national video investment and branded content. "In this day and time with linear TV, any sort of advantage is something that they capitalize on."
Horizon Media's Campanelli said that his agency hasn't done much testing with Open A.P. because the agency brings its own ad-targeting data from clients directly to the networks. Plus, major networks like ABC and CBS that agencies buy ads on are not part of Open A.P.
"You need everyone. Even if it's three quarters of the marketplace and you still have a quarter of the marketplace that's not connected, it's still hard for the agencies," he said. "At the end of the day, they're competitors, and I can't envision a report from Open A.P. saying 'Viacom worked, Turner didn't,' and Turner being OK with that."
Up until now, the networks have focused on pooling data to create segments for campaigns before they run. While the tests are still new, Campanelli said buyers are equally interested in better understanding attribution and whether or not the targeting was effective in persuading someone to buy a product.
"We're at that tipping point where the networks need to put skin in the game in terms of proving that this additional targeting that we're paying a premium for is actually working," he said.