What We Learned at the Comscore 2019 Local TV & Agency Sales National Conference
10.22.19 | Ann Bremer
At Inline Media, we invest in data and tools to uncover insights in order to better understand our clients’ audiences on a human level. We are a primary subscriber to the marketing & media industry’s leading syndicated research tools, including Comscore. Last week, we attended their 2019 Local TV & Agency Sales National Conference here in Denver.
Comscore’s audience analytics data goes beyond traditional age & gender demographics to include household income, household members, education level, viewing segments & personas (sports fans, political audiences, etc.), and purchasing habits. This data can be used across multiple platforms including digital, linear (traditional) TV and OTT.
An especially interesting discussion focused on “the addressable future.” Addressability is the primary driver for digital media campaigns; optimizing relevance & timing to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time. This strategy has been gaining ground in linear TV plans in recent years. Delivering better targeted ads should lead to more engaged viewers, increased efficiency, and higher ROI.
Sounds great, right? What’s the catch? Addressable TV requires MVPDs (multichannel video programming distributors – typically a cable or satellite service that is providing multiple television channels to a household) to use their set top box technology to show different ads on a home-by-home basis while they are watching the same live or on-demand program.
The challenge is the lack of addressable inventory and availability on a local level. eMarketer estimates that only 57.2% of US households can be addressed. This number has been flat for the last 4 years and is down slightly from 2018 when it was 57.4%. While addressable TV ad spend is projected to be $3.49 billion by 2021, it represents only 5% of all TV ad spending.
Comscore is working with both media and ad agencies to simplify the complexity of the measurement issues, including addressable TV. This is just one of the resources we employ to tackle the increasingly complex media environment.