Advanced Advertising Summit panel “The Local View” looked at TV stations and cable operators reaping revenue on their digital and over-the-top platforms. Local advertising on linear TV is in a good spot, the panelists said, and OTT adds to the take.
“What we like to focus on is the tremendous broad reach of broadcast,” said Christopher Martinez, Hearst Television OTT director of sales. “Linear and OTT working together has revitalized the need for local.”
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Jon Lafayette, business editor of B+C Multichannel News, moderated the panel.
Jim Loughran, senior VP of convergent video partnerships at Viamedia, acknowledged the cord-cutting issue and said, “broadcast and cable have huge reach and it’s not going away.“ Adding OTT to the local mix, he added, “makes the reach excellent.”
Kristin Wnuk, director of local sales at Roku, mentioned the measurability of OTT. “CTV and OTT absolutely gives clients the opportunity to extend their reach,” she said. “It also gives clients the opportunity to measure differently.”
Carol Hinnant, Comscore chief revenue officer, said there are “too many siloes” in terms of measuring viewing on the various platforms. “That is definitely the challenge,” she said.
Loughran mentioned how some clients don’t understand the value of some of the advanced measurements available to them, including cross-platform attribution. “People are very comfortable with doing things the way they’ve been doing them for a long time,” he said, adding that it’s on the salespeople to tell the story well.
Hinnant agreed. “That’s the key word, educating,” she said, “The desire to have better metrics is there.”
Wnuk said most everyone in television is trying to bridge the gap between linear and digital. “We are at a time when not all ad impressions are created equally,” she added.
When Lafayette asked about hot ad categories, the panelists mentioned the chip shortage continuing to slow down auto sales, but said other categories have bumped up. Loughran mentioned COVID testing and vaccine centers, cannabis, sports gambling and solar energy ramping up spending. “You have things that didn’t exist before,” he said.
Political spending, the panelists noted, remains red hot around our divided nation. “Political’s very strong. It’s gonna be very strong until they change the rules,” said Loughran.
Despite reports of its demise, local television looks to stay hot, the panelists agreed. “Is local dead?” Wnuk asked. “It’s absolutely not.”
NYC TV Week continues on Tuesday with the Next TV Summit and on Wednesday with the Hispanic TV Summit. ■
