The three big cable operators joined up last year to launch the On Addressability Initiative, which aims to offer advertisers addressable advertising at scale by creating standards across their footprints.
With addressable advertising, marketers can send specific messages to individual homes, increasing the effectiveness of campaigns. Streaming networks, which run on internet protocol, are set up to provide addressable advertising. Getting cable TV technologies to cooperate has been trickier, which is what On Addressability is looking to solve.
AMC has been signing on to advanced advertising initiatives including working with OpenAP and Xandr.
“Addressable is the future of advertising and with On Addressability, we are finally bringing the future into the present,” said Kim Kelleher, president of commercial revenue and partnerships, AMC Networks. “At AMC Networks, we are focused on bringing performance-based marketing to our clients and innovative solutions to brands, however they are interested in buying television advertising. Fortunately, AMC Networks is in a unique position to push this frontier and, with our partners at Charter, Comcast and Cox, we are already getting started.”
As part of what is described as a pilot program, AMC will allocate some of its commercial to addressable ads delivered to audiences across the Charter, Comcast and Cox cable TV footprints. That will give those operators more linear advertising inventory to sell to national advertisers.
So far, most of the addressable advertising operators have been able to sell has been in the spots that run in the local breaks that run in cable programming.
“We launched the On Addressability initiative last year because as MVPDs, we are responsible for delivering ads into viewers’ households. Enabling addressable TV has to begin with the content distributors who lay the groundwork and set up the infrastructure,” said Marcien Jenckes, president of Comcast Advertising. “Programmers have the largest amount of inventory, however, and we need their participation to achieve scale. AMC Networks’ decision to partner with On Addressability is important for the industry and the start of what we believe is a growing trend.”
In addition to establishing standard and technical solutions, On Addressability is tackling other issues including measurement.
Canoe Ventures, owned by Comcast, Cox and Charter, is handling the technical implementation and service management of linear and VOD addressability. That gives programmers one main entity to work with instead of dealing with the three cable operators separately.
“Even though MVPDs have inventory across all platforms – IP, VOD, online included – linear television is still where the majority of viewing takes place, so if we can bring better targeting and more scale to TV advertising, while maintaining security and brand safety, everyone wins, “ said David Kline, executive VP of Charter Communications and president of Spectrum Reach. “We’re looking at a really big opportunity, and with the cooperation and support of forward-thinking programmers like AMC, we’re well on our way.”
