With its huge distribution footprint and data about its consumers, AT&T and Time Warner expect to be able to create innovative advertising products, in addition to new forms of content that would appeal to an increasingly mobile viewership for video.
“We can make the advertising more interesting for your house, versus somebody next door,” said Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes during a joint AT&T-Time Warner conference call with analysts Monday morning.
With AT&T offering addressable advertising across new TV and mobile platforms, viewers would see products they’re interesting in.
“That means more consumers get a better experience viewing. They get less interruptions, and it means that more of the cost of programming can then be borne by advertisers and consumers get a break,” Bewkes said.
“So the benefit for consumers is pretty good, very good, and the benefit for advertisers is terrific because if you look at what’s happening in that world, advertisers need more competition and this will give another outlet, not just Google and Facebook, which have been gaining all of the traction. Now you have yet another advertising choice that’s equally efficient,” he said.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson also said that the feedback the company gets is directly from its millions of customers to fuel innovation.
“We’ll use those insights from our TV, mobile and broadband subscribers to inform what content we create. We’ll develop content that’s better tailored to what specific audience segments want to watch, when and on which device,” Stephenson said.
“And we’ll use the insights to expand the market for addressable advertising, and addressable advertising is far more effective and more valuable both to the advertiser and to our customers,” he added. “Owning content will help us innovate on new advertising options, which combined with subscriptions will allow us to grow a two-sided business model to help pay for the cost of content creation.”
