Top cable operators Comcast and Charter Communications, unable by themselves to make addressable advertising easy for marketers, have enlisted Dish Network and Vizio to try to solve their problem.
The new initiative is called Go Addressable and is designed to come up with industry-wide standards and solutions.
In its official announcement, Go Addressable added that DirecTV was participating, along with cable operators Cox, Altice USA and Frontier Communications, pretty much covering the universe of pay-TV providers with addressable capabilities.
Satellite companies like Dish have a national footprint, and have been able to mount addressable ad campaigns for big marketers. They also provide addressable advertising for political campaigns.
Similarly, Vizio is able to insert targeted commercials into its sets all over the country and formed Project OAR, which aims to set standards for addressable advertising.
And one reason advertisers have been rushing into the over-the-top and connected TV market is that those commercials can be targeted and addressable like other digitally delivered advertising.
But cable companies each cover a specific part of the country and working together has been difficult for technological and business reasons.
In March, a study conducted by Forrester Consulting for companies including Dish Media, Canoe, Cadent, Comscore, Verizon Media, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia found that addressable TV is a priority for brands, but that it is being held back by operational complexity and a lack of education.
Two years ago, Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications formed On Addressability, an industry initiative aimed at helping the cable industry deliver addressable advertising at a time when marketers were looking to use data to better target their commercials to viewers likely to be interested in their products.
Last year, On Addressability issued a playbook designed to help distributors, programmers, ad buyers and advertisers take advantage of cable’s addressable advertising capabilities.
With the launch of Go Addressable, On Addressability is being phased out.
But being able to mount an addressable ad campaign over cable still seems to be a remarkable achievement.
Last November, AMC Networks and Canoe announced their first addressable campaign running multiple commercials within a single ad availability across Comcast and Charter homes.
In election years, DirecTV and Dish have teamed up to offer addressable markets to political campaigns.
