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Chicago -- A bow-tie wearing group of cable technology executives laid out the challenges and roadblocks still facing the growth of advance advertising on a Wednesday afternoon panel at Cable Show 2011 here.
Beyond the need to develop systems that integrate the sales process for the MSOs with the planning systems at the media agencies that enable campaigns to run from operator to operator, the industry needs to figure out how to handle all the data advance advertising generate.
"One of the hurdles is we'll find out some of our advertising doesn't work," said Chris Faw, senior vice president, operations, Tim Warner Cable Media Sales. In the current advertising environment, "part of us doesn't really doesn't want to know,'" But with advanced advertising there is accountability, and as long as organization are able to react to that data to build more effective campaign, advertisers will be better off.
Jason Malamud, vice president and general manager of Verizon FiOS Advertising, pointed out that advanced advertising is expensive, but that good data will help justify the cost.
"What works may be subjective in the advertisers' mind," added Todd Stewart, corporate vice president, advertising sales, Bright House Networks. A key is setting goals at the outset of a campaign.
That means helping to educate ad agencies and clients on what advanced adverting can do. "You have to get the client involved and find out what the client wants to do," he said.
"Some advertisers are very interested in it," said Chris Falkner, vice president advanced advertising technology & operations at NBCUniversal. "They see the value and are willing to spend," but for others the added expense is hard to justify. "To get more cost efficient at this point requires scale," he said.
Added data will also create value in some low-rated cable programming aimed at niche audiences. "We don't have Nielsen ratings for BET Jazz at 4 o'clock in the morning," said Faw. "We can't unlock that with the current data we're getting from Nielsen," he said, adding that "unlocking the long tail is a big deal for us."
The session was entitled "Television with a Twist," and one twist was that the panelists all wore bowties to tweak the signature fashion statement of moderator Arthur Orduna, CTO for Canoe Ventures. When the session ended, Orduna praised the group for being both interesting and "sartorially splendid."
