As the television industry moves toward commercials that are more targeted, Discovery is joining the On Addressability initiative, which was launched last year by the ad units of three of the industry’s largest distributors.
The initiative, started by Charter Communications’ Spectrum Reach, Comcast Advertising and Cox Media, aims to provide large-scale, standardized addressable advertising in video on demand and linear TV.
Joining On Addressability enables Discovery to offer advertisers advanced advertising capabilities across its 18 U.S. networks.
“Discovery has long been at the forefront of the movement to bring linear addressable advertising to the U.S. ad sales market,” said Keith Kazerman, executive VP, digital sales, advanced advertising and research, Discovery, Inc. “This initiative is a major milestone and represents a huge step forward in scaling Discovery’s addressable offering.”
Discovery has been offering driven advanced advertising through its Engage data platform.
“Addressability has always been a north star here for both us and the industry,” Kazerman said. “The real need we’ve heard from clients directly and from agencies is scale. Bringing our 18 networks and great audiences and partnering with three of the largest MVPs answers that call with content scale, execution scale and penetration scale. We’re really excited we are delivering that spark and real momentum for linear addressability in national breaks.”
Kazerman said the three MVPDs are already able to deliver addressable campaigns across their combined footprints and that, even in the midst of a pandemic, that's something advertisers want. He said that when advertisers do spend marketing dollars, they want to really understand the impact of their marketing spend, and having an addressable target maximizes the effectiveness of ad placements.
“We’re very excited to have Discovery join On Addressability. When we launched this call to action last year, the focus at the time was working with distributors, such as Charter and Cox, to create the foundation. Now, we’re embarking on the next big chapter, by working with programmers such as Discovery to build out that inventory,” said Gina Mingioni, senior VP, strategy and operations, Comcast Advertising. “Discovery’s joining is a testament to the scale, support and industry adoption we’ve seen behind On Addressability.”
As a programmer, Discovery joins AMC Networks, which signed up for On Addressability in June.
“Discovery’s participation in On Addressability makes a valuable addition to options for reaching a range of audiences, from broad reach to specific audiences,” added Louis Gump, senior VP, Cox Media. “This milestone adds to the growing momentum to bring enhanced addressability to the media landscape to meet the needs of our advertising customers.”
