Complete Coverage of VIDWeek
Scott Ferber, founder and CEO of Videology, and Tim Hanlon, founder and CEO of The Vertere Group, kicked off the Programmatic Summit with a talk about the state of programmatic advertising and how traditional media is getting more advanced in its advertising. Ferber described how all TV viewing was linear back in 2000, but just 78% of it is now, on course for 74% in 2019.
Among millennials, he added, 62% of viewing is on linear TV.
He also detailed digital’s growing share of the ad pie. In 2011, television commanded 40% of the ad spend and digital 22%. Last year, the numbers were even at 38%. By 2020, digital is headed for 51% and TV 33%.
As the television industry moves into the advanced ads age—64% of advertisers believe half of TV buys will be programmatic in the next five years, Ferber said—he urged everyone to operate by a common set of principles.
Hanlon was then called up onstage to interview Ferber.
Ferber said 2016, with the presidential election and the Olympics, was a great year for TV advertising, which does not encourage many parties to change the way they do business. He said he’s seeing “an unprecedented amount/rate of change in the upfronts.”
Ferber spoke of an “inflection point” in terms of advanced advertising occurring in the next 12 months and urged the industry to “create our own rules,” and not let the likes of Google and Facebook set the terms of digital advertising. Letting those online players handle traditional media’s digital business, Ferber said, means the older media companies “are not going to have a very good place at the table.”
Hanlon and Ferber described the silo’d nature of digital and linear within traditional media organizations, and Ferber noted how the major SVOD platforms, such as Hulu, are so often watched on the TV in the living room. “It reinforces the need to break down the silos and bring us all together,” he said.
