The Missing Link to Linear TV Data Automation—The Agency

 
Missing-Link.jpg

In 2015, industry experts predicted that total Programmatic TV (PTV) sales would grow in 2016 to capture 23% to 35% of total USA TV ad sales. By late 2016, these projections proved to be wildly optimistic. In early 2017, total PTV sales for 2016 reportedly came in at less than 1% of the total market sales. Very reliable sources have stated that the total was actually less than 300 million dollars, or less than a half of one percent of the domestic TV market.

Over the last few years, almost every conversation about linear TV data automation focuses on automated buying, audience targeting, and new multiscreen technologies that allow TV advertisers to reach the consumer in a very similar way that they connect to the digital marketplace. Most have touted programmatic buying as “the answer” to moving the process toward station-agency automation.

By 2017, the TV network software providers dived deep into the programmatic marketplace by offering their own automated solutions. If anyone can convince the major TV networks to move forward with automated sales of their inventory and automation of transactional data, it should be the software providers that operate a station’s programming, inventory and trafficking software…but even they have found resistance to this “one-sided change”.

Offering the same solution as digital will not work for linear TV. Many so-called programmatic companies spent large sums of money in the years past and have now learned this. (See the many industry thoughts and projections on this in the links below.) The key to driving successful change are the ad agencies, and getting them on board is the key for this automation to take place. To get their participation, you have to integrate agency workflow into the entire process. Ad agencies need to manage and work with all types of data from the entire marketplace within a single, standardized platform, and not from within numerous individual silos. The silo solutions designed to date all support the top end of this network-to-agency pyramid, but seemingly all have neglected to connect the bottom half of the equation, “The Agency”.

In my humble opinion, I predict automated buying/transactional communication for television will be an industry reality by 2025, but the data connectivity won’t look exactly like digital, as face-to-face negotiations will still rule the day for premium inventory. There are many signs today of this movement toward automation, but there are still a number of large steps that must occur before we get there.



pyramid-gray-white-paper.jpg

Agencies must connect and communicate with the Networks, SSPs, and DSPs

There are two parts to the equation and both of them must connect before real automation can take place in the TV marketplace. Agencies will drive this change, but to make it happen, Networks, Sell Side Providers (SSPs) and Demand Side Providers (DSPs) need a way to get their data to each agency that allows the agency to utilize all of the new-found multiscreen targeting and transactional tools. Agencies are reluctant, and most refuse to enter network silos to manage their business. Ad campaigns cannot be managed in 100 silos, or even as little as 10 silos. There is no efficient way for the agency to fundamentally manage multiple campaigns going from portal to portal. Agencies that do this today experience many headaches and do not see this as a long-term solution. Agencies en masse are not adapting this silo approach to an extent that would give anyone the confidence to think that this will be the model of success in the years to come.




pyramid-illustration-white-paper.jpg

Agencies—The Missing Link!

As much as you have heard in recent years about programmatic and audience targeting, over the next few years you will need to hear the same regarding sales-to-agency data connectivity automation. This will be the sign that automation is in fact taking place. Connecting 300 to a 1000+ media-partners in itself is a huge task for agencies and networks, add in You Tube, Facebook, Hulu and the many other fragmented multiscreen data providers and the picture really becomes confusing for the agency. Any viable solution to connect the agency has to simplify this task and has to be an “industry solution”.

Over the last 40 years, many agencies have adapted to EDI. However, EDI was developed in the 1970s, before the Internet, and is too limited in its technological capabilities. Therefore, you now find many agencies and networks using different software programs that require personalized data customization and extensive manual data entry. EDI is simply not prepared for the fragmented data types of the future. Asking the industry to adapt to any new standard would be fruitless for it would require most networks and agencies to trash thier IT systems and start anew. This won’t happen, so the key is for the industry to achieve total industry automated data connectivity with their current infrastructures.

The influx of all of these new data tools is forcing the agency software suppliers to rethink and update their software. Software suppliers such as Media Ocean, Strata, Core Media Systems, and the agency proprietary systems, must accommodate these new fragmented multiscreen, transactional data, geo-specific, and addressable ad targeting and buying features… but to what standard? The software providers cannot map and reformat the data to work with the entire field of highly customized network, station group and content delivery mechanism databases in the marketplace.

The key to industry data automation will be a system that allows the agency to channel all types of data from any source in a standardized format

The industry is too fragmented for each network, agency, 3rd party or software provider system to individually map each media partner’s data format. Standardization and convergence of network and 3rd party transactional and target data must happen while the data is en-route to the agency and utilize a secure processing system that knows each party’s individual requirements. Transactional data must be reformatted, and reconcile the station data against agency 1st party data for errors and missing data, while also processing any required 3rd party Data Management Platform (DMP) data to ensure seamless pure data entry into agency systems and translate the data in reverse for 2-way data communications.

As CEO of PremiumMedia360, I am in a unique position to speak and hear from key players in every vertical participating in this effort that will eventually make this automated industry vision a reality. PremiumMedia360, working with our media partners, has spent the last 5+ years building the platform to allow seamless data communications between networks, 3rd parties and agencies. We named our system “GIA™” (Guidance Intelligence Assistant). GIA allows all parties to continue to use their current software systems. All data changes required are completed en route to each other to allow seamless data connectivity between the network IT systems or 3rd party and the agency IT systems, and vice versa.

Connecting to GIA is quick and easy and cost is zero for networks, 3rd party suppliers, and agencies. The benefit once connected is that data flows securely, encrypted and re-formatted exactly for the intended media partner as required by their IT system. Data from a station that comes from NYC may be different than the same station data that comes from their offices in Detroit or even different from that station’s data coming from a DSP, or from You Tube, etc. To account for these conditions, GIA has created a framework of connectivity, run by Artificial Intelligence, which is programmed to recognize and reformat various file types within a single station’s data or other 3rd party sellers of that same station content.

The result is a solution for the “bottom half” of the TV marketplace data equation; end-to-end seamless data connectivity that allows all parties to advance the automation of the TV marketplace. This opens the door for each agency, network and 3rd party supplier to proceed at the technological pace they are comfortable with, allowing seamless data partnerships between sellers and their agency partners. Every network or 3rd party supplier on board has instant 2-way data connectivity with every agency on board.

Today, GIA pipes data to some of the nation’s largest ad agencies, who step-by-step are making this seamless automation come true. As technology partners realize the importance to integrate the agency workflow into the buy-sell process, the vision of the automated linear TV marketplace will begin to take hold. This will give all participants the foundation and confidence needed to further investments and strategies towards a connected sell-buy-post buy manage, open source marketplace....one agency and one network at a time.

John Bowser, CEO

 
Armchair