We’re all falling to pieces
The TV 3.0 session, well-moderated by Greg Bauman, Editor of TV Week, left me in pieces. The panel reiterated one fact: we have moved from a world where an audience of 30 million once sat collectively in the living room to watch the same show via similar television sets, to a world of fragmented audiences, fragmented content providers, fragmented technologies and fragmented measurement tools.
The good news, according to Michael Steib, Director of TV Ads for Google is that fragmentation results in the ability to target more precisely. “If you can get 30 million people in one place, it’s a big mix of demographics. You CPMs should be much higher when it is easier to target. The challenge is matching advertisers with people.” Robert Leverone, VP, Television for Dow Jones added that traditional day parting is no longer valid, suggesting that his audience just might be more inclined to consume online video during the work day.
Ron Lamprecht, Senior VP, Digital Distribution for NBC Universal agrees with the fragmentation challenge, but suggests that advertisers are very early in the game. “The multiplatform sale is not really happening yet.” In a traditional media buying process, relatively few people were involved. Today, it is more complicated due to the then number of partners physically required to get a video to appear on, say a cell phone. His firms’ investment in Hulu is clearly the greatest strategic move in regaining control over other forces with installed user bases such as YouTube, now owned by Google.
A second challenge, according to Steib, is that the traditional television advertising sales process has been upended, suggesting that the demands on media sales forces have never been so extreme. In his ideal world, all administrative tasks would be taken off of the salesperson’s plate, so that more time could be spent on creative, strategic thinking.
As measurement is a pre-requisite for targeting, George Shababb, Chief Operating Officer of TNS Media Research puts his hopes towards 2009, the year when the country converts to digital broadcasting and the conversation truly becomes two-way.
