In this guest post, Wavemaker’s Sydney trading director, Philippa Noilea-Tani (pictured below), says addressable TV is the development that promises the greatest change for marketers – and better results…

Thirteen years ago, nervous and a little unsure, I sat in the back of a cab on the way to my first job interview in media. I remember repeating over and over in my head “Target Audience Rating Point, Target Audience Rating Point”. My aunt, who worked in media at the time, had given me a rundown of her career, shared her top tips and stressed to me the importance of understanding what a TARP meant.

 

There was no mention of what CPC, CTR, CPA or ATF might stand for. In my early years of media, digital planning and buying was a blur of three-letter acronyms and my understanding of digital marketing was minimal at best.

I spent my first years in media working as hard as I could, to become the best TV buyer I could be.

My career soon progressed beyond TV TARPs and while my digital knowledge expanded along the way, my experience over the years has been skewed to offline media touchpoints.

About two years ago, our media landscape began changing at a rate I’d not experienced before. It hit me hard! I was going to have to get up to speed on digital quickly if I wanted to keep up. I carved hours aside to learn the acronyms, the different ways of working, and made every effort possible to pick up what I had missed along the way. My digital knowledge has improved, but I still find it challenging to comprehend the finer details.

I’m incredibly proud of my progression and what I’ve been able to achieve for my clients along the way but I’m happy that newcomers to our industry don’t face the same challenge.

There’s a lot happening in the media landscape that motivates me and which, I believe, will deliver better results for clients, including:

• the convergence of offline and online media touchpoints;
• the rate of innovation and digitisation of all traditional media formats;
• true integration that means newcomers to the industry don’t have to choose between a career in offline or online;
• the ability to communicate with our clients using channel agnostic language;
• bringing together the skill sets of our strongest TV buyers and most intelligent digital minds at every level in the business, to deliver even more powerful solutions and results for all of our clients.

Addressable TV – essentially the ability to show different ads to different households while they are watching the same program – excites me for all of these reasons and so many more. While it’s still in its infancy in the Australian market, the growth potential for addressable TV is vast if the experience in the US is anything to by – and it usually is. According to Oztam’s Australian Video Viewing Report Q4 2017, 43 per cent of Australian households own a Smart TV, a number not unlike the US one year ago (42 per cent of US homes owned a Smart TV in 2017).

Fast forward to July 2018, and 71.6 per cent of US homes are now connected TV households, and addressable TV ad spend is predicted to exceed $3 billion by 2019. The benefits of addressable TV advertising are well recognised, and include targeting precision, increased ad relevance, reduced wastage and stronger ROI.

We have TV buyers delivering best-in-class audit results and media efficiencies for clients while digital buyers deliver innovative data-led targeting solutions. At the moment, these people don’t regularly work directly together or share notes. The advent of addressable TV will change all that.

The potential output is inspiring and our clients will reap the benefits as our communication solutions connect with consumers in more ways and at more points than ever before.

We have pulled together a Working Group at Wavemaker to ensure we identify and implement every possible opportunity provided by addressable TV for our clients’ benefit. The working group consists of members from all of our agency departments – curiosity is high, engagement is strong, questions are rife and the learning curve is steep.