As Digital Advertising Surges Ahead, TV Just Gets More Complicated

In a world where every brand wants custom measurement and attribution, the industry risks getting mired in choice

It’s December, and the TV upfront has already started.

And from the sound of things,  it promises to be a big fat mess.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that a bunch of deals are already in motion. But I had a super interesting chat with Discovery’s advanced advertising chief Jim Keller on the podcast I host. (Next in Marketing, brought to you by AppsFlyer).

Jim was saying over the past six to eight weeks, the number of calls his team has fielded from big brands about next year’s upfront is “staggering.”

The fact that this interest is happening around Christmas for a marketplace that usually wraps up around July 4 speaks volumes. It’s not because TV viewership is particularly robust - far from it. It’s because everything about TV advertising is in flux - and becoming more complicated by the minute.

“Every conversation with a client isn't like about ‘what's your supply going to be?’ or ‘what's your next show?’” said Keller. “It’s ‘what are you guys think about data measurement and attribution and how does that extend across all platforms?’”

Indeed, as we’ve all read and written about, TV is theoretically becoming more digital. Nielsen is wounded. NBCU is auditioning dozens of replacements. Upstarts like Innovid and Samba and VideoAmp are raising boatloads.  Ad buyers seemingly want TV to be accountable and trackable, like digital ads.

Yet what struck me was the word Jim kept using in our chat to describe what his team is doing with brands. “Bespoke”

As in right now, every ad deal Discovery is exploring with brands will be uber custom - each employing its own way of measuring, evaluating and tracking.

Sounds extremely challenging to execute and scale - especially in a medium that has historically been all about easy-to-buy scale.  

“Hey NBC, I need 4 zillion female eyeballs. Two spots in ER? Sold! Let’s go have lunch.”

Ok so it was probably never that easy. And TV has been trending toward becoming more complex as consumers have shifted among screens and data-driven buying more common. But this new reality, where each advertiser brings its favorite measurement vendor, their preferred currency, their unique ROI thing they care about (sales, leads whatever), and their favorite attribution partner sounds not just challenging - but straining.

As Keller noted, many times the same advertiser will come to Discovery with multiple sets of budgets, currencies, and metrics partners.

This dynamic promises to really tests advertisers and agencies’ infrastructure, so to speak. You need to staff up on both sides to handle the implementation of all these kinds of campaigns. You need experts on every type of data provider. You need to shift gears quickly. You thought ‘programmatic TV’ meant you could buy ads with a few clicks.

Contrast TV’s evolving state with how digital media - which the TV business is supposedly trying to emulate  - really works. The latest round of forecasts for 2021 from Zenith and GroupM actually upped digital’s growth rate for this year to upwards of 22%.  And it’s no surprise, yet still sorta stunning, that per the Wall Street Journal,

“Somewhere between 80% and 90% of digital advertising outside of China will go to Google parent Alphabet Inc., Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., GroupM estimated.”

There are lots of reasons that those three companies dominate -massive scale,  piles of first-party data, the fact that they are eminently trackable.

They are also dead simple to buy.  They all have self-serve options. There’s nothing bespoke about it.

Maybe TV is just going through an awkward transition phase. Maybe winners and losers will emerge and CTV will simplify things. Except that right now, every brand and media company seems inclined to go its own way.

Complexity implies sophistication - but it often translates to friction.

Which is not something TV appears to need right now.