Can TV Avoid the Fate of Newpapers?
And can Comcast really bring the TV ad business together?
One thing that everyone in TV agrees on is - the industry needs more advertisers.
For a business that is seeing its core (linear-based) ad model shrink, the hope is that the growth of connected TV doesn’t just move revenue to another channel, but grow it exponentially.
To do that, To do that, TV needs many more brands to have access to, and interest in, buying TV ads. Maybe not 10 million advertisers like Meta or Google, but far beyond the few hundred that have long dominated the upfront business.
The question, of course, is how to get there? How do you turn TV advertising into a platform business?
There are signs that things are moving in the right direction. The Video Advertising Bureau says upwards or 900 new brands have come to TV over the past year. Yet to offset the declines TV is experiencing, things need to move faster.
A few months ago, Comcast threw its hat in the ring, announcing the launch of Universal Ads.
My question is - can a player in the ecosystem - i.e. somebody who sells ads - also serve as the facilitator of the market?
As a cautionary tale, TV executives may want to (bracingly) look to newspapers, and even the on-life-support open web. Even if it’s not the comparison many would like to make.
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Let’s try to sum up where TV is in terms of trying to build up its ad base by catering to all these SMB and DTC brands that supposedly are ready to make the leap:
NBCU has Peacock Ad Manager, a self-serve ad platform
Paramount has Paramount Ads Manager
Disney Campaign Manager
You also have organizations such as OpenAP and Blockgraph, which aren’t designed to serve smaller brands, but are ostensibly about making it easier to do ad targeting (and data integration) across multiple TV partners
You have ad tech startups like TV Scientific and MNTN trying to build Instagram-like marketplaces for TV
And so on
Then a few months ago, Comcast announced Universal Ads, which the company describes as “a one-stop TV advertising platform that brings premier media companies together in a strategic partnership to simplify access to the premium video category.”
Besides its own inventory, Comcast has lined up deals with the likes of A+E, AMC Networks, Fox Corporation, Paramount, Roku, TelevisaUnivision and Warner Bros. Discovery. Pretty impressive!
Conceptually, Universal Ads makes a ton of sense. Smaller, new-to-TV advertisers who are used to Facebook or YouTube aren’t likely going to want to engage with six-plus new ad platforms, each of which that does things it’s own way and has only so much scale.
“I think we're focused on helping not only our own inventory, but our partners that are on the platform get access to a much larger client base”, said Larry Allen VP & GM Data & Addressable Enablement at Comcast, on my podcast this week.
“Building a storefront, if you will, that could cater to and really behave like the platform's UIs so that it's very easy for a buyer that's used to buying, you know, Snap or Facebook, that they could swivel into our storefront with Universal Ads and be able to execute a similar campaign on streaming inventory, seemed logical and pretty straightforward.”
Ok but here’s the tricky part. It’s not as though all of the Universal Ads partners have ditched their own self-serve platforms (not to mention that Disney is a conspicuous holdout). Plus, as an industry colleague mentioned to me, all of these platforms start to sound the same.
Here’s where newspapers (and the web) come in. Over the past two decades, we’ve seen umpteen consortiums launch, attempting to replicate the same sort of thing.
For instance, when all the digital ad revenue (and traffic) was going to Yahoo, AOL MSN, the newspaper business tried:
Similarly, premium web publishers - facing the growing duopoly - have tried:
Umpteen ad networks
In the case of TrustX, a publisher trade group even ran the body as a co-operative. Still, in almost each case, these companies prioritized their own sales efforts. Their sellers prioritized getting paid commissions. Resources went to the mother ship, not necessarily to help the collective good.
How does TV avoid that?
“Obviously, if each of the programming partners built their own storefront, that's duplicate resources, duplicate development, multiple salespeople,” said Allen. “There's a lot of costs that are able to come out of the system by aggregating. And scale matters. And I think if you want TV to be viewed as a platform similar to a Meta or a Google, then you need all of the programming partners to really participate and operate as one, not as a single company, but as a single opportunity.”
“And I think that's really what we're striving for is to create bespoke access, but also aggregated access that enables scale and flexibility for the buyer.”
Again, sounds great. But what are the chances it plays out that way? Especially with Comcast -a competitor running the show (it’s exactly the kind of thing people would complain about Google doing). Will we see a few Universal Ads partners dump their own self serve tools and go all in? We’re talking about public companies under a lot of pressure right now.
“It’s the right idea - make it really easy for these digital buyers,” said John Hamilton, General Manager and SVP at the CTV ad tech firm Osmos. “My question is, is that actually going to happen? Where will this sit in the waterfall? Because you can imagine a scenario where this becomes just another DSP that gets access to the leftovers.”
Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether serious dollars will move this way. In the meantime, there are lots of questions. How does Comcast promote this thing to SMBs and DTCs? Should it eventually become a joint venture/spinoff? (Not that those always have a perfect track record).
“I guess, this how development works, right? “ said Allen “You have to have a lot or a little bit of chaos in order to get to kind of the best outcome. And I think we're in that moment right now. Consolidation is gonna happen. And so I think the best product will ultimately rise to the surface and get the most scale.”