• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 5, 2009

NEW ORLEANS -- Addressable TV advertising, and the issues related to it, are emerging as key elements of a new agenda for media services agencies, industry leaders said Thursday during the second day of the American Association of Advertising Agencies media conference.

"The issues I'm talking about include addressability and attendant functions, such as frequency capping, segmentation and versioning, serialization or chaptering, telescoping, and how addressability enables all these capabilities," said Marc Goldstein, CEO North America at GroupM, and chairman of the 4As' Media Policy Committee. He added that it will only accelerate the industry and government debate surrounding the regulation of consumer privacy and media.

"One potential roadblock to those advancements is an issue I raised at last year's media conference--namely, privacy," Goldstein reminded the audience. He added that--at least for the time being--regulators have "endorsed the concept of industry self regulation."

Goldstein warned that it is critical for all sides of the industry--advertisers, agencies and the media--to work together in a way that meets government and consumer expectations. The promise it offers: Marketers would end up with the ability to deliver advertising messages addressed to "every home--and even every TV in every home," he said. Such delivery would give television the same flexibility and precision as Internet advertising.

The emergence of addressable TV advertising, and the consumer privacy issues related to it, dovetail with an equally important--and festering--industry issue: Who owns the data generated by addressable advertising campaigns on the Internet?

Ultimately, TV could fall into the same debate as addressable TV advertising developers begin mining the return path data generated by digital set-top devices.