• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 18, 2016

How TV media-buying has changed. When I started out, liquor brands couldn’t even advertise on TV. Gradually, over the years, they cracked into cable TV. And now, according to a presentation at MediaPost’s TV Insider Summit, a liquor brand was the first to break into a programmatic TV ad buy on satellite TV provider DISH.

Jarod Caporino, managing partner, Resolute Digital, presented how the agency has been utilizing various forms of programmatic and addressable TV for whiskey brand Glenfiddich.

Rules still apply. For example, distilled spirits still have to focus on targeting viewers 21-plus, and forget about advertising in NFL games. Beyond that, it’s all about leveraging the power of data and addressability to reach the viewers in the households the brand wants to reach.

Caporino said programmatic and addressable buys require a mindshift from program-centric TV-buying to more of a viewer-centric mindset.

“I care about the user that’s watching it,” he explained, adding: “It’s more about the user. Yes, I want the content to be safe and friendly for brands, but it’s more about the person who is sitting in front of that screen. With addressable it’s about the person, not the program.”

While many definitions exist for programmatic TV, Caporino said the two basic criteria -- from his point of view -- are “automation and addressability.”

“It has to be those two things,” he said, adding that he would like to see the emergence of “real-time bidding” in the programmatic TV marketplace, but “it doesn’t have to be real-time bidding.”