• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, October 3, 2017

Mark Mitchell started his career as a TV buyer at Y&R before entering broadcast television sales at ABC and then venturing into a series of start-ups. Now, as chief relationship officer, clypd, he is on the cutting edge of audience-based advertising.  Clypd, which recently entered into an agreement with Nielsen, is a software and services provider to network television ad sales organizations.

Charlene Weisler:  What is your current job responsibility?

Mark Mitchell: I establish and manage our partnerships with the TV networks for clypd.  Four years ago when we started the company, a ton of effort went into convincing sales leaders that the industry needed to begin to change.   Those early days of "programmatic TV" were all about educating, building trust and testing new transaction models.  We're now at the point where everyone sees the benefit of selling advanced audiences, and market adoption is underway.  

Weisler:  What is your definition of programmatic TV?

Mitchell: The application of rich audience data for targeting to improve television advertising outcomes, with underlying technology that allows this to happen in an efficient, streamlined fashion.

Weisler: What are the advantages of an open marketplace? A private marketplace? What are the challenges in each?

Mitchell: The private marketplace (PMP) model puts clypd's advance audience forecasting and optimization capabilities into the hands of network teams for execution of advanced TV sales strategies.  They are able to operationalize any advanced audience data, create optimized proposals and then manage those deals through their existing sales systems.  

The clypd open marketplace (OMP) was initially developed to provide nontraditional buyers, demand-side platforms and digital agencies, the means to purchase linear TV inventory, where conventional relationships with TV sales orgs may not exist.  At the same time, it gave TV media owners access to new sources of demand.  

While a robust marketplace, OMP's managed-service approach falls short of the hands-on control that traditional TV buyers need.  For that reason, we are launching a self-service OMP application that will allow holding companies to transact across all of our partner networks, in a semi-private environment.  

Networks will use clypd's software to manage agency/advertiser-specific deal terms, just as they would in offline sale today.  Think of it as a convenient Amazon-esqe experience for buying and selling linear TV advertising.  

In both cases, the biggest challenge is changing legacy behaviors and beliefs.  Some people embrace it, while others need a bit more convincing and support.  

Weisler:  What is your definition of television?  

Mitchell: Wow.  Harder to define every day.  Having grown up in this business, I still see it as the viewing experience of programming supplied by a media owner who operates linear channels.  Distribution and consumption of that content has and will continue to change in ways that best serve the consumer, with business models evolving to support it.

Weisler:  What is the biggest challenge for an agency / advertiser in buying television through a platform?  

Mitchell: Transparency, trust and costs.  How direct is the access to the inventory and the audiences that am I getting, and what impact is it having on the cost of media?

Weisler:  Where do you see television in general and television sales in the next three years?

Mitchell: The TV advertising industry is going through a renaissance, which is essential for it to compete with the likes of Google, Facebook and eventually Amazon.   The sales side of network television has always attracted some of the brightest people in the industry.  Many get a bad rap for holding onto old ways of doing business.  But those "old ways" drove some amazing profits.  Now you will begin to see just how nimble and innovative this community can really be.