LiveRamp Brings People-Based Marketing To TV Media Buys, Measurement
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 5, 2018
LiveRamp on Monday officially announced the extension of its IdentityLink platform into television, allowing marketers to support people-based TV media planning, buying and measurement.
As the worlds of television and digital converge, the company will now support all addressable television integrations, as well as data and media-based buying capabilities in TV and digital, said Allison Metcalfe, general manager of TV for LiveRamp.
The decision to support television fills a gap for marketers buying digital and TV advertising. It solves the problems of rough measurement models and platforms, the lack of tools to buy both digital and television, and data to target the correct consumer audience, Metcalfe said.
TV accounts for about $224 billion in global marketing spend, according to LiveRamp, citing International Data Corporation estimates (IDC) numbers. Pew Research Center estimates that 60% adults under the age of 30 primarily use streaming services delivered via over-the-top services (OTT) and connected TVs. The Diffusion Group believes advertising on those channels will account for nearly half of all TV revenue by 2020.
Metcalfe said advertisers can now come to LiveRamp with their CRM data or other third-party data with the goal of reaching those consumers on television. The platform will allow the advertisers to achieve that match, similar to the way it is carried out on Facebook. On the backend the advertisers will achieve the same type of measurement as they get from digital.
Marketers will have an option to see the data through reports produced by a tool that LiveRamp calls Connect Select, specifically being built for television and used by multi-video platform distributors like Comcast, Charter, Verizon Fios, Dish, DirecTV, which sell the media time to the advertiser, similar to Facebook.
LiveRamp, an Acxiom company, showed signs of entering the world of television through two recent partnerships -- one with TVSquared that provides marketers with audience-level insights into TV ad performance. The other, with iSpot.tv, allows marketers to measure TV ad impressions against digital audience segments.
Laurie, how does this work for "linear TV" buys? How does the system know who in a household that has a linear set in use who is watching---not only program content but the advertiser's commercial? Or are we, once again talking almost entirely about digital "TV" but trying to give the impression that its all of TV?
Also, do we really believe that 50% of all TV ad dollars will be spent on OTT and "connected channels by 2020? Wouldn't that reflect a rather sudden and massive shift of "eyeball" tonnage---even if higher CPMs were charged----away from "linear TV"? Here we are in March 2018 and there's no sign of such a vast defection by advertisers. The next upfront will soon take place and when it does, the contracted for ad spending will take us through the summer of 2019. That doesn't leave much time for OTT and connected TV to rack up that huge upsurge in ad revenues for 2020----unless we are predicting a gigantic drop in the amount of dollars spent in the next upfront---like a 50% decline. Of course, ad spending on OTT and connected TV is growing---as it well should----but 50% of all ad dollars attained in a twinkling of an eye? Color me skeptical.
Hello LiveRamp, can you answer Ed's questions? I beleive I remember you (Allison) saying that it was for broadcast, digital, and OTT.