• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, September 27, 2018

It’s a good time to be a consumer, says Nielsen Podcast. The product landscape is flooded with variety and options, and it seems like the number of channels shoppers can use to access those options are constantly expanding. These challenges alone set the stakes pretty high for brands looking to stand out.

But in addition to product choice and access to products, shopping behavior is changing. says the report. U.S. consumers are making fewer trips and their baskets are smaller. Even so, a majority of shopping decisions are still made in the store, right at the shelf. But everyone knows it takes more than just good shelf placement to land in someone’s shopping basket.

This episode explores what it takes to be a brand in today’s marketplace, as well as how brand marketers can use consumer data and technology to their advantage when it comes to engagement and campaign execution. It also explores the private-label space, where the tides have been shifting away from multinational brands in recent years.

The guests in this episode include Leslie Wood, Chief Researcher at Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Linghan Wang, Senior Manager of Research and Development at Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Brett House, VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at Nielsen, and Lauren Fernandes, Manager of Strategy and Analytics at Nielsen. For more episodes subscribe to The Database here  SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher.

For the past 50 years or so, the process of buying TV ads has remained fairly consistent, and pretty straightforward, says another podcast from Nielsen. 

Advertisers make their buying decisions on a contextual basis using broad audience characteristics like age and gender. This strategy is based on the premise that advertisers have enough general information about who will watch the scheduled programs to properly place their ads where their ideal customers will see them, says the report.

Recently, however, interest in more targeted ad buying is bubbling up, largely because that’s how the process works online. In fact, when the internet is involved, including the connected TV realm, the technology, data and physical plumbing allow advertisers to serve two different people visiting the same web page a different ad.

This is possible in the traditional TV space “to a degree”, says the report, That said, however, advanced audience-based ad buying in the traditional TV world isn’t very widespread, and the bulk of ads are still bought and sold the way they always have been.

This episode of The Database delves into the world of advanced audience-based buying in the linear TV space and addressable TV in the online space. The report discuses the differences between the two terms, talk about those base benchmarks of age and gender and get into the hurdles and opportunities as the industry increases its digital focus on how ads are bought and sold.

Guests include, says Nielsen, George Tsivin, SVP of Product Leadership at Nielsen, Thomas Eaton, SVP at Nielsen Catalina Solutions, James McNamara, SVP of Client Strategy at Nielsen, and Jason Burke, VP of Strategy at clypd.