• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, September 4, 2020

Amid the frequent announcements of partnerships and other news about addressable TV advertising, it might be useful to stop and survey the landscape for a moment.

Actually, I won’t attempt to delve into the OTT/CTV addressability sphere in this installment, but instead focus on an overview of where things stand in the world of MVPDs, smart TV and NextGen TV addressability.

For this purpose, the go-to source is Mitch Oscar, USIM’s director of advanced television strategy, who tracks all things ATV on an ongoing basis.

Here’s his summary of the addressable universe as of Q2, broken down by MVPD: 

This summary also points up one of the most important developments in addressable in recent years: the emergence of rep firms like Ampersand and Xandr that make multiple MVPDs’ inventory accessible on a one-stop shopping basis, and with standardization, at least within their own platforms.

On the smart TV front, the two major initiatives underway are Project OAR and Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising (AVA). While still in development and in technical trial stage, those efforts are projected to offer access to upwards of 12 million and 15 million smart-TV households, respectively, by year’s end. 

Then there’s ATSC 3.0-enabled broadcast initiative, now called NextGen TV. This is also in development, through the Advanced Technology Systems Committee:

In addition to all of the above, the TV networks are now very much on the case when it comes to enabling addressability for their inventory. 

Making TV network inventory addressable would make it more competitive with digital’s one-to-one targeting capabilities — hence the networks’ discussions with MVPDs and partnerships with smart-TV makers to make this happen.

The On Addressability trade group, formed by Comcast with Charter and Cox Communications, and now also including the AMC Network and Discovery Communications, is laying the groundwork by developing definitions and standards and best practices for transacting addressable campaigns driven by the networks. 

The measurement players in this space are a subject for another column... stay tuned.