• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 18, 2021

The promise of real-time, live TV addressable advertising will give viewers what they have in the digital world: current messaging connected to their related online activity.

Can live TV, and or on-demand TV really get the same results?

In somewhat of a groundbreaking moment for addressable advertising -- which can target commercials to specific viewers -- ViacomCBS and Dish Media says they have delivered addressable impressions within a live national broadcast via pay TV network provider set-top box.

Of course, lots of hurdles in the addressable advertising world remain -- such as a lack of true national scale and different inventory vendors working with different technology.

Then, of course, there is no currency-grade measurement of addressable advertising -- especially when merging live, linear TV ad operations.

Imagine if NBCU has a four-unit pod of commercials. The first and third one as bought via traditional linear TV process. But the second and fourth ones are addressable. How does one evaluate the whole pod and those individual messages?

While making a big transition to addressable advertising, marketers will still need to match legacy media buys to metrics, specifically what they are use to: Nielsen TV ratings. Denise Colella, senior vice president of advanced advertising products and strategy, NBCUniversal, speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year, says this will be key piece of the puzzle.

Scott Brown, general manager of audience measurement for Nielsen, also speaking at CES, agrees there needs to be currency-grade addressable measurement so marketers can directly compare the value of legacy network TV inventory and a network’s addresssable TV inventory. That's especially true, he says, when it comes to a live broadcast of a TV show.

Another pressing issue: Scarcity of inventory -- mostly due to the amount of addressable advertising commercials currently accessible, which is mostly owned by the cable and satellite companies.

Matt Sweeny, Chief Investment Ffficer, WPP’s Group M, says addressable advertising still needs to offer digital-media level key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, he says after seeing a digital car ad, consumers might search for a nearby dealer or start on online effort to build out a car model. Or, perhaps they will look for financing.

“Those are the kinds of metrics we’d like to bring to TV. But it is in early stages at this point. Frankly much of the advertising right now is ineffective and off-putting. We are inundating people with too many messages,” says Sweeny.

NBC’s Colella adds: “If Matt doesn’t want to see a pet ad, we don’t want to show him a pet ad. Perhaps we can show him a travel ad so he can go to someplace exotic.”

Yes, addressable advertising to get away from it all -- including TV.