73% Of Marketers Now Using Addressable TV
- by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, August 1, 2023
Nearly three quarters (73%) of marketers report using addressable TV in the latest survey by Advertiser Perceptions for Go Addressable — up by 16%, from 63%, from a survey conducted at the same time last year.
Go Addressable is an industry initiative led by TV distribution companies, focused on helping to maximize the scale and impact of addressable TV as a marketing platform.
In recent years, addressable has expanded beyond its traditional application in advertising through multiplatform video programming distributors (MVPDs), to include connected TV (CTV) media providers and programmers.
In fact, over the past year, marketers report being slightly more apt to use CTV budgets than linear TV budgets to fund campaigns using addressable, with 51% saying they tapped CTV to 50% tapping linear.
Among those polled, nearly half (49%) employed a team consisting of both linear and digital marketers to plan addressable TV, 26% used digital video marketers for this purpose, another 26% used linear TV marketers, and 19% report having a dedicated addressable TV campaign.
In what appears to be a positive sign regarding marketers’ perceptions of addressable, when asked what would cause them to spend more on addressable, fewer cited “better measurement and proof of return on investment” as a top factor: 43%, versus 50% last year.
However, the percentages saying they would spend more if addressable was more cost-efficient and had better scale rose compared to last year.
However, asked about addressable’s top challenges now, 41% cited inadequate attribution to prove ROI, and 34% cited confusion over how addressable TV measurement and attribution work.
The results suggest that while awareness of addressable and how it works has improved, industry education needs to continue.
Go Addressable notes, for instance, that confusion about attribution is common, even though the group works with the top 20 attribution vendors in the market.
This year’s survey results are based on online interviews with 302 marketer (40%) and agency (60%) contacts from The Advertiser Perceptions Pro Community and third-party partners, conducted April 4-13. All are involved in brand media decisions. A third (34%) are senior-level executives (vice president and above), 51% are mid-level (director/supervisor), and 15% are managers, planners or buyers.
If 73% of all marketers---I assume this refers to U.S. marketers---- are using addressable TV why are the estimates of ad spending for this type of TV buy so modest---only about $3-4 billion annually last time I looked. One would expect a spending level of at least $10-15 billion annually in the U.S. if such a high percentage of use is true. Or, maybe the average spend rate per user is very tiny. Or, perhaps some respondents claimed to be using "addressable TV" who don't understand what the term means. Or, the really big national TV spenders were hard to reach in such a survey and were not properly represented?I'm not blaming the research---this kind of thing isn't easy to measure when the term, itself, is so widely used and often misinterpreted. I simply find that 73% figure hard to accept---but maybe it's correct and I'm being overly skeptical.