| And they’re off! This weekend begins TV-world’s two month-long sprint of festivals and events designed to lubricate deals, reacquaint home-bound Zoom drones, and pump billions into the coffers of the hospitality industry: Possible-> NewFronts-> Upfronts-> StreamTV-> Cannes It is quite the slog, though a generally fun albeit expensive way to do business. Each stop has its own personality and caters to a specific part of the greater ecosystem, but there’s much gray area and massive amounts of overlap. Not to mention the spectacle of an industry where large segments appear to be in irreversible decline spending millions on bacchanals largely to prove, well, that they still can. But I digress. What should you, as a media world executive, be looking for this year? The TL;DR is still what you think it is: integration, measurement, innovation and, more than ever this year, the hype around AI. Why It Matters Let’s start with integration, by which I mean a holistic view of all the various modes of watching video: linear TV, streaming TV and social video, e.g. YouTube. This matters more than you might think given the random ways these three have been grouped together (or not) over the past decade. Meaning that while some companies grouped linear and streaming together as “TV”, most grouped streaming and social video together as “digital” because the advertising was bought programmatically and thus handled by the same team, while linear was bought by the “TV team.” That’s been changing, especially as it becomes clear that many people are watching YouTube on their television sets and brands are waking up to the fact that the overall FUBAR-ness of the streaming buying system often means that people are seeing the same five ads over and over again. Which means that if and how various media companies have plans afoot to fix that is something to definitely keep an eye on. Similarly, one of the ways that advertisers are looking to fix that broken system is to focus in on contextual cues rather than demographic ones. That solves a world of hurt around everything from privacy to transparency to reach. All well and good, only agencies, which have invested massively in demographic-based data and have programmatic teams set up to buy that way, have been slow to embrace any sort of contextual-based buying. So we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on how they are feeling about it this year. One big clue will be to see how many streaming services present some sort of contextual-based buying option as part of their Up/New Front offering. Another Big Thing we’ll be looking at is how many US viewers the big SVOD services actually have. Amazon has plenty of course, since they switched everyone to ad-supported automatically. But the rest? That’s unclear. Netflix, for example, only gives out worldwide numbers. Numbers that include Mexico and Brazil, where the assumption is far more people sign up to watch the ad supported version because the savings really matter. In the US however, that’s not necessarily the case. (At least as of the writing of this article.) So while the streaming services will introduce all sort of flashy and tech-driven ad options, the bigger question to focus on is whether they actually have that many ad-supported US viewers. (My suspicion is they do not.) Then there is AI. There will be no shortage of things branded “AI” and clearly, most of that will just be marketing. Pro Tip: Terms like “AI tools” or “AI-powered” are generally euphemisms for “AI Adjacent.” That said, there will be solutions that actually do use AI, whether that is to identify items to make shoppable or to identify potential viewers for an ad or program based on prior habits. Who is rolling them out and how feasible they seem to be is what you should be looking for. And Pro Tip #2: AI, circa Spring 2025, is mostly good for instantly doing tasks it would take hundreds of humans thousands of hours to complete. So if the solution fits that mold, then it’s probably real. Ditto solutions that tout a feedback loop—does the system learn and improve over time? If yes, then it’s real AI. There are a few other things we’re keeping an eye on, too: What’s going on with bundling—are there any real innovations, are people doubling down on their channel stores and are consumers taking them up on it? How are the OS Wars going? Have the various programmers come to terms with how important the TV OS is and what are they doing about it? Are there any innovations in the OS market, any new players other than The Trade Desk’s Ventura? And then finally we will be watching to see if there will still be massive displays of profligate spending on parties and dinners or is the seesawing stock market and spectre of further economic uncertainty and recession putting a damper on things. (Here again, I’m thinking no, but hoping to be proven wrong.) What You Need To Do About It Obviously keep your eyes on all of the above and we will be sharing what we learn as well. If you’re at the StreamTV Show in Denver in June, we’re doing our usual opening act, this year called “The Future of Streamonomics.” It’s got a stellar cast of characters we’ll be announcing next week and covers everything from FASTs to Local TV to the OS Wars to Contextual Targeting. Make sure you are in Denver early enough to catch it! On a more immediate note, check out the On Demand version of the webinar we did yesterday with Pedro Almeida from Mediaprobe and Howard Shimmel where we discuss strategies for the upcoming Upfronts, the varying value of impressions and how to make sure you’re getting the most valuable ones. It’s free and available now. |
