By Andy Monfried, Founder & CEO, Lotame
Since Lotame decided to make a significant move into the advanced TV space, it has been truly exciting to participate in an industry that is emerging from a very long and stagnant period of minimal change into an era of innovation.
Keeping up to date on advanced TV marketplace developments requires commitment. The demand for accurate and timely TV audience data is increasing every day, whether it’s making pure audience buys, guaranteeing TV campaigns based on attribution KPIs or even targeting specific households with addressable TV. We stay close to our clients in order to anticipate what they need to take full advantage of the opportunities that are now available to them in the TV marketplace.
High touch meetings with our clients continue to be a rich learning experience that enables us to develop a deep understanding of their requirements and then build consensus on what still needs to be developed. We are committed to continuing to improve our capabilities so that we can enable linear TV to remain the most influential medium that has ever existed.
Scale – In developing advanced TV audience measurement and targeting solutions, one of the most important elements is scale. For measuring smaller and highly fragmented audiences, scale is a critical component of improving accuracy and both TV buyers and sellers want the most accurate solution they can get their hands on.
At Lotame, we have the scale that broadcasters and advertisers need, as our aiTV product suite is powered by data gathered from 10 million Smart TVs (the largest available ACR dataset) across the US thanks to our partnership with Inscape. That TV data is combined 120 million digital IDs from our global Lotame Data Exchange (LDX). We don’t rely on small, inaccurate panels to guess what people are watching; we have the real data about what they are watching.
Recency – The TV marketplace is heading very quickly in the direction of measuring campaign performance in real time to allow strategic course correction of TV campaigns and brand allocations. Advertisers and TV Networks need to measure reach, frequency and ROI not just at the end of a campaign, but as it is running. The audience composition for any given show can change on a daily basis and audience reach can only be maximized by tracking your results on a regular basis. aiTV captures TV viewership data in real-time, so advertisers and broadcasters have instant access to who watched what show, and how effective their media buys were. Because this TV data is constantly tied to digital IDs and we have an in-house device graph, there are no lags in processing this data across devices.
Transparency – The demand for transparency in the world of advertising has never been stronger, and it isn’t just limited to digital. Marketers and advertisers want to know exactly where their money is going and how it is being used. Lotame aiTV offers advertisers insight into what their ideal customers are watching and how exactly to reach them, without having to pay for only prime time ads.
Customized Solutions – We are learning how ad agencies and TV networks leverage their audience data in different ways. In addition, they do not always have the resources to transform a fire hose of data into useful analytics and benchmarking. A high touch solution whereby the data supplier adds not only expertise, but also provides customized reports is of great value in a world where fewer in-house resources exist. Data services need to be an art, as well as a science. At Lotame, our aiTV team works hand-in-hand with our valued clients to make sure they are getting the right insights and access to their customers. We don’t offer a one-size-fits-all solution, because that just doesn’t work in advertising.
Lotame’s aiTV suite is focused on bringing Audience Intelligence to TV & Video, and includes three solutions that help tie together our vast expanse of behavioral data to television viewership data. These solutions include:
aiTV: Platform: Our TV DMP (Data Management Platform) that allows for the planning, optimization, activation, and reporting of TV viewership data. Broadcasters gain insights into who is watching shows, dayparts, or networks, and marketers have the ability to reach their ideal audience across screens.
aiTV: Attribution & Insights: This reporting suite offers marketers amazing insights into the effects that media buys have on foot traffic, online sales, offline sales and website visits. If you want to know if your advertising works, this is key.
aiTV: SmartTV Data: Prepackaged and/or custom TV viewership audiences, scaled via the Lotame Data Exchange. This means marketers and publishers can purchase a “digital” version of their target TV audience – to reach the same TV viewers with targeted digital ads.
These are truly transformative times in the advanced TV industry and Lotame is excited to be helping our clients navigate them successfully with innovative solutions and superior capabilities.
The missing ingredient in the advanced TV puzzle has been execution and delivering upon success for advertisers and broadcasters alike. Lotame is not only committed to delivering the best-in-class platform for audience measurement, across both digital and TV — but, we are also now offering the service and consulting services to go with our technology. By understanding the strategy of our TV partners, we are able to deliver the combo of a TV platform, with a focused team of experts, to execute and guarantee a successful engagement.
As Bob Dylan said, “The Times They Are a Changing” – and we are evolving, and adapting to what our clients need most: expertise and results.
Lotame is here to help. Want to learn more? Contact us.