‘Video Everywhere’ Preview Roundtable
by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, October 23, 2018
On the eve of the DPAA’s annual “Video Everywhere” summit, MediaPost held a roundtable discussion with DPAA President-CEO and two of the summit’s marquee speakers: journalist and “Frenemies” author Ken Auletta; and Deloitte Digital’s CMO Alicia Hatch. In a free-wheeling conversation traversing technology, data, content, brand experiences and an increasingly intolerant and annoyed consumer population, the speakers make the case why digital out-of-home will help get people to turn their heads to — not away from — brands.
MediaPost: Let’s start with one of the themes from Ken Auletta’s new book: the shift from Mad Men to Math Men.
Barry Frey: What the summit addresses is basically the societal and media technology changes on how everybody consumes media today. It’s labeled the Video Everywhere Summit because now we have become an omnichannel environment with media and advertising all places and on all screens in the consumer’s daily journey.
As a society, we’re spending more time out and about than ever. With that societal change, it’s not just that in-the-home media is becoming fragmented and going down, but now 80% of the Western world’s population is located in urban centers. We’re spending 70% of our time outside the home — and it’s really shifted consumption.
And that’s just one leg of a three-legged stool, which is that out-of-home advertising is now digital. That means better data, and the use of mobile data, and tons of other kinds of data like visual detection. That means we’ve gone from a branding and a reach medium to a bottom-of-the-funnel medium, where we can actually see activity from ads, whether it is increased activity online or people going into stores.
In terms of the summit, we’re going to open with a film produced by Screenvision showing consumers on their journey throughout the day.
We’ll also be mixing in a bit of politics right before the midterms, so we’re going to have the founder of Axios and political pollster Frank Luntz to talk about data, politics and advertising.
Ken Auletta: One of things I learned in in the two-and-a-half years I spent reporting “Frenemies” is that the public is increasingly tired, exhausted, annoyed with traditional advertising. More so when you think about the mobile phone, which is the dominant instrument now in our lives.
It feels like an interruption. And if you look at some of the data, 20% of Americans have an ad blocker on their phone. And one third of Europeans do, too. They’re blocking all ads. If you look at Nielsen numbers, roughly 55% of people who record a show skip the ads when they watch that show.
One of the opportunities that Barry’s organization has is new ways of reaching consumers with ads that don’t feel familiar, interruptive and annoying.
Frey: That’s a great point. We don’t have any ad blocking. And we don’t have any brand safety issues that [Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer) Marc Pritchard is always talking about. No bot fraud issues or viewability.
Alicia Hatch: We’re also seeing with the new generation they don’t differentiate between digital and physical. They tend to weave it together very seamlessly. And when it’s not, that’s their version of interruptive.
We look at digital out-of-home as native advertising, because you can seamlessly weave it into their lives in a way that feels authentic. And the air itself becomes a platform for them to engage with — where it’s the surround sound of your life. It has an opportunity to ride this wave, where brands are all pivoting around actually delivering brand experience vs. just branding.
In a world where you are actually delivering brand experience, it is across every aspect of your business, down into the guts of your supply chain, the financial decisions you make, what you decide to research, all the way into your call center and how you are engaging your customers. All of that speaks to what your brand is about. What your “why” is. And your why ultimately gets delivered through experience.
Digital out-of-home absolutely has a chance to leapfrog as a channel in the way it participates and innovates on the power of brand experience.