Euromedia March | Page 16

coverstory_cover story 24/04/2014 12:20 Page 1 The convergence of IP and broadcast and the increasing integration of Social Media promises finally to open the door to targeted advertising. What are the remaining obstacles: consumer resistance, insufficient data mining, effectiveness measurement? Colin Mann look at the dynamics of the emerging sector and how linear, and on-demand TV are placed to benefit from its opportunities and meet its challenges. ccording to Michael Tuminello, director of product, Innovid, which in January 2014 announced it was working with Cisco to bring interactive, contextual advertisements to viewer's second screens by instantly identifying keywords spoken on TV, the door to targeted advertising has been open for sometime already. “Targeting capabilities are in place for digital, broadcast, and social media, using data from whatever A Ads for you, technology is in place in each channel (cookies, set-top box, etcetera). What convergence brings us is the ability to provide not only targeting, but enhanced creative and metrics, in increasingly more efficient and interconnected ways, as opposed to delivering a siloed experience in every channel and attempting to stitch the pieces back together after the fact.” Kirssy Valles, senior solutions marketing manager at Harmonic, notes that there is an ever-increasing number of connected devices, including tablets, smartphones, PCs, connected TVs, and hybrid STBs, opening up a whole new world of possibilities when it comes to the type of experience people have when they are viewing and consuming video content. “In addition, social media networks have become a relevant form of communication and an effective content gateway and video discovery tool. A growing number of TV viewers are simultaneously online while “Social media is potentially a huge resource that enables more targeted advertising.” Kirssy Valles, Harmonic 16 EUROMEDIA watching television, providing consumers with new avenues for social interaction. Nowadays people can communicate with friends or family about TV shows as they are watching them. Many consumers, especially the younger generation, rely on social media to learn more about products and services and take advantage of deals. Social media is potentially a huge resource that enables more targeted advertising. Media companies should establish marketing strategies and optimise their presence around social media,” she suggests. Innovid's Tuminello sees the primary obstacle as the current way of doing things. “If this problem were being solved from scratch then it would be much easier to come up with standard and scalable ways to do all the things that need to be done. As it is, we need to agree on and standardise methods of ad trafficking, ad delivery, ad measurement, and data sharing, and in many cases disrupt currently working single-platform processes to do so. Many of the organisations in the equation (advertisers, publishers, media