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State of the Screens

NBC: Inconsistent Measurement (And Bad Ads) Are Holding The Industry Back

By February 6, 2018No Comments

Is the current ad model sustainable? This is the question that industry leaders recently wrestled with.

Quote from Linda Yaccarino — Chairman of Advertising @ NBCUniversal.
“NBC is committing to making television smarter, … That means improving the consumer experience, weaning ourselves off of a single currency metric, becoming more focused on meeting real business objectives. Who knows, [maybe] even reducing [our] commercial load across [the] board.”

The challenges:
1) Consumers dislike intrusive/irrelevant ads
2) Marketers are frustrated with measurement that is not based on ROI

Quote from Bob Rupczynski — CVP, Global Advertising @ McDonald’s.
“There are occasions where we’re willing to pay more for a message targeted to a consumer’s needs, … We will never walk away from building the McDonald’s brand, but the more targeted and efficient we can get, the more we can drive an outcome for a specific subset of a segment.”

More. Pivot from Video

Quote from M.G. Siegler — General Partner @ Google Ventures.
“But again, it’s hard to see how all of that translates to the Netflix era of television, let alone online. Because I don’t believe it does. In our ever-more-busy lives, we simply don’t have time to sit through minutes of content in hours of time to accommodate advertising. Yes, traditionally the advertising has paid for that content (and as such, our time), but the world is changing. Advertisers might be able to buy our “live” time, but our “non-live” time is increasingly not for sale. There’s simply too much else to do. “

More. How Cable Companies Learned to Love Netflix (or Hulu) and Chill

Michael Beach

Michael Beach is the Chief Executive Officer of Cross Screen Media, a media analytics and software company that enables marketers to plan, activate, and measure CTV and linear TV at the local level. Michael is also the founder and editor of State of the Screens, a weekly newsletter focused on video advertising that is a must-read for thought leaders in the advertising industry. He has appeared in such publications as PBS Frontline, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Axios, CNBC and Bloomberg, and on NPR’s Planet Money podcast.