iSPOT’s Upfront Roundtable offers four perspectives on how online advertising will be sold during the upfront by broadcast and cable networks that seek to monetize their online TV content. Read on to learn about the specific content that will be sold, the difficulties of buying within the platform, the online formats that are available and more. iSPOT spoke with four (count ’em four!) network and agency executives.
- Rick Mandler, vice president digital media advertising/ABC Digital Media Group
- Dan Owen, vice president, digital media sales, A&E Television Networks
- James Kiernan, vice President, group director MediaVest USA
- Margaret Clerkin, CEO North America MindShare INTERACTION
Interview with Rick Mandler:
iSPOT: Can you review what content ABC is offering online?Mandler: We have two different sets of video offerings, short form and long form on abc.com. We play full episodes of various prime time programs on the full episode player and we have a wide variety of short form, from promos and backstage clips for prime time programs to original content that has nothing to do with actual shows. It’s a line extension of existing shows and new brands we’re trying out. At abcnews.com we have a large offering of short form video culled from on air and original webcasts we do for World News Tonight and Nightline, which are longer formats. We recently launched a new design for abcnews.com that is much more video centric.
ISPOT: How is the advertising for these programs being sold during the upfront?
Mandler: We’re going to sell it all together, it’s as simple as that. Of course, there are challenges. Sometimes the digital buyers and the TV buyers are different. Sometimes even if they are the same, the budgets for digital haven’t been released yet. Sometimes the budget for TV has been released but the budget for digital hasn’t, so how do you get people to commit to a package that includes digital if they don’t have the money yet to spend. So there are all kinds of challenges but our view is that the industry is moving to a consolidated approach and we’re going with them.
iSPOT: Do you sell packages of TV and online or online exclusively?
Mandler: We’ll do both. You have to.
Intervew with Dan Owen:
ISPOT: Can you detail the new online properties A&E has announced?
Owen: We’re launching Crime & Investigations, a new broadband channel with all the Crime & Justice content. We’re concentrating mainly on the core brands during upfront, Biography, History and A&E. There’s also ancillary stuff for history, History International, The History Channel en Español and Military History. We want to meet the consumer wherever they wish to consume the media. You’ll see rich vertical channels within History.com so it becomes a portal for everything history. We’re going out to the marketplace with the traditional angle as well as the digital angle. We also have the George Lucas stuff coming. We have the rights to the George Lucas films for the final series of the Indiana Jones franchise. He did 94 30-minute long form videos. We have the rights to all of that. In the fourth quarter we’ll roll it out with a big broadband push because it will play online first, before it rolls out on History Channel on air. It’s starting in November and there’s a huge push in the upfront.
iSPOT: What kind of ads will you sell with this content?
Owen: We have the power of the TV networks and use them to drive viewers online to unique urls. You have branding with traditional media where you have :15s and :30s and vignettes within a show and then you have a direct call to action using bugs on air to drive people online and once users consume online media you can embed the advertising. It can be contextually relevant ads, it could be video or e-mail newsletter pushes. We’re working with a number of companies to make sure content is available on user PDAs. It’s multi-platform advertising across the board.
iSPOT: Do you play full-length shows online like the networks?
Owen: We’re rolling out a long-form strategy now, but it’s not ready yet.
iSPOT: How would compare what A&E is doing with online video to what the networks are doing?
Owen: We haven’t rolled out long-form yet. We’re doing short form online and lots of it, but long-form is coming.
iSPOT: What kind of advertisers are buying A&E online video?
Owen: With the convergent stuff, there’s lots of studio money from the Los Angeles and New York markets. There’s also a lot of telecommunications and there’s more male skewing for the History Channel.
Interview with James Kiernan:
iSPOT: What kind of online ad opportunities do you expect in this year’s upfront?
Kiernan: I expect there to be increased emphasis on network’s digital offerings. Last year, networks rediscovered the web. For a long time websites were online programming guides, now they’re being customized with unique content to give consumers reasons to go to their sites. I’m expecting to hear a lot about what they’re offering, new properties they’ve taken into their portfolios, what they’ve done with those properties being integrated into overall programming offerings. Fox will talk about how MySpace can be leveraged to extend your marketing program, NBC will talk about how iVillage is within their portfolio so advertisers can leverage that asset to connect with women 25-49. And we’ll be hearing about the joint venture between NBC and Fox to rival YouTube and CBS will talk about their video ad network.
iSPOT: How will CBS sell content that plays on other sites in association with their new ad network?
Kiernan: Consumers aren’t relying on CBS content to reside on the CBS destination, it may be syndicated through a long list of niche sites. “Survivor” clips can be viewed on “Survivor” blogs or fan sites. You can capitalize on the long tail aggregation of hundreds of niche sites. If you can aggregate them into a network it becomes attractive to large advertisers.
iSPOT: But how can CBS they sell the ads for other sites?
Kiernan: We look for one central point of contact. CBS will be the focal point to buy that content. It’s a way to make it easier for advertisers to tap into the long tail.
iSPOT: When you make an online buy, do you do it separately or in conjunction with TV?
Kiernan: We restructured to react to the marketplace so we have digital experts, but they reside within the TV group. We work in tandem with TV buying counterparts so when we get a proposal we can view it together. It doesn’t mean just running spots. We work in conjunction with the brand entertainment group to have :15s and :30s and we integrate the programs, using digital elements to keep consumers connected from week to week. We create something we can own with content associated with the program wherever the show may be, so the loyal fan base will visit the website and the brand will follow them into the platform.
iSPOT: How does online TV content compete with other online content??
Kiernan: They don’t have the dominant share like they do in the TV space, so no digital entity is a must buy. It doesn’t rival the reach of portals, it’s well behind the portals in targeting capabilities, like Yahoo’s behavioral targeting. Networks haven’t arrived at the solution yet, it takes time to build that capability. The portals have a loyal audience that enables advertisers to target consumers more efficiently.
iSPOT: How is online viewing changing the TV environment and what’s ahead in the future?
Kiernan: Every network offers consumers the opportunity to watch full episodes online. We don’t see that deteriorating on air ratings. It builds more audience for the programs. They don’t use it to view shows every week but to catch up on episodes they miss. Long term, it’s all going to be converged into a single pipe, TVs will have the capability to plug into the net, so we’ll be talking about one platform.
Interview with Margaret Clerkin:
iSPOT: How much demand is there for online TV content?
Clerkin: There’s a high demand for broadcast integration that includes the TV and online element. In the last 18 months, the market has proven that there is a high demand for online video that is becoming a more desirable marketplace for advertisers to play with because audiences have proven to want the content and are willing to watch on the small screen.
iSPOT: Is there enough online TV inventory available?
Clerkin: There’s a difference between enough inventory and enough quality inventory. There’s a gamut of online video inventory, but a lot is consumer generated or amateur professional video that’s not necessarily the type of content that brands want to be associated with. In terms of broadcast network TV content it’s increasing, so I wouldn’t say there is a major shortage. There’s usually a single or maybe two opportunities to buy into a particular show, so if you want to own “Lost” you need to be willing to purchase it from a broadcast perspective as well as an online perspective. You have to be able to play on both arenas. For clients that can’t play in the broadcast arena there is a major shortage, but since we play in broadcast we’re not effected by a shortage.
iSPOT: Is your situation of buying both TV and online typical?
Clerkin: Yes, it’s typical but we’re more advanced than other agencies because we’ve taken major steps to integrate the two teams together. We go to the marketplace and say based on the audiences we have these are the people we want to reach in national broadcast and online and we sit down and have negotiations for the properties.
iSPOT: Is online TV advertising bought separately or in packages with TV?
Clerkin: They price the elements separately, but you can’t buy them separately. It’s very much bought in a package based upon not only what you’re buying for that show but what you as an advertiser are spending with that network. For example, if an advertiser spends a million on “Lost” and $40 million on ABC and another advertiser spends a million on “Lost” and $20 million on ABC your priority changes based on your total investment in terms of who gets the broadcast integration and what elements can be negotiated into that package.
iSPOT: What kind of advertisers are buying online TV content?
Clerkin: Phone carriers, Sprint is our partner, and package goods companies that want a high level of involvement. We’re starting to see more financial services companies stepping into the space as well.
iSPOT: Do you specify the online ad formats that will run when you buy or are they plugged in later??
Clerkin: You specify the formats you want. We’re hoping to see a change this year. Most networks created off the shelf one size fits all packages regardless of what show you were buying. They were saying here’s the four elements, we’ll give you these types of units online with a mobile component and we’ll create a game for you. We said that doesn’t work, because people who watch “CSI” aren’t going to engage in mobile or gaming. You can’t plug the same elements into every TV show, it has to be tied into the specific audience and what the advertiser’s objectives are. It’s what they were used to in the broadcast environment where they sell GRPs and spots, there’s nothing to create. In the online space we design and develop from a creative perspective. It was an oversight from the broadcast networks and we hope they learned from the lesson and they’ll be more customized in package development and engage with us earlier in the process to design the projects.
