Furious's Blog

If you have been following news about the digital ad ecosystem at all, the fact that Google is going to remove all third-party cookies from Chrome by 2022 is not news to you. If it is news to you and you work in the digital ad space, you should really read this. 

To set the stage a bit, Google is not out on a limb here. Blocking third-party cookies is something their counterparts at Safari and Firefox already do. But since Chrome accounts for 64% of worldwide browser usage on average, the impact is considerably different. 

An automation strategy can help reduce price variability and achieve sustainable increases in total revenue, but most TV sellers have yet to introduce one. The status quo for updating rate cards is using Excel to apply across-the-board percentage increases every year—or every quarter, at best. This leads to inventory being undervalued because pricing doesn’t reflect continuous shifts in supply and demand.

Furious has found that sellers can achieve a 10% revenue lift from automating their rate card process and using data-driven pricing methodologies, assuming that governance is in place to improve adherence by sales teams. To achieve this, programmers and operators should develop a strategy for the planning, implementation and operation stages. Here’s what each one entails.

For most linear TV sellers, the process for updating rate cards is fundamentally unchanged from the 1950s, as I explained in a previous post. Instead of using a pencil and a ledger as they did in the past, today’s analysts use Excel, but they’re still applying across-the-board percentage increases instead of analyzing actual sales data to make decisions on pricing.

An automation strategy can help to reduce price variability and achieve sustainable increases in total revenue, but most sellers haven’t introduced one. The obvious question is how—and where—automation should be introduced.

Here are the five key processes and workflows to consider:

Used to share pricing with buyers, TV rate cards contain a complete list of ad rates for specific time slots, stations or networks. In most seller organizations, they’re only updated annually or quarterly at most, and new rates are calculated using Excel. Often analysts apply across-the-board percentage increases rather than analyzing historical sales data to optimize pricing; the latter is simply too difficult with Excel as their only tool.

Although linear TV sellers are now able to segment and deliver audiences in ways that would have been inconceivable in the past, the normal process for updating rate cards is still a relic of the 1950s. The key difference is that instead of calculating prices with a pencil in a ledger, analysts now use Excel. 

TV has long been viewed as a cost-effective vehicle for delivering reach, which still holds true today. According to one estimate that backed into pricing on a CPM basis, the average price across all national TV advertising in the U.S. is under $2.50, though TV CPMs are usually perceived to be at least 10 times higher. (The author, Simulmedia’s Dave Morgan, attributes this disconnect to the fact that TV CPMs are usually expressed in terms of primetime programming and against the coveted demo of 18- to 49-year-olds, ignoring the totality of TV’s massive reach.)

To be clear, high-value programming can be expensive. The average CPM for primetime broadcast ads bought in the upfronts for the 2019–2020 TV season was $36.19, up 13.2% over the previous year, according to eMarketer. Then there’s scarce inventory that fetches astronomical prices: The average cost of a Super Bowl ad in 2020 was $5.6 million, up from $5.25 million in 2019. 

Here’s a quick primer on how TV is priced and sold.

Aside from being calculated in Excel instead of a ledger, the process for creating TV rate cards, which provide a complete list of ad rates for specific time slots, stations or networks, hasn’t fundamentally changed since the 1950s. Given how dynamic and complex the TV marketplace has become, there are a number of challenges and risks in continuing down this path.

The end of 2020 is near, and so many of us are longing to close this chapter and move onto a new one, though 2021 is still full of unknowns. Will it be another year of social distancing and working from home? Or will widespread distribution of vaccines return us to a semblance of normalcy by late Q2 or Q3? Is there even a universal “normal” anymore?

No matter what the future holds, the advertising industry will continue to push forward and adapt to whatever our “next normal” is. That being said, what does 2021 mean for linear TV and, more specifically, for linear TV advertising? 

I have some thoughts and three predictions.

When you consider the various ways that COVID has disrupted the TV advertising business this year, the Upfronts are where the effects may be the most enduring. Will media buyers be wooed again with live performances by A-list celebrities? Probably. But now that networks, media agencies and brands have been forced to carry on without them, the more interesting question is whether the Upfronts will continue to play such a dominant role in TV ad sales. (Consider that they accounted for 73% of network ad buys during the 2018-2019 TV season.)

As we head into winter and the pandemic continues to rage, the next few months are ideal for staying at home and catching up on all your favorite shows and even some new original programming. The big question is: Which streaming service should you subscribe to? Consumers have an ever-increasing buffet of options to pick from.