Furious's Blog

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TV ad sales is a high-volume, fast-paced business with many clients to please, KPIs to track and deliver against and sales budgets to hit. As a result, TV sellers are pressured to come up with creative plans to reach their clients’ goals at the right price, all while leveraging their inventory. Too often, they are forced to rely on what they know advertisers will respond to, rather than exploring their entire house of wares. This is mainly due to the inability of systems to deliver quick and accurate information.

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For those of us who’ve lived in “TV-land” for most of our careers, the word “measurement” can bring up feelings of frustration, confusion and even longing. We are tantalizingly close to knowing exactly who we’re targeting, though taking full advantage of addressable TV still feels elusive.

The promise of addressable TV reads a lot like the promise of digital: the ability to reach known people with the right creative, surrounded by the right content. In previous blog posts, I’ve outlined what we can learn from digital. Here, I’d like to do a deeper dive into what the ability to target and measure can truly unlock:

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At Furious, we eat, sleep and breathe arming TV sellers with the tools they need to incorporate the lessons of digital and ultimately to keep TV ascendant in this next era of media. We see it as a matter of adaptation, of retooling the organization, the business, the stakeholders, and the sellers in the trenches with a new set of tools with which to fight what is essentially a new battle.

Throughout the next month, we’ll be releasing content to give TV sellers tools they need to stay on top. Look for learnings on addressable TV (i.e., thinking beyond CPP), our thoughts on the unduplicated reach curve (spoiler alert: it’s a myth!), and our take on the rate card of the future.

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One of my favorite hip hop artists, LL Cool J, describes TV advertising today the way that I see it at a moment in time, better than anyone:

“Don’t call it a comeback. I’ve been here for years.”

I have considered framing my argument in a variety of ways. I could trash digital and discuss fraud, fake news, a lack of trust, etc. Or, I could simply use the size and inertia of TV and the stellar Q3 2018 Political revenue (which not only threw TV a bone but changed the power dynamic of our country). I could speak about upper funnel versus lower funnel, the power of reach for a brand marketer only attainable in TV, etc.

All of these would make for a potentially interesting blog post but would ultimately not be the whole story.

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Let’s face it, folks, linear TV is not getting any easier. More screens, more measurement, more rate types all spell more work for your sales organizations. So with all that MORE, you know what there is less and less of…TIME.

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Programming is often a team effort for introverts. When working as a developer, you will run into decisions other developers have made that you consider mistakes.

It could be a data structure designed with three tightly bound tables. It could be a massive REST API managing all the company's requests with obsolete technology you need to extend or replace. It could include delicate, untested code that when modified, is likely to cause both personal and technical explosion.

I have built systems that contained all of these flaws, or worked with the (sometimes catastrophic) results. Working with and learning from other programmers is simply easier when you can critique their code effectively without offending them.

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The growth [which is always impressive from base of 0] of digital media created a temporary [and artificial] bubble and offered investors and entrepreneurs a shiny object to chase. It was long believed there was more upside to be had in innovation that ‘blew stuff up’ or disrupted traditional TV businesses by shifting time and attention to new, digital platforms.