Furious's Blog

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As any media planner will tell you, forecasting views for TV can be overwhelming—and the consequences for mistakes can be huge. Underestimating the number of views means lost opportunity to sell inventory; overestimating results in a failure to deliver advertisers the guaranteed impressions promised and exposes a seller to liability risk.

We need to predict viewership days, weeks, sometimes months in advance, to carry out sales deals. Since views for linear TV can change drastically—even within the same series from week to week—what is a planner to do?

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Now that we’ve established that maximizing yield is crucial for video advertising businesses, let’s break down what actually impacts yield—and what solutions exist to help media sellers maximize it. Yield has two levers: price and inventory allocation. Media yield management—and ultimately successful improvement in yield—requires a strong foundation in two key areas: forecasting and optimization.

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News of Nielsen being on the block has been swirling as of late. Couple that with the threat from major broadcasters to walk away from the measurement giant, and the growth of Addressable TV offerings leads us all to the very real potential of a completely reimagined measurement paradigm for TV; but what would that look like?

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The data is in: time spent with video each day is flattening—which means overall consumption is flattening as well. Tighter numbers mean now is the time to pay special attention to yield, making the most of revenue per spot. Since every media company is unique—with its own programming, ad inventory, and data—the business logic that predicts and determines the right pricing must be unique as well.

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Change your sales processes (i.e., don’t hamper your rate card changes before you’ve begun)!

Last week, we talked in detail about building a TV rate card of the future, built on data-driven decision-making to result in more optimal pricing. But, as we advised, making improvements to your pricing logic will mean nothing if you don’t hold people to the integrity of your rate card.

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There are two levers you can pull to affect TV media yield: price and inventory allocation. Here, we’re going to focus on price. When working with clients who sell linear television on a spot basis, the most significant form of revenue leakage that we see is due to price variability—which itself is a symptom of pricing inefficiency. In other words, fixing your pricing optimization is the most meaningful, fastest way to make a significant impact to yield. And yes, if we’re talking about pricing efficiency, we’re going to be talking about TV rate cards.

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As addressable TV comes within reach, you might wonder, “Now, can I know, with certainty, who is seeing my ads on television?” More importantly, “If I know who is seeing my ads on TV, can I understand and manage who sees what ads, on what devices and when with confidence?”

The answer: Maybe.

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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.