Technological advances and the need for better return on advertising investment are propelling demands for new ad models in the linear television ecosystem. Addressable TV is the perfect hybrid solution for marketers, providing the targeting, data and control of digital advertising with the reach potential and impact of traditional television.
However, delivering addressable ads to households is not like flipping a switch. Connecting an ad to a specific household requires a device like a smart TV or set-top-box in which to deliver the addressable ads, as well as an accurate and scalable household graph to ensure the ads are being served to the right homes. With 54% of U.S. households owning at least one enabled smart TV, they offer a unique and fast growing opportunity to supercharge the deployment of linear addressable ad campaigns.
When Nielsen built its addressable TV technology, it did so with the understanding that it needed to be easy to implement and use without compromising core elements required for future sustainability. “We know that having an ad decisioning engine that is robust, accurate and scaled is critical for any addressable tech stack, as it maximizes each ad occurrence so that it is seen by the right audience,” said Kelly Abcarian, General Manager, Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising.
With audience targeting being a critical element for addressability to scale and gain advertiser trust, Nielsen enriched the smart TV data of its addressable solution with Tru Optik’s more than 80 million U.S. connected TV (CTV) households. This integration ensures more accurate audience targeting and activation at the time a linear ad is being replaced on the TV glass.
Abcarian continues, “Our work with Tru Optik elevates our ability to deliver addressable ads to specific linear TV households across smart TV devices and enhances our audience activation capabilities. With this collaboration, Nielsen’s Addressable TV Platform enables the conversion of the maximum number of available addressable impressions for a given campaign. As addressable on smart TV scales, reconciling device level insights with real household characteristics is key to increase the impression pool as brands seek to deliver creative tailored to consumers’ specific tastes and preferences.”
Nielsen is growing its footprint of enabled devices in U.S. homes due to its ability to have ACR integrated into any smart TV model. In addition, Nielsen’s ACR technology is signal agnostic, which allows it to recognize all linear signals at the glass-level, whether that signal comes from a set-top-box, OTT device or antenna. Now with Tru Optik, Nielsen is solving the other half of the equation: ensuring that addressable replacements on the linear broadcast reach the right, accurately profiled household audiences.
“We are excited for Nielsen and their addressable beta program participants to leverage the Tru Optik Data Management Platform, allowing real-time addressable audience forecasting and building at scale against both first party and third party data ,” said Andre Swanston, Chief Executive Officer, Tru Optik. “By integrating with Tru Optik, Nielsen and its clients will have access to our Data Marketplace, which is the most relied upon across CTV ad tech platforms and publishers. As a result, this relationship will empower Linear TV advertisers with the same addressable targeting ability as Connected TV and digital.”
Earlier this year, nine of the leading U.S. programmers joined Nielsen’s Addressable look TV beta program to test and evaluate the solution. With this data integration the platform offers participants the ability to execute linear addressable campaigns with first and third-party data that can also leverage CTV defined audience segments across the linear ecosystem, maximizing impression conversion, and better activating advertisers’ unique audience profiles.
In addition, beta participants will benefit from the Tru Optik integration in three unique ways:
- Capture Fluidity of TV Audiences: Consumers’ use of the largest screen in the home is blurring the lines between linear and CTV. Consolidating households of linear viewers and CTV device owners into a single, holistic segment enables a more accurate representation of the home’s true composition. The marriage of linear and CTV audiences allows for greater audience discoverability and the ability to maximize impact at the outset of a campaign in order to drive efficiency and minimize waste during the addressable ad conversion process.
- Maximizing the Addressable Funnel: Addressable TV is transacted on household impressions. As a result, it’s important to have a scaled and accurate household graph for smart TVs to ensure targeted ads are reaching real homes. Nielsen’s Addressable TV platform offers publishers and advertisers a higher degree of confidence that their linear addressable ads are reaching real people while maximizing the conversion of impressions in the addressable funnel.
- Onboarding & Accessing First and Third-Party Data: With Tru Optik’s 88% match rate and 90% coverage of CTV ad viewing audiences, Nielsen’s Addressable TV Platform now allows publishers and marketers to onboard and seamlessly activate their first-party data against an addressable TV campaign. With the third-party data that is already available in Tru Optik’s platform, beta participants will have the ability to choose from datasets that are already popular in the advanced TV ecosystem and activate against them. They will also have the ability to combine multiple third-party data sets together to create a new class of master target audiences.
For our beta participants, having an addressable TV solution backed by strong household characteristics is key to making comprehensive addressable strategies. Working with Tru Optik, Nielsen brings to the marketplace consistency across many activation and planning points. The key to addressable ad conversion from linear TV to targeted household impressions is a strong device footprint, an addressable tech stack, and trusted household graph. In the end, addressable TV can now be as easy as flipping a switch.
