TV Execs: Ad Agencies Must Get with the Programming

 Long fixed on buying 30-second broadcast TV spots on a mass-audience basis, ad agencies must quickly evolve and change their behavior to keep pace with fast expanding video viewing habits of consumers, stress service provider and content company executives.

The rise in popularity of Internet video, interactive TV functionality, video-on-demand and even mobile video has been presenting content owners and aggregators far greater choice in reaching potential customers, with each choice offering different ad models.

“Agencies have some learning to do and there also needs to be an element of risk taking,” said Barry Frey, senior vice-president of advanced platform sales, with Cablevision Systems, a top U.S. cableco that serves the metro New York City market as part of its territory. “We own the interactivity to the home,” he said of the connections to the customer.

In addition to offering advertisers the ability to target their messages to specific geographic audiences – as opposed to traditional national broadcast TV viewers – as well as to add interactivity to the equation so users can view a message and take action through the TV set.

The call for ad agencies to get with the programming is not completely new as advertisers and cablecos alike urged these professionals to start thinking beyond and audience of one million to an audience of one at The Cable Show last year. However, the speakers were a tad short on specific advice for these companies.

“It’s a matter of agencies getting more proactive and getting more experience,” explained Frey. “There’s nothing like learning through doing,” he added, suggesting, as have other cablecos, that advertiser get their feet wet with new abilities by trying them out in one small market served and take them region-wide if successful.

Time Warner Cable’s Executive Vice-President and President Joan Gillman agrees. “Tests don’t have to be expensive as this is more about process than price.”

But agencies need to spend more time on their “creative” – the content for the ad. “For a long time we’ve got the same creative because there was only one message. That has to change for the message to be more engaging and compelling “We need two or three [sets] of creative. It’s a call to action.”

Cablevision’s Frey recommends ad agencies get more creative to reach viewers through different and evolving means. “Agencies need to understand the medium. We need more creative thought and work.”

One network executive asserted that advertisers themselves also need to understand their options and whom they seek to reach through them.

“Advertisers are asking us what they should be doing, [because] they really don’t know,” claimed Stephanie Friedman, a top research executive at NBC Universal. “We see ourselves as the voice of the consumers.” The company is acting as a consultant, she added, “to give them advice.”

Cablevision Systems Corp. www.cablevision.com
NBC Universal Corp. www.nbcu.com

Time Warner Cable www.twcable.com

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