Premium video and programmatic innovation take center stage at CES

As we head into a critical year that includes a generation-defining presidential election, Olympics and more, the rise of streaming is ushering in the era of convergence. Converged TV approaches linear, connected TV (CTV) and digital video as vital components of a universal TV ecosystem rather than silos. The need for a converged TV ad strategy reflects the reality of the media landscape—from the continuing relevance of linear and the growing importance of CTV to the somewhat underreported impact and dominance of digital video and the agnostic way most people view video on all screens, regardless of size or delivery method. Of course this new world of video raises some new questions, including a fresh look at whether the video at hand qualifies as premium video—not just in production quality but in the viewer experience. A wide range of media and advertising leaders joined John Dioso, editor of Ad Age Studio 30, at the FreeWheel CES 2024 lounge in the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas to share their insights on what it means to be premium in today’s connected video world, including transparency, balancing programmatic innovation with brand safety, the future of streaming and more. Table of contents Why premium video matters The viewer experience How programmatic can get to the next level The buzz word for 2024: transparency From brand safety to trust in brands The biggest opportunities for premium video in 2024 Why premium video matters In November, Comcast’s FreeWheel Council for Premium Video and the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) released a study, “What is Premium Video?,” that defines “premium video” as “content delivered transparently, in a trusted brand-safe environment, seen by real people within a high-quality viewing experience.” The definition was informed by an Advertiser Perceptions survey of 305 marketer and agency executives, an online survey of video inventory distributors and publishers conducted by Comcast Advertising in September 2023. and a Comcast-commissioned consumer survey of 284 people, Ad Age reported. The FreeWheel Council/VAB study detailed the different perspectives and priorities of ad buyers and sellers and viewers. Perhaps not surprisingly, there are many more agreements than differences. For instance, although both the buy side and sell side agree on the primary components as described in the premium video definition, buyers valued audience engagement and targeting above all, while sellers saw the publisher of the content as most important. And while buyers tend to have a more traditional view of premium video as long-form (longer than 20 minutes), episodic content typically found on linear or paid live streaming TV, viewers value production quality over duration of content. “It starts and ends with the consumer,” added Katy Loria, chief revenue officer of FreeWheel. “Content matters, environment matters, mindset matters. At the end of the day, we’re not just serving impressions for the sake of serving impressions. We’re trying to build engagements. That’s the magic that happens between an advertiser and a consumer.” “It’s really about where we find those pockets of quality inventory and how we can leverage that best for our business and for our customers’ business and what they’re trying to accomplish,” said Tim Smith, senior VP of demand-side platform Basis Technologies. The viewer experience Low-quality user-generated content viewed on a substandard digital video platform is obviously a non-premium viewer experience, but so is watching a program on, say, free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) or ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) that excessively repeats the same commercials during ad breaks. Despite the fragmentation, ensuring a premium viewer experience is a vital piece of establishing what constitutes premium video and constructing a convergent TV landscape. “Users need to be in an environment where they can digest video content in a way that isn’t shoved down their throats,” said David Dweck, senior VP of paid media at digital marketing agency Wpromote. “Programmatic video that trails users across websites as they’re scrolling and trying to read content isn’t premium.” On Jan. 10, FreeWheel released a report, “Designing a Better Ad Pod,” that explores how publishers can optimize the quantity and frequency of ads in an ad pod to improve viewer experience and brand results. Among the top-line findings from FreeWheel’s Viewer Experience Lab in partnership with Media Science, ad breaks of two minutes or less can improve brand impact and ad experience. “When we think about premium, it’s not just the content itself, it’s everything around that content,” said Mark McKee, general manager of Freewheel, “including how the businesses on both buy and sell sides work to make it a premium experience.” “An experience where there’s low ad load, the content is really good, and the viewer is engaged tends to see higher conversion rates as a result of higher view-through rates and better performance for brands,” said Moe Chughtai, global head of advanced TV at MiQ Digital. “The premium experience has grown in dimensionality over the last couple of years,” said Robby Barnett, VP of business development at Viant. “A streamlined viewing experience, low load times, creative being stitched directly into the content with the same frame rate and resolution are all expected. Things like pod management, advertiser separation and meaningful frequency for a user session are all part of a premium experience.” How programmatic can get to the next level As a converged world of screens simultaneously fragments audiences, the ability to reach consumers at scale will require new tools, including the automation and targeting capabilities offered by programmatic. According to FreeWheel’s “Video Marketplace Report,” programmatic ad views in the U.S. have increased 21% YOY. To make convergent TV a reality, the buy side, the sell side, and the ad tech industry will need to bridge the gaps between programmatic and direct insertion orders. “It’s going to take stakeholders on all sides of the buying equation to feel comfortable with what programmatic can deliver,” said Adam Roodman, senior VP of product and strategy at Yahoo DSP. “It’s obviously of interest for the buy side. It’s also of interest on the sell side, but they have legacy experiences and formats and buying patterns that they’re trying to transform on both sides. It’s going to need a comfort [level] of trust from the buy and the sell side working together to take it to the next level.” As media companies continue to develop and grow their streaming platforms, the shape of the upfront marketplace has begun to shift, Ad Age reported last year, leading to programmatic deals being negotiated as part of the upfronts. “Programmatic and the upfront are two things that traditionally didn’t go together,” said David Dworin, chief product officer at FreeWheel. “You use the upfront to secure guarantees where you have scarce inventory, and you use programmatic where you’ve got plentiful inventory. We are focused on what we can do to make programmatic work in video and to make a premium supply path that works and balances both the automation that you get from a programmatic supply path and the unique capabilities of video.” “Traditionally, upfront buys are a little bit more stringent, but they do come with inherent benefits,” added Barnett. “We’re partnering with FreeWheel on a way to create a system of record for publishers and advertisers to track how the upfront spend is moving across different publishers and platforms. That’s going to help streamline the process.” The buzz word for 2024: transparency The first requirement of FreeWheel and the VAB’s definition of premium video is that it should be delivered transparently. According to the FreeWheel Council/VAB study, when it comes to automation, 42% of surveyed advertisers said transparency is a primary challenge with programmatic transactions. Plus, 56% of advertisers would increase video advertising spend with better measurement, attribution and/or optimization capabilities allowing for better insight into how campaigns performed. Senior executives from Warner Bros. Discovery, The Weather Company and others agreed that visibility, reporting and data quality are essential for both premium video advertisers and publishers. “We are a premium publisher,” said Felix Zeng, head of programmatic at The Weather Company. “We produce products that we are proud to sell, so we want marketers to have stringent standards so that the quality rises to the top.” “There’s so much more video supply in the ecosystem right now where marketers can spend their dollars and their budgets,” said Jill Steinhauser, senior VP of ad sales revenue and planning at Warner Bros. Discovery. “It makes sense that they’d want to know where their money is landing, who’s watching this content, and from what provider, content owner, distributor or aggregator.” From brand safety to trust in brands While sellers in the “What Is Premium Video?” study specifically listed brand safety (second on the list of FreeWheel and the VAB’s definition of the term) as the No. 1 quality in premium video, buyers and viewers listed similar aspects, including trustworthiness and content produced by a recognizable brand, in their respective top fives. “Brand safety is so important today,” said A.J. Storinge, executive VP and global managing partner at UM. “In conversations with clients, I start with thinking about the conversations happening within the brand platform. Are audiences open to alternative views? And then we go to a platform’s measurement standards.” “In pharma, where there’s a lot of people investing in linear TV, it’s an easy segue for us to carve out that budget and do a test on streaming,” said Kristy Quagliariello, VP of programmatic media at Klick Health. “For a younger demo audience who are cord cutters, it’s really important for us to get them on streaming, especially with premium publishers that they’re more comfortable with such as NBC or Paramount.” The biggest opportunities for premium video in 2024 CES is all about looking to the future and the possibilities it brings, so the show was the perfect forum for TV industry insiders to forecast the myriad opportunities in premium video in the year ahead. “We have a media-rich year in front of us, with fixed opportunities such as major sporting and entertainment events, but we also have the Olympics and an election year,” said Storinge. “Think about all the content that’s going to be created out of those stories and the opportunities for brands to consider how that voltage may actually help drive their business.” “How do we create a great consumer experience that includes the ad experience and how does that play out for the brand to have their connection with consumers be much more direct—and for the publishers to create something that allows the stickiness of the great content they have to resonate?” said McKee. “That is where I’d like to put my cards in 2024.” For an independent agency like Kepler Group, “it’s improving creative largely through generative AI,” said Garrett Dale, chief partnership officer. “With AI, creative can be created faster with actionable insights to make premium video better for us and our advertisers this year.” Joshua Lowcock, president of Quad, believes “the biggest opportunity in the premium video space is demonstrating to advertisers that there’s consumers that demand ad-supported video. There’s a lot of speculation and skepticism that ad-supported video is going to take off at scale, but we know it does and it will. We just need to demonstrate to advertisers that the market and consumer demand is there.” For Melanie Hamilton, senior VP of enterprise sales at Comcast Advertising, the biggest opportunity relates to the last remaining criteria in the definition of premium video: proving that it is seen by real people. “Addressable is having its heyday,” Hamilton said. “MVPD data backed by deterministic data matched to physical address has 95% fidelity, whereas with CTV we’re seeing hashed email addresses with just over 50% fidelity. Having a single view of the customer and a single view of the home, we can have real attribution, real insights and campaigns that make true impact, which is incredibly exciting.” In the spirit of convergence, Loria emphasized that the appropriate theme for the year ahead is keeping things simple. “We will continue to support interoperability and put the right controls in the hands of buyers and sellers in order to continue to facilitate transparency,” she said. “If there’s a call to action, it would be, let’s make the TV ad buying process streamlined, more transparent and direct.” About FreeWheel FreeWheel empowers all segments of the new TV Ecosystem. We are structured to provide the full breadth of solutions the advertising industry needs to achieve their goals. We provide the technology, data enablement and convergent marketplaces required to ensure buyers and sellers can transact across all screens, across all data types and all sales channels, in order to ensure the ultimate goal—results for marketers. With offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Paris, Beijing and across the globe, FreeWheel, a Comcast company, stands to advocate for the entire industry through the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. For more information, please visit freewheel.com.

Premium video and programmatic innovation take center stage at CES

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