A demo of Brightline’s Proteus XE product advertising The Weather Channel app during Local Now live programming
The Weather Channel is bringing interactive ads to its live broadcasts on its streaming apps.
Although interactive ads—which allow consumers to take an action while a commercial runs—are certainly not new, The Weather Channel is incorporating them into the content instead of relegating them to commercial breaks. This will allow weather updates or other programming to continue to play while an interactive ad surrounds the content.
The ad product is the latest tool from Brightline, the connected TV ad tech company that fuels interactive commercial breaks on major streamers including Hulu, Peacock and Max. The product, called Proteus Experience Engine, marks the first time Brightline is bringing its interactive advertising technology from traditional ad breaks into the content stream itself.
It also marks the first step by the company to expand interactive advertising into branded content, make shows interactive and even solve elements of the ongoing media measurement upheaval.
The in-stream ads on The Weather Channel app and its sister FAST platform Local Now will initially last seven to 10 seconds, and can take the form of a branded slide, QR codes or redirect users to other channels. A demo image shows Local Now content playing within a Proteus XE ad for The Weather Channel. The ads might also eventually connect users to other content from The Weather Channel parent Allen Media Group, such as The Grio or Byron Allen’s Oscars gala, according to the company.
Allen Media Group plans to launch the product later this summer with three to five advertisers and is pitching it during its upfront negotiations. It is using it as a value incentive for upfront negotiations during its initial beta tests. For example, if a brand is negotiating a channel takeover on Local Now, a Proteus ad might be included in the deal to place in the platform’s other channels to direct them to the sponsored channel.
This year’s upfront negotiations come in the wake of economic turmoil and strapped marketing budgets. In the first half of this year, advertisers pulled back or held TV ad dollars from flexible commitments to weather the uncertainty, but now need inventory to re-invest optioned budgets.
“[Proteus] would have failed profusely in the first half of the year when everyone was holding back money, because if you’re holding back money, all you want is as many eyeballs as cheaply as possible,” said Michael Bologna, co-founder and chief accelerator at Brightline.“You can only buy so many eyeballs—eventually, eyeballs are not enough. You have to engage those eyeballs.”
Proteus will also tap into marketers’ evolving needs for measuring outcomes, according to Robert Aksman, chief strategy officer at Brightline. By providing a direct source of interaction with viewers, Brightline is able to track audience attention and business outcomes from consumers that interact with the product, as well as verify the ad’s viewership.
“Some of these attention methodologies are pretty sophisticatedly modeled—but not direct. The most direct way of measuring attention is someone clicked [the ad] to respond; the best way to know if somebody is sitting in front of the TV set while an ad is playing is tracking the number of clicks that you’re getting on your ad,” said Aksman. “I believe that this offsets verification because we’re verifying that the viewer is there and we’re verifying that they’re engaged because they’re clicking on something.”
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Allen Media Group is being mindful of the placement of these ads to avoid risky situations, such as advertising a food delivery brand during coverage of a hurricane. As a result, the ad format won’t be available through programmatic platforms.
The product is designed to feed The Weather Channel's hyper-local targeting data to Brightline to serve relevant ads—an allergy medicine might sponsor a segment on local pollen counts and serve different ads for its products based on the region’s pollen.
In the current economy, “sellers want to charge more, buyers want to pay less, advertisers think they’re always right—everybody can’t have what they want,” said Bologna. “In this case, with this product, everybody can have what they want. The seller can charge more because there is a trackable value that the agency can in turn track back to success, which they can then pitch back to their client, which will then approve the premium.”
As Proteus rolls out to more media companies—at least two major streamers are expected to be announced in the near future—Brightline teased more capabilities to come that move beyond a static ad or QR code. Shoppability is a high priority as well as ways for viewers to interact with live content through polls or trivia.
“We’ve gone so far off the deep end into data, data, data” that advertisers have forgotten about experience, said Aksman, adding that over-specific targeting and cheap CPMs have become too common of objectives in the industry. “The measurement that seems to move the needle these days is still cheaper CPM, even if it shows that it was not effective at all…Historically if it’s just cheap, cheap, cheap, that’s where fraud exists because people are dismissing that quality costs money.”
Bologna said he envisions a future where Proteus returns marketers to the 1950s, when brands like Procter & Gamble were built into soap operas.
“In five years, [Proteus] is going to be part of the actual program,” said Bologna. “This is going to be the new [soap opera]. Advertising is going to move beyond just CPMs and just be part of all of our viewing experiences.”
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