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IPTV ‘goldmine’ to open doors for smaller advertisers

It’s early days for audience measurement, metrics and monetisation in the world of connected television, according to the panel of Mumbrella360’s “Connected TV” discussion.

Dan Sinfield, OMD’s head of trading and implementation, was joined by LG marketer Brad Reed, Telstra’s head of IPTV and PayTV Eric Kearnley, and Shirlene Chandrapal, Smartclip’s senior vice president of connected TV.

Chandrapal told the audience that smallers advertisers will soon be able to break into the IPTV market in a way they couldn’t with traditional television

“It does mean that advertisers don’t have to spend as much money to target the same amount of people. It opens up the world of TV to whole new world of potential advertisers. So smaller advertisers who can’t advertise on TV because they need a lot of money won’t necessarily need that,” Chandrapal said.

“TVs are made 18 months in advance so the development cycle is considerably long.”

“There are a lot of interesting things they are building that will come down the line, and data is another big component of that. In theory, these guys are sitting on a goldmine of data.”

As for second-screen technologies, Sinfield had a clear message.

“We have to be clear about what is best served to a connected TV versus what is best used on a complimentary device,” he said. “It’s very important to define – from an advertiser’s perspective, but also from a consumer’s perspective – what is the role of the specific platform? That will set the tone for what works on connected TV and what doesn’t.”

Reed identified a major trend in the content fragmentation that is occuring as a result of new media. Genres, he says, are becoming increasingly important.

“The big blockbuster content is going to remain on free-to-air. Below that, you’re seeing massive fragmentation.”

Reed pointed to ABC’s popular catch-up service iView as an indicator of segmented audiences looking for niche content.

He said the fragmentation has brought the opportunity to limit advertising to a target audience.

Kearnley, who is heading up Telstra’s T-Box operation, said the merging of telecommunications and content is “just going to go on and on”.

“We are hoping to have a million boxes by the end of 2016. We are absolutely committed to supplying content to our users anywhere anytime.”

Jack Fisher 

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