Moderator: Patrick Keane, EVP / CMO, CBS Interactive
Steve Robinson, President & Founder, Panache
Ian Schafer, CEO, Deep Focus
Patrick: Upfront is this week. How is money positioned in terms of an upfront, and will we see “meaningful” budgets move over?
Steve: We see multiple approaches. Seeing early adopters consuming all their video online, but you need to have the ability to scale the buy. Need to know that ad formats will work across all of these platforms.
Ian: Upfronts are like DoubleClick parties in 1999. You knew that something needed to change. Upfronts are evolving. Right now they serve as a platform for education to media buyers.
Patrick: Lets look at creative in respect to video. Is it pre? Overlays?
Ian: Many different formats, and the IAB is removing the friction. But I have my own biases…pre-roll for example. There have got to be better ways to capture people’s attention. On TV, the commercials break up the content. But you start with an interruptive experience. Need to use video to create a deeper experience. Needs to scale “deep” rather than just “wide.”
Steve: Engagement is the key. The more engaging the ad, the more compelling the experiences bring the user back to the content. Video overlay ads are great opportunities. Create engagement, plus you can constantly pull up new video and create a telescoping experience and offer an extended and different experience for the user.
Ian: The experience has got to be the first thing we look at.
Patrick:: Obvious elephant in the room is measurement. We have an inability to measure what is supposedly the most measureable media in the world. How do we provide measurement and accountability to advertisers that are meaningful?
Ian: Working with Bacardi for Dewer’s, we’re able to measure ROI because we gave it enough time to have an impact. We gave it time to grow. And we targeted content that reached a very specific audience – hipsters. We were able to move the needle in regional markets, but it took time. Three months before we saw anything, and six months before it was significant. But it worked – it just takes time.
Steve: We’re monitoring how people are engaging with overlay ad formats, when people interact, how long they interact for, and trying to figure out how to measure the engagement and accountability and tie it back to ROI and brand lift.
Patrick: What verticals need to put their toes in the water now?
Ian: Niche content is going to open the door to more advertisers. There will be lots of ways for packaged goods companies to take advantage of what is going on, but they will have to get into the creation of content, in the same way they did 50 years ago. We’ll start seeing longer form content that people will want to consume. Not the “Tide Presents Crescent Heights” stuff, but real content that people want. But not sure the Internet can sustain the size of the budgets that have the potential for shifting online.
Steve: Lions Gate did a very successful campaign. The Internet will be able to deliver and help figure out “which 50% of their advertising works.”
Ian: Not only a question of inventory being available, but are the agencies able to buy it? A second year media planner can buy online advertising easily. But to buy at scale that lifts the CPMs of the industry, buying the scale is challenging.
Steve: Not a technology challenge. We need to advocate standards for ad delivery as well as ad formats.
Patrick: At CBS, we don’t believe that the web is just another vehicle for watching video, but need to think about community as well.
Ian: We think about community all the time. We don’t generally do one without the other. In order to fulfill on the promise of the Web, we need to tie the community to the back end as well.
Steve: Doesn’t believe that people gather around the video screen to have a shared experience when watching shows online.
Audience Q&A:
Cable providers varying their pricing based on bandwidth consumption?
Ian: Its like global warming and steroids in baseball. It’s a bad idea and consumers will revolt. Joost was more interesting as a technology than a content platform. Don’t be surprised if there is actually a bandwidth surplus.
Patrick: Have to take a consumer driven approach. There are real costs, and those costs need to be paid for.
Peter Naylor, NBC: What are thoughts on ABC’s two-ad pods?
Patrick: we are in a mode of experience. Everyone right now wants to beat up pre-roll, but they are working for advertisers right now. A :30 in front of a clip is a crappy user experience. We are experimenting with overlays, pre-, mid- and post-roll, full ad experiences.
Jeff Coco, Atlas: What about costs? Advertisers feel like prices are inflated and waiting for costs to come down? Will CPMs stay in the high $20s?
Steve: too early to say right now. As we get more information, we’ll have more insight as to what audiences are worth in terms of scale and reach. Right now, though, media is just starting to understand technology. When that happens, these things will take care of themselves.
Ian: The reason people pay $1.50 per click from Google because there are results that show that it is worth it. If the results work, you can justify the costs. We need to deliver on the promise of metrics to justify the higher CPMs .The problem right now is that we are charging the high CPMs without the justification.
Patrick: The web is a great place to reach niche audiences. And if you can reach a high value audience, then advertisers should pay a premium for them.
What are the qualities of the perfect media planner?
Ian: Need someone who understands how TV is purchased. Need to be able to talk the talk and then walk it. Most people don’t have the expertise from TV, but you can give them a crash course. Media planners need to look at consumer behavior patterns and their media consumption patters. They need to be able to be flexible and nimble and take advantage of a medium first, before other people get there.
Steve: Going to see a more quantitative look from the agencies. They need to be able to justify the CPMs for what they are buying.
Patrick: The internet is just another media now. The web isn’t just people with pierced noses in the basement playing foosball. Interactive people need to understand TV.
Ian: Media buying is going to have to be platform agnostic.
