Ask the Expert: Addressable TV advertising with Finecast (part one)

Hi, welcome to our Ask The Expert series, where I’m talking to industry experts around the use of data and insight to drive better business and marketing decisions.

Today I am joined by Joe Kinchin, Partnerships Director for Finecast, and we’re going to be exploring the shifts in the TV advertising space.

Hi, Joe, welcome.

Thank you.

Can you start off by telling us a little bit around Finecast, where it sits within WPP and then your role within there?

Yeah, sure, so Finecast is WPP’s addressable TV platform. And what that means is that we provide GroupM’s agencies and advertisers with a single-source point of entry to the entire TV ecosystem.

Predominantly, we’re talking about TV content that is distributed via IP and via the internet. Overlaying across that content is a whole range of addressable relevant audiences.

And we do that through our proprietary tech and our best-in-class data providers, which Experian is obviously one of them. My role as Partnerships Director is to work with these data providers to create the segments that make sense for TV and for our advertisers.

That sounds like a really interesting role, Joe. From your perspective, then, what is changing within the TV advertising space at the moment?

The changes are predominantly led by the consumer and the way they’re watching and where they’re watching and as we’ve kind of eluded to, there’s a lot more content that’s kind of coming into the market now and in different kinds of ways, so that means there’s more platforms for us to activate across.

But then the other side of that is the available data sets that are available to use. You know, that’s why we work with a whole range of top-class data providers to provide really relevant audiences for specific campaigns.

That’s really the main changes that we’re seeing, but we expect to see, you know, that fragmentation of content and platforms continue.

And I guess, that’s one of Finecast’s mantra, is to harness the power of that fragmentation to make sure that advertisers can do TV advertising in many different ways.

So, you mentioned content a couple of times there. How do we define TV-advertising content now?

Yeah, that’s a really good question because as we’ve seen new players come into the markets, the likes of Netflix and the likes of Disney, that’s shifted a little bit on what the kind of TV content can be because it might not just be your linear scheduled programme, it’s more kind of on-demand viewing.

You will actually probably see slight variations between demography and cohorts around what they define TV content as. So that’s a really kind of interesting question right now.

But predominantly, I think right now, it’s about making sure that the quality of TV content, you know, is still paramount. And so when we do define it, it’s long-form, quality-produced, professionally produced content.

OK. So we’ve spoken about tech and content. From a consumer perspective, what are the benefits from that?

There’s much more benefits as a TV consumer these days from a viewing perspective. Obviously, they can consume media on their own terms a lot more now.

From a consumer perspective, this ability to bring more addressable advertising means ultimately, they’re going to see much more relevant, much more useful ads that will benefit their life.

I think that’s key, isn’t it, in terms of innovation. It really is kind of focused around the consumer as well. One of the big industry areas at this moment in time is around privacy, consumer privacy. How do you face into that at Finecast?

Yeah, so, with any data provider that we work with there must be a really strict data-privacy protocol and that’s a fairly lengthy procedure to make sure that any data that’s being used or any provider that is being worked with is wholly GDPR compliant. So that’s kind of a first step.

In terms of, I guess, more focused in how that looks within addressable-TV world, it’s around kind of finding the right keys to basically build audience in a privacy-compliant way. And so we work with our data providers, where we can look at audiences at a geo level.

And typically, one of the most consistent kind of keys that you see is postcodes. And the beauty of what we do at Finecast is we go down to a postcode unit level, which typically, I mean, there’s a lot of range, but the average postcode unit is households. So you’re still getting a pretty granular look of an audience, but still within all kind of privacy-compliant regulations.

Thanks. And I think that really is a key point. How do all the shifts that you’re experiencing at the moment actually impact how you’re dealing and supporting clients?

So, what you’ve been asked for that is different than you have been previously?

Depends on the brands that you’re talking to, but ultimately, each brand will have a specific type of audience, you know, and that goes much deeper than what we can traditionally do on linear TV advertising, which is kind of broad demographic.

So we’re able to provide a planning framework for these brands to plan against a specific audience. Then through the use of our data providers, we can kind of build a multidimensional audience that meets those needs and ultimately activate that and then measure that effectiveness that goes beyond reach.

So you can obviously look at how many of that audience you’ve reached, but you can also look at what actual impact that’s had.

So, has there been any brand lift, has there been any, I guess, digital kind of engagement off that or even as far as down at sales?

OK, so really that whole kind of piece, wrapping round straight into measurement as well.

So, again, people can be very focused around where their marketing spend is working for them and where it’s not working for them.

Thanks, Joe, for joining me. I really appreciate the time that we spent together today.

Thanks for having me in.