Wiland Blog

Television has come a long way since its beginnings. And with today’s boom in streaming services, OTT entertainment choices, and the ubiquity of smart TVs, there are more opportunities than ever for advertisers to target their messages to reach their ideal audiences on their internet-connected televisions using addressable TV, a major category fast-growing advanced TV.

Will Clayton, SVP of Digital Product Management with Wiland, and an addressable TV guru, presented a webinar for the Direct Marketing Club of New York on “Addressable TV: Evolution and Opportunity.” We chatted with him to get the 411 on the basics of this exciting channel and how advertisers can successfully leverage it for great results.

A Quick History

So how did a fundamentally mass media like television come to support direct marketing? TV has had quite the journey. From pre-World War II experiments on how to build on radio’s success by incorporating images to the first commercial cable systems of the 1950s, then to the rise of pay-per-view in the 1970s and 1980s, TV technology has been continuously advancing throughout recent history.

In the mid-1990s, Multiple System Operators (MSOs) sought to identify the next advancement for TV beyond broadcast pay-per-view. These MSOs were also looking to compete with home video rentals and began upgrading their equipment to support video-on-demand, in which subscribers could access premium content when they wanted it rather than only at specific times. This subscriber-centric focus evolved into cable internet and addressable linear television—introducing the new technological capabilities that would allow for modern connected video services and devices.

Connected television has continued to evolve alongside streaming and time-shifted viewing options. So, while today’s TV viewing might look a quite different than traditional linear television, the basic process for brands to utilize addressable TV follows the path of other direct channels. It all starts with targeting your advertisements to a custom-crafted audience of high responders.

Data-Driven Success

The key to campaign success in any targeted marketing channel is getting your messages in front of the right people—those consumers who are most likely to respond to your advertising and engage with your brand. Addressable TV is really like any other targeted marketing channels in this regard—from digital display to mobile, social, and even direct mail—in that it takes detailed consumer spending data to identify and reach the right audience.

This is where bringing in a data partner like Wiland can fuel the success of your addressable TV campaigns. Wiland has the largest set of first-party individual-level U.S. consumer spending and interest-intensity data ever assembled. We leverage this insight to help you find the consumers most uniquely aligned with and ready to spend with you, and then reach them using addressable TV.

Getting Started

Addressable TV is an exciting marketing channel that can greatly extend your reach to more and better-qualified consumers in your target audience. While there are certainly plenty of factors to consider before jumping into addressable TV—such as having high-quality video content to deliver as advertising—it is a channel that can have a big impact on your brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.

Consumers are watching more streaming and subscription TV than ever before. This translates into new addressable TV advertising opportunities for you. Now may be the time to being testing addressable TV as part of your advertising mix, and we’re here to help with any questions you may have.