The year was 2003. Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California, Apple released iTunes, everyone’s friend Tom started MySpace, and March Madness was streamed online for the first time.  The 2003 deal was between CBS and Yahoo! to stream the first 3 rounds of the tournament as part of the Yahoo! Platinum service for $16.95 a month¹. Two years later, the NCAA announced that March Madness 2006 would be streamed free of charge on NCAAsports.com².

Fast forward a mere 16 years and we now see that not only are people streaming March Madness, but the streaming viewership is beginning to eclipse those watching the tournament on TV.

During the 2021 NCAA tournament, streaming audiences reach increased by over 85% from the 2019 tournament (2020 was canceled due to Covid19). On the other side, TV reach among adults 18+ declined by 24%.³

So what does this mean for advertisers? Cue the sports analogies. The best way to win in the game is to have a full-court press when it comes to your advertising strategy. Gone are the days that you can just run an ad on TV and reach everyone at once. Combining OTT and Cable TV advertising is a slam dunk to expand your reach. A strong bench will also be crucial to reaching your audience during March Madness. Adding in things like Pre-roll, Display, and Audio will ensure that you are communicating with your customers throughout the tournament in a multitude of ways.

Liza Goldenberg
Director of Vendor Relations

Launch Follows Receipt of Patents Achieving Advertising-System Interoperability Among Broadcasters, Cable Networks, MVPDs and

Digital Supply and Demand Side Platforms

Initial Television Participants Include A+E Networks, FOX, Reelz

Magnite Is First Participating SSP

New York City and Lexington, KY – August 24, 2021 – Buyers and sellers of linear television ad inventory now have a fully transparent solution enabling them to automate and expedite the activation of data-driven linear video inventory without changing existing workflows or technologies.

“The last mile to activate linear TV advertising through existing digital platforms is finally here,” said John Piccone, president of QTT.   “Buyers and sellers can now take advantage of their investments in data-driven audience planning tools by activating at scale through QTT’s seamless translation platform. As a result, we now have an array of partners offering premium television inventory through demand- and sell-side platforms to connect them directly with traditional and new digital advertisers.” 

Recently Viamedia’s Divisional Vice President, Brad Boggs, and Tallahassee-based Account Executive, Leslie Baker spoke to the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce about trends in advertising. Their presentation, presented by WCTV, entitled “Beyond the Basics: Put Your Marketing in Motion with Video Advertising” can be viewed here:

By John Piccone, President QTT^®, a division of Viamedia

There is a whole new generation of advertising buyers and sellers who have fallen in love with the features of advertising technology without understanding the marketing objectives that drive media decisions.

To the digital buyer, critical metrics of success live in the headers of their analytics reports which represent bottom funnel metrics. Absent are traditional building block metrics that live in media mix modeling that have guided marketer’s media decisions for decades.

Nowhere is this more apparent than video advertising. Today a marketer can place its video advertising in many places: Linear TV, Connected TV, Desktop, Mobile and Digital Out of Home. But for decades, the lion’s share of video advertising share has gone to linear TV. Why is that? Simple…

TV Advertising Works

And advertisers know TV works. They may not have real time dynamic ad serving reporting, but decades of trial and error have shown TV works and as time passes the linear TV attribution game is only getting better. Correlations based on ad occurrence and website or mobile traffic generates millions of data points to give marketers even better insights on the value of TV.

Measurement Favors the TV Advertiser

A viewer must watch an average of 5 minutes of the TV program to be counted, even though many more people sample a TV show. Compare that to an online video ad that needs to be visible for only 2 seconds.

TV’s pricing can’t be beat.

Marketers have relied on Nielsen’s household sample to measure television viewership for decades. Most linear buys are against a broad demo group (Adults 25-54, Women 18+, etc) These Nielsen demos are priced by the sellers based on demand, supply and historical rate cards. This is no different if a digital buyer wants to buy a broad demo on YouTube or CTV. However, the key difference is that on TV you pay only for those audiences in that purchased demo. So due to the “spill” nature of TV the advertiser also gets everyone else who watch its ads, for free. Whereas with online video, thanks to dynamic ad serving only the purchased target audience sees the ad. If we run the advertising math, a TV Demo CPM of $20 on TV is actually a tiny fraction of that when you factor all the people who saw the ad. And for marketers who are building a brand, every eyeball counts. On the other hand, digital video CPMs remains static, or actually increase in the case of fraud or bot traffic.

Are there many benefits that digital video advertising offers that TV cannot? Of course. But it’s still clear that the cost of media, coupled with the advertiser-friendly measurement standards, is very hard to beat TV.

Inevitably the linear and digital worlds will collide. Marketers can now buy TV programmatically when it meets both buyer and seller objectives. Spoils will go to those who can understand linear and digital measurement and pricing metrics. Visit https://viamediatv.com.