This summer Sky launches AdSmart, a new approach to TV advertising which allows personalised ads on linear TV for the first time. Specially targeted ads will be sent to Sky+HD set-top boxes and, based on geographic and demographic information, will be inserted in to live broadcast streams. This means advertisers can now cherry-pick their audiences and, using the power of TV to greater effect, enhance accessibility for niche brands, those with smaller budgets or location-specific services.
Sky AdSmart will make national multi-channel platforms accessible to regional advertisers by serving different ads to different households based on factors like age, location and life stage, derived from a combination of Sky’s own customer data and that of consumer profiling experts like Experian. From August, Sky AdSmart will have 30-40 advertising partners able to select the specific audience they want to reach and restrict their advertising to specific regions or cities, show ads only when defined audiences are watching and cap the number of times ads are shown. The mechanic is available on Sky owned channels, such as Sky One, Sky Living, Sky Atlantic and its movies channels.
The service features four campaign planning approaches…
- Optimised linear – Using different copy in the same linear spot to optimise targeting
- Define & reach – Defining precise target audiences to serve the ad when they’re watching
- Up-weighting – Upweighting exposure to specified buying audiences
- Regional – Targeting audiences only in selected metropolitan areas or regions
“Although the scale is small, the implications are very interesting – it’s the first time proper targeting in the UK has reached the TV set,” says Nigel Walley, managing director of digital TV consultancy Decipher. “It’s the first time the unbelievable data resources of pay TV platforms are being used beyond promoting their own services.” Sky expects not only big brands who want to optimise campaigns by sending different messages to different audiences, but also companies like local retailers wanting to create a buzz around a store launch.
MEC opinion: One prohibitive factor to Sky’s new service may be cost, as bigger brands looking to target their creative may consider the cost of producing several versions for one slot too high. For most bigger brands, the larger cost is not production, but media buying and so the smaller reach, in traditional terms, achieved by these highly geographically targeted campaigns may lead to advertisers not being willing to pay the increased cost.
For media agencies the question is whether this technology will affect the targeting of campaigns, as they may argue that media agencies already effectively target through programme choices. Jeremy Tester, BskyB’s director of brand strategy, argues that currently media agencies’ tools are limited. “TV advertising is great but how it’s measured – you can only define and reach certain audiences – is fairly blunt. We’re giving them a way of honing in on audiences.”
The use of data may also pose a problem, in that if this technology takes advertisers closer to digital capabilities, will TV viewers feel stalked by adverts, as is increasingly happening online? Through consumer tests, however, Christophe Cauvy, director of digital and innovation at JWT Europe claims that consumers also like to see ads for products they don’t know, or may not like but change their mind about, and so the lack of discovery was a disadvantage.