Sponsored: This post first appeared in the 27 November print issue of AdNews as part of a partnership with MCN.
You’re going to hear a lot more about the value to be found in advertising’s ‘positive wastage’ in the coming year from MCN. It’s not a new theme for the TV industry but in a marketing and media world where data-led precision targeting dominates the trendlines and headlines, it is new again.
Mass targeting and positive wastage is the idea that advertising can – and does – influence people’s preferences and purchasing behaviour, even when they’re not always aligned tightly with a marketer’s intended customer or audience target.
Earlier this month the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) held a stimulating forum, the ‘Tyranny of Targeting’, led by the co-founder of London agency VCCP, Charles Vallance. It stirred all manner of viewpoints afterward.
The general consensus was that as an industry we risk losing the important fundamentals on why advertising works and how it helps brands grow if we swing too far to personalisation and tight targeting.
For the 25 years I’ve been in television, that old adage that ‘half of advertising is wasted but I just don’t know which half’, has loomed large. Today though, there is a growing body of evidence – from the marketing sciences and leading industry thinkers – that audience ‘waste’ actually works for brands. It seems entirely at odds with marketing’s mega trends for personalisation, hyper-targeting and data and analytics, which can carve customer and audience segments into the finest slivers.
No question there is a very important role for more personalisation and targeting. Indeed, better defined audiences – and using algorithms and automation to find them – has been a core part of MCN’s investment for five years. We’ve spent $30 million building our automation and data-led audience segmentation platforms and capabilities for broadcast TV, digital video and display. It will remain central to our future. But at MCN’s Homefronts this month we’ve talked to hundreds of industry partners about the power of ‘mass targeting’ across any screen or device.
As we all thunder towards ever more finite audience and customer segments in our communications planning, we must remain mindful that advertising can, and does, serve a central role in influencing those who are not, in a particular moment, the primary intended audience. This apparent ‘wasted’ influence in advertising is actually not waste. It’s value. There will be detractors, as always, in this debate but stay tuned. The science is in and it makes sense.
For all its critics, television remains the most powerful medium in the world for achieving this sort of public ‘display value’ for brands. Yes, MCN is leading the industry redefinition of television to be “broadcast quality content, of any length and on any screen or device” and we’ll ultimately offer 450 different customer segments for broadcast TV and digital audiences. No question there is enormous benefit to more refined audiences and customer segments. But let’s not lose sight of the influence that advertising delivers to other potential or lapsed customers that precision targeting wants to ignore.
This post first appeared in the 27 November print issue of AdNews as part of a partnership with MCN.
Anthony Fitzgerald
CEO
Multi Channel Network.