M+E Connections

Adobe enhanced its Advertising Cloud platform by adding several new connected TV (CTV) capabilities that are designed to help advertisers better understand and engage audiences, according to the company.

The new capabilities include the addition of CTV advertising formats to the platform’s cross-screen planner, the company said Oct. 10. “We have several brands already leveraging the new capabilities, including 3M and Allianz, which have had access in a closed beta since Q2’ 17,” Phil Cowlishaw, head of special operations consulting at Adobe Advertising Cloud, told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) by email Oct. 10. “Following great success with these customers, we’re excited to release the updates to all clients today,” he said.

Designed to “maximize de-duplicated audience reach, the cross-screen planner can ingest a marketer’s linear TV or digital base plan to identify audiences advertisers have not already reached, and then deliver against those audiences on TV, desktop, mobile, social — and now, CTV,” Adobe said in its announcement.

Adobe added: “Because the cross-screen planner is integrated directly into Adobe Advertising Cloud’s demand-side platform, marketers can understand not only how CTV audiences are behaving, but also how it compares to other channels in terms of driving effectiveness. Most importantly, it gives advertisers the ability to control frequency not only within connected TV, but also across all Advertising Cloud channels and devices, including desktop, mobile, social, OTT, and linear TV environments.”

Understanding audience behavior and channel effectiveness is just one part of the puzzle, so Adobe Advertising Cloud also added audience targeting and reporting across CTV, it said. As a result, advertisers can now activate first- and third-party audience segments and “layer on geo, demo, interest” and device targeting to reach CTV viewers, enabling advertisers to “reach precise and highly engaged audiences and understand the true value of each impression relative to their entire campaign,” Adobe said. Audience demographic verification in CTV apps is being provided by Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings, according to Adobe.
 
“For most marketers, achieving ideal reach and frequency, understanding channel effectiveness holistically, and reaching precise audiences in premium environments would represent a meaningful improvement from the status quo,” Adobe said. But, “to close the loop,” Adobe Advertising Cloud also introduced comprehensive conversion reporting for CTV campaigns, it said. By using anonymous, non-personally identifying information, marketers can now understand how CTV ads affect online and offline conversions and also determine “overall brand lift and attitudinal metrics via targeted” BrandSights surveys, Adobe said, calling Advertising Cloud’s unique cross-channel attribution solution — from search to linear TV — “the first of its kind.”

The Adobe Advertising Cloud enhancements were made in response to the fact that more content has become available on more devices than at any time ever, the company noted, pointing to data showing that, in the past five years, the number of new shows on online services has soared 500%, and the average U.S. consumer is viewing more than five hours of content of cross-traditional TV and digital video daily.

At the same time, over-the-top (OTT) media is growing significantly faster than traditional linear methods, but advertisers have “failed to keep pace” with that growth, Adobe said.

The Adobe Advertising Cloud updates to its CTV offering “help bridge the gap between this critically important medium and existing digital ad formats,” it said, adding: “Regardless of whether a marketer is executing a linear TV buy, a digital-only buy, or a combination of both, it is crucial for them to understand which individuals have already been reached by an ad and the frequency at which they have been exposed to the ad, so they can deliver the optimal media mix to most efficiently achieve their advertising objectives.”

It was “hard to overstate just how much significance the extension of data-driven audience targeting to connected TV holds for marketers,” Mark Dawson, senior media planner at insurance company Allianz, said in a prepared statement. He added: “By connecting the dots between ad exposures and conversions, we now have an apples-to-apples understanding of connected TV’s effectiveness relative to the rest of our campaign, which should help accelerate marketer’s investments in the medium even more.”
 
Other Adobe Advertising Cloud CTV partners include A+E Networks, Discovery Communications and Vudu. “Connected TV has been one of the final frontiers in the digital video landscape with regards to targeting and measurement,” Greg Ashton, director of digital revenue and yield management at Discovery Communications, said in Adobe’s announcement. He added: “With the extension of Connected TV, Discovery enables marketers to reach audiences at scale in a premium and transparent environment.”

Adobe Advertising Cloud was previously called TubeMogul. Adobe changed the name after buying TubeMogul last year.