Data Tell Story of Changing Viewership Habits: Publicis’s AJ Kintner

The shift in viewership from linear TV to streaming video has transformed the way advertisers seek to reach target audiences.

Data-driven targeting strategies have become more prominent as consumers spend more time with digital media.

"TV has completely changed.

We've been trapped in our houses and watching a lot more of it, but at the same time, a lot of the platforms started to come out to give Netflix competition," AJ Kintner, executive vice president of advanced video strategy at Publicis Groupe, said in this interview with Beet.TV.

"Our viewerships of what traditionally was linear are completely different." Recognizing the need to support data-driven marketing, Publicis two years acquired Epsilon from Alliance Data Systems. Epsilon has a vast trove of consumer data from loyalty programs and email marketing campaigns.

The data help to informing media-buying decisions amid the growth in connected TV.

"Being able to use data like Epsilon has, which is U.S.-based households of PII [personal identifiable information], to set up targetable audiences and then push those audiences to our partners in an 80% to 90% match rate really just changes how linear addressable and TV, in general, is effective," Kintner said.

Second-screening activity also is common among consumers who watch TV while using their mobile devices surf the web, chat with friends or check in on social media.

"We usually have our mobile device in one hand, and the channel changer in the other," Kintner said.

"They do complement each other, and there are companies like Samsung who actually have the ability to own the TV and own the device in your hand." Automated content recognition (ACR) systems that monitor what households are actually watching provide some of the most revealing data, Kintner said.

The can show how advertisers are misallocating significant parts of their media budgets to linear TV, only to learn that much of their target audience consists of cord cutters.

Meanwhile, marketers are working to develop greater insights about CTV viewing habits.

"Brands are trying to understand it just as quickly as the networks are creating it.

All of the networks have created their own streaming services," Kintner said.

"Clients want to understand it, they want to buy more of it.

They just need to make sure they're buying it the proper way." You are watching "Data: Powering CTV for Marketers," a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Sabio.

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