Ampersand, an TV ad sales company owned by major cable companies, has introduced a new functionality that automates elements of addressable TV for buyers – speeding up the process for campaign planning across its supply partners.
Ampersand’s five MVPD partners include Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox, Altice, and Verizon. Across partners Ampersand reaches 116 million households and over 70% of addressable households. The company, which uses aggregated and audience data from 42 million households, is owned by Charter, Comcast and Cox.
Contained within the AND Platform, the new addressable functionality automates much of the process to enable “faster turnaround times for proposals and ordering, as well as creating system-generated proposals for agencies that encompass supply from all 5 partners in a simple, concise, and efficient manner,” explained Ampersand’s Ari Turner, SVP of Sales Operations.
That includes automating all back and forth communication between Ampersand and each of the MVPD supply partners, along with aggregation of inventory and potential audience from each MVPD, Turner told Fierce via email.
“We will be continuing to enhance the addressable functionality in the platform in 2023 with streamlined ordering and full reporting suite up next,” Turner added.
In announcing the new functionality Ampersand VP of Product Management Kalyan Lanka said in a statement that advertisers spent over $2 billion on addressable TV ads in the past few years, with the expectation for spending to double by the end of 2023.
"By consolidating and streamlining the ability to find custom audiences all in a single interface, we will allow advertisers to reach any audience across any screen, within a highly engaged context," Lanka stated.
Initially the addressable TV feature can be used by Ampersand clients as part of its managed service offering, but the vendor plans to release a self-serve option in the near future that will allow clients to plan and buy addressable TV directly.
Prior to the automation capabilities, Ampersand introed incremental reach features, allowing brands to target light TV viewers and households that are either under or overexposed to national linear campaigns.
Laura McElhinney, EVP and chief data officer at Horizon, said that the agency’s connected marketing platform blu, along with Ampersand helps maximize results for brands by bringing speed, transparency and improved data quality.
“Ampersand's scale and ability to reach relevant, precise audiences through a single platform with data-driven results, is an exciting step forward for the TV industry," McElhinney said in a statement.
Ampersand is working to make addressable TV buying easier as advertisers look to zero in on key audiences, with the format is gaining traction. In a poll of 300 brand and agency respondents, Go Addressable in November found that 81% of advertisers are overall satisfied with the addressable TV advertising options today – up from the 72% that were the year prior. As to what is driving the satisfaction, respondents cited that the medium has become simpler to buy, as well as improvements in the number of options and cost to implement.
New research released Wednesday from DirecTV also found that addressable advertising is making its way into the mainstream. According to a survey of 350 advertisers by DirecTV, in partnership with Advertiser Perceptions, 86% of respondents said addressable played an important role in 2022 Upfront negotiations. And addressable appears to be delivering results as 83% of advertisers said buying addressable increased their ability to meet campaign objectives.
Still more than half (55%) said audience fragmentation across CTV and linear will impact their spending allocation over the next two years, according to DirecTV.