Comcast, DirecTV get behind new addressable ad push

Comcast, DirecTV and more top U.S. pay TV providers today revealed Go Addressable, a new industry initiative aimed at accelerating addressable TV capabilities.

Altice USA’s a4 Advertising, Charter’s Spectrum Reach, Cox Media, Dish Media and Frontier Communications along with TV manufacturer Vizio have also joined the group, which will focus on industry education and advocacy.

“As commercial loads decrease, viewing continues to shift, and the definition of video evolves, addressable solutions which deliver creative versioning, multi-advertiser insertion and campaign level reach/frequency optimization are critical to maintaining value and scale,” said Adam Gerber, chief global investment officer at GroupM agency Essence. “This requires everyone to recognize that point solutions for ‘parts’ of the video marketplace aren’t enough. Ultimately, we need common measurement, planning tools, buying platforms and validation capabilities that unify all forms of impression-based video across traditional, unit based linear, addressable linear, and all forms of streaming video.”

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Go Addressable wants to increase access to addressable inventory and reduce fragmentation in addressable TV advertising by identifying best practices around common terminology, technical standards and measurement solutions. The group is also building a website to serve as “a living repository of addressable TV advertising knowledge for the industry” and working to streamline the execution of addressable campaigns across multiple distributors.

“Addressable capabilities open up tremendous new opportunities for advertisers by marrying the reach of TV with the precision of audience targeting,” said Mike Dean, senior vice president of advanced advertising at ViacomCBS, in a statement. “ViacomCBS is delivering national addressable campaigns with many distribution partners, but the growth of addressable requires standards, scale and industry participation. The Go Addressable initiative is an important step toward achieving unified marketplace solutions that work across the TV ecosystem to drive meaningful expansion and accelerate adoption.”