The Media Odyssey

Dan Callahan: [00:00:00] we joked yesterday, the most premium of media companies in the upfront are now promoting addressable light capabilities, which I hope we get into a little bit today. But, even the most premium program has to have now a data capture and a signal identifier, at least from a streaming standpoint to say, Hey, this show's great, Evan's watching or Marion's watching it.

Because you gotta validate that.

Evan Shapiro: Welcome back to Media Odyssey Podcast reunited. That is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: That is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: And we've got a great episode back from vacation. How was your vacation?

Marion Ranchet: Amazing. How were yours?

Evan Shapiro: Too good. Too good. Too good.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Lots of pasta, lots of wine, lots of balsamic vinegar. So we've got a great episode today.

We've got, we wanna talk about what ads are important, [00:01:00] which ads really are effective and which aren't. Transparency and data on connected television in the advertising ecosystem. And we've got a great guest from Spectrum Reach, Dan Cowhead, who is the head of national sales for them. And we're gonna talk about addressable advertising and what that means and why it differentiates itself.

So a lot has happened since we were apart. The Upfronts all happened since we were together last. Any reactions you had from the Upfronts this past week?

Marion Ranchet: I think the biggest one would be for me actually, the fact that Roku didn't show up. They went the silent way. So I've seen YouTube and is it Neil? The CEO.

Evan Shapiro: Neil Mahan. Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. He was like all of this with creators and the whole thing. And apparently they put together an amazing, an amazing event. And I've seen news here and there. That

Evan Shapiro: Lady Gaga played for 20 minutes.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. But the thing is, I'll go for the silent, right? So those weren't [00:02:00] there. I think it does signal a few changes going on.

Evan Shapiro: What do you think? Yeah, because you're a Roku whisper. What do you think that meant?

Marion Ranchet: I haven't spoken to anyone, but I think it's a matter of being focused, getting stuff done. I think there's a lot of, whoopla about treating people and maybe they didn't have much to tell. Could be the other angle at the same time.

Evan Shapiro: What I heard was that they instead, I think it was a cost saving measure to be blunt. And I don't have firsthand. I know Charlie Collier who runs Roku Media there, but he and I have not talked about this.

My understanding from a couple people was that it was really a cost saving measure and that they went very small agency by agency dinner by dinner. Yeah. As opposed to doing a big expensive, million dollar event.

Marion Ranchet: That looks more like them, honestly. If you look at

Evan Shapiro: That's more Anthony Wood.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly. You've said it right? So yeah, I think a bit of that. And there's a lot going on. And actually, interestingly enough, they made a very different move. One that I did not expect, by buying [00:03:00] Frndly.

Evan Shapiro: So what do you think about that?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I'm gonna write about this in more detail because I wonder, I see where they're going with this.

I think it makes no sense to do it themselves. And I think it speaks to something that we talk about a lot, that is, that, it's all nice and beautiful to be in streaming right now, but, in terms of scale engagement, what's happening in cable, MVPDs. I think it is crucial.

I see it myself. Some of the companies I work with, they are seeing great numbers on advertising from distribution outside of CTV, so I think that's a move from them to dip their toes in the two worlds. Let's see.

Evan Shapiro: That makes sense. That makes sense. And I've heard generally good reaction to that acquisition around the rest of the industry.

Everybody seems to think it was a,

Marion Ranchet: Some people say, duh what? Why? I've seen a bit of that, but

Evan Shapiro: I have not, I haven't seen that much. But you're, again, you're a little bit more tuned into that, to that community than I am. I also thought.

Marion Ranchet: How about you? Tell [00:04:00] me about the Upfronts, right? Because you were right in the midst of it remotely though.

But so what's your take?

Evan Shapiro: What's fascinating was, so I had spies at each Upfront and they were kind of text live texting me as they were happening. And to me what was very interesting is how much each one of the presentations they shared. Everybody but one mentioned the N- had the NFL on stage with them, right?

Every single one. NBC, Disney, Fox, Amazon, YouTube all had the NFL, right? Yeah. Netflix all had the NFL. And so to me there's a kind of creeping monoculture there that is pretty dangerous for the advertising economy. I think that's an interesting aspect. And then on the other side, everybody did, everybody used these buzzwords: full funnel.

Everybody's full funnel now. Everybody's full funnel, all the, and again, it's like

Marion Ranchet: Omni channel, full funnel. Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: It loses its meaning to a certain extent because nobody really explained [00:05:00] necessarily what that meant. And how that, transpires or how that will transact. And what's the data transparency before, during, and after a campaign and then to me the most important announcement during the upfront had nothing to do with programming. It had to do with YouTube. They announced two major things as part of their new ad stack, which is these Peak Moments. Did you see that?

Marion Ranchet: No, I did not see that.

Evan Shapiro: So they're gonna they have this thing where they're gonna use Gemini AI to determine the peak emotional and engagement moments of every video, and then use the AI to insert your ad right there, immediately after that peak point. That is to me a game changer. All of television should be doing that.

And then the other was really pushing their shoppable, send to phone purchase within the CTV environment offering. Again, I don't see [00:06:00] anybody else, not even Amazon, really spoke that much about that during their Upfront.

So to me, those things, those are elements that are now table stakes. I did, I wrote a piece on my Substack Media War and Peace, which you can subscribe to right now. I'll wait.

Marion Ranchet: 25%, off right?

Evan Shapiro: Exactly. 25% off for all new subscribers. Right now.

Marion Ranchet: That's a Peak Moment YouTube. That's a Peak Moment.

Evan Shapiro: That is a peak moment. Very nice. I wrote a piece about iSpot did this survey of about two hundred and fifty two hundred sixty marketers, and they asked them what their big priorities were right now, and number one, over 50% was outcomes. Yeah. And number two was value and everything else, paled by comparison.

So to me, when outcomes are the number one priority for every single buyer, the full stack data, the amount of data you're providing on the front end to target most likely buyers. The data you're providing during the campaign to adjust while it's running. And the post data analysis, which enables you to determine what kinds of transactions [00:07:00] transpire due to your campaign.

To me, that is the holy grail of advertising right now.

Marion Ranchet: Nice. So moving on, because this is done. What's coming next, right? Because there was a lot of

Evan Shapiro: Deal making. Now all the presentations happened. Yeah. Now the deals hopefully get made.

Marion Ranchet: So deals are being done. Today we're gonna talk about what? What are we talking about today?

Are we talking about TV versus digital? Are we talking about

Evan Shapiro: So you and I had a debate, you and I had a debate a couple weeks ago where we were talking about what television is now, the difference between social and television. The effectiveness of sight, sound, and motion on the big screen versus social video and YouTube.

And you said that you had this you were basing this on a study that you had read, but you were talking about how social video campaigns are actually decreasing in effectiveness on a per campaign basis. Yeah. And that seems I did a little research, in your absence and found that study and you're right, people are pulling money [00:08:00] away from pure social campaigns and putting them more and more into retail media and bigger CTV campaigns as well.

But again, I feel like if retail media is gonna be the center of a lot of people's focus in the buying community, that only reinforces the need for high quality data before, during, and after the campaign. And the people who can provide that are gonna, the ones who are gonna win the biggest deals, the biggest increases in budgets and CPMs year on year.

Marion Ranchet: Why do you think that is that potentially social media is not performing on par with what we've seen historically? Is it that, because there's the question of attention, right? And we're gonna talk about, are all views equal, all ads equal? Is it a question of attention? Is it that there's so much on digital that, ultimately it's a lot of noise.

And that effectiveness that we saw at the beginning is getting drowned. Because that's the business case that TV makes, right? In that debate, TV versus digital. What [00:09:00] TV says is, we're creating, we're building brands, we're, we have a longer attention span. We, it's also about creating an emotional connection.

All of those things ultimately feed into into TV also being a performance. But the only problem is that it's harder to qualify.

Evan Shapiro: Measure. Measure the performance.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. To measure. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So what's your take on that?

Evan Shapiro: I think there's, what's interesting is same survey by iSpot.

Buyers don't really consider fraud, all that ma much when they're making purchases of media and.

Marion Ranchet: That feels insane.

Evan Shapiro: Say again.

Marion Ranchet: That feels insane.

Evan Shapiro: It does feel insane.

Marion Ranchet: Especially when budgets are tightening.

Evan Shapiro: And I think that's catching up to social video.

If you listen to Augustine Fou, who's a great analyst in this area, he believes that as much as 50 to 60% of all impressions on social are fraud. And people have ignored that because there still [00:10:00] is a return on investment. You can spend a dollar, get a dollar .25 back and you can measure it.

You can measure that effectiveness. But still, if half of the impressions being served on social are fraud, holy cow, think about the amount of waste that is. And then when you look at CTV, Statista did a study and some research around this, and they're showing that in 2023, it was around 16% of all impressions served on CTV were fraud.

Yeah, about $88 billion. That means this year it'll be over $90 billion in bot watched ads on CTV and that's gonna grow to 170, 175 billion by the end of this decade. 20, 22% of all ads, one in five ad impressions served on CTV are being watched by a bot. And so to me that's part of the reason why people are pulling out of social is they're, that fraud is beginning to catch up.

Marion Ranchet: But so about CTV, I find those numbers staggering honestly and [00:11:00] what's very worrying is that we've always said that eyeballs go, are going to CTV faster than ad dollars. But if you're saying that, even that the little money that goes to CTV, it's still a small portion of total advertising in the US.

That even a big portion of that is fraud. That's insane. The question is who's trying to tackle that? Because if you look at CTV, it's not the only issue they have. They have trouble proving the business case. Are they bringing incremental reach? You are gonna, you speak a lot about measurement, the same thing.

It's just a bunch of walled gardens, right? I honestly, I wouldn't wanna be a TV, an ads buyer, and media planner in today's world.

Evan Shapiro: No I think it's a really difficult thing because there was a I wrote this piece this past week about how the buyers are really unhappy with the lack of transparency in the, specifically in the CTV world they feel like a lot of the middle people, I won't say [00:12:00] middlemen. But the middle people are really just adding cost, but they're not adding any transparency. They're not adding any accuracy. They're not adding any real value. And it's just inflating the cost of the purchases.

And at the same time, really obscucating what the outcomes and what the results of these campaigns are. And it's something we've talked about a lot is the lack of high quality data available on CTV. Especially when you look at things like FAST and AVOD.

Marion Ranchet: It's hurting fast and AVOD stakeholders a lot because if you look at what it costs to run a fast channel today, a lot of folks are saying it's the ad tech tax and everyone is trying to understand, all of those little cents here and there.

And that's actually a lot of money. And when you are a channel owner and you are trying to invest in that new model. On the other side, you still have a lot of fixed costs. That's content. That's your people. That's just the tech delivery. It's [00:13:00] really making the equation tricky.

It's great that advertisers and agency are complaining because my hope, 'cause honestly my side of the world we have no say. I've seen a few folks trying to fight against that. But if the agency and the advertisers are saying Enough is enough, and are cutting this middle people, or are pushing for transparency and reduce cost, honestly, and it's a question of, show us what you do. Be paid fair value for what you do.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And that gets to, we're gonna have a guest a little bit later Dan Callahan from Spectrum Reach. And he and I were in an event yesterday, the Go Addressable event during the Upfront where I unveiled this new map of the media universe, the addressable table of elements. Looks like the periodic, you called me breaking bad.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah you were breaking bad on us a hundred percent.

Evan Shapiro: I went total Walter White on you, even though I failed, I literally failed [00:14:00] chemistry in high school.

Marion Ranchet: Oh I did too.

Evan Shapiro: I am not good at that. But we made it look like the periodic table of elements and there was really no judgment on the table. It was really an an outlay of the addressable universe.

But addressable advertising, which I you asked me this before we got started, like not everybody understands what that is. Yeah. What it is. Yeah. This is, beyond contextual, this is beyond targeted. This is using what's called deterministic data over probabilistic data.

And when you look at the data ecosystem, there is this growing ecosystem of data vendors who are providing things like hashed emails and IP addresses as a way to plan your media and put into a data clean room and compare it with your own first party data to create targeted campaigns and measure the outcomes on the back end.

But what we found out was that those are not reliable data. That, think about this in a multi-dwelling unit, I live in an apartment building. You live in an apartment [00:15:00] building too?

Marion Ranchet: No. I You live in, it's like a mini building of my own, okay. You know those Amsterdam houses like this.

Evan Shapiro: Okay. Yeah. So it's townhouse basically.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly.

Evan Shapiro: What's happening is, so it's attached to other homes, right?

Marion Ranchet: Yep.

Evan Shapiro: So what's happening in these multi-dwelling units, VPNs and other things are really just clouding the accuracy of the IP addresses attached to an address or to a consumer. To the point where vendors have an average of four or five IP addresses per household but when then you look at the ISP data, the people who are actually providing the internet addresses.
It's more like one, one and a half.

So that means as many as two or three are just fraudulent or misconstrued or just wholly inaccurate. And then you look at email addresses as a way to create a data pool for contextual addressable advertising.

And what, think about this. How many old email addresses are [00:16:00] associated with your name that you no longer use?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Your Roku email address?

Marion Ranchet: I've actually had to switch my last name, then my name, because I've used up so many over the years.

Evan Shapiro: Or I'll create an email address just to sign up for something and then I'll never use that email address.

Marion Ranchet: I don't do that that often I have to say, 'cause I'm a password freak it scares me, but, no, I see what you mean. So that means that the numbers are inflated. Not accurate. When actually, what you wanna know? You wanna know more about what's going on in a house. Just you don't just wanna know where they are.

Evan Shapiro: You wanna know the homeowners there. Yeah. And you can anonymize it and create the privacy that you want. But the issue is that so much of the data that's being sold to create campaigns is just. It's a lot of chafe. There's a lot of garbage in it. And if you put garbage in, you're gonna get garbage out.

Whereas if you look at the providers, the MVPDs as an example, so compare, let's say Netflix or Disney plus, [00:17:00] where really pretty much all they have is an email address and a credit card. Yeah. But on the flip side, you look at you know someone, a pay TV provider or a mobile provider, a telco.

They have home address, credit card. They have so much more, what I call actually not first party data, but zero party data.

Marion Ranchet: Oh, cool. Yeah, I like that. I'm gonna steal that.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it is. It's, the consumer has provided it and there's a direct relationship, billing relationship, connected to the actual household address.

It just creates a much higher quality. It's deterministic. We know that this human being has these attributes to them, and there are this many human beings in the home, and so on and so forth, as opposed to email addresses or IP addresses.

Marion Ranchet: So if I were to dumb it down for non Maddison Avenue people addressable.

It's also a question of stakeholders. So it's, you would say it's mostly folks within the MVPD world?

Evan Shapiro: Primarily, yeah.

Marion Ranchet: [00:18:00] Versus perhaps,

Evan Shapiro: No, I think telcos as well.

Marion Ranchet: MVPD telcos but by opposition with CTV platforms.

Evan Shapiro: Pure CTV platforms. Yes. And then that's the other thing is not only did the, to the, did the premium SVODs have an issue with a lack of data transparency, but on the flip side, there's this huge churn that's out there as well.

Take up on ad tiers is actually increasing dramatically. Antenna now says that around somewhere around 70% of all SVOD signups in the last year went to ad tiers. Which is impressive.

Marion Ranchet: Which is really gonna hurt our poop. Initially the idea was,

Evan Shapiro: we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: We'll see. I think it will.

Evan Shapiro: But on the flip side of that the churn of those ad tier is 70% per year. Yeah, that's a lot. If you're losing, that's, if you're signing up 10 and you're losing seven every single year, it's really hard to create a frequency campaign at an audience if the [00:19:00] consumer is signing up for an SVOD watching and binging a show, and then canceling before the next billing cycle, which is, basically somewhere around 40% of all new signups are these serial churners, and that's an Antenna term. It creates a lot of

Marion Ranchet: the ISP, the paid tv, the telco, the mobile operator I'd say these guys are like bank, right? When the utility is at the core of the subscription, it's hard, right? I'm getting called every week to make a switch, but I just can't be bothered.

Evan Shapiro: it's hard to break up with a utility company.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, it's pretty hard. So you are right to say that these folks have a lot of a lot of data. And actually I've been complaining, so to say a bit about that, that part of the ecosystem, especially in Europe because, so I spent eight years at Orange which is a French Telco operating in multiple markets in Africa, et cetera.

And to me they sit on a pile of data and really gold. But because they're so big and slow, they're struggling to, [00:20:00] embrace and play, on par with the CTV platforms at least from a platform perspective and innovation perspective, when actually to your point, they have the reach and they have more data.

So I'll give you the example of the French market, who is one of the last market as often to get into addressable tv. They call it TV segmented. So segmented tv, like we needed another name, but this is what it is. The four telecom operators who are doing internet, mobile and tv, so they're also pay TV operators are coming together.

They had a goal to have at say perhaps 200 million euros within the last two years in terms of revenue only at 50 million.

The spiel is appealing, right? They're saying, of course we still command a lot of the linear viewership. A lot is still happening on set boxes versus CTV come with us instead of, doing one to many in terms of your ads.

You do one to one, right? So you have that [00:21:00] personalization, et cetera. You can segment who you wanna target, and it's cheaper, supposedly. And then you can go you can, it's like 5,000, right? Whereas you wouldn't get a traditional linear TV spot at that price. Now, you fast forward today, it is so heavy in the processes that it's not growing the way it should be.

So the promise is there, but in terms of the execution, we'll still have to see what's going on.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, and I feel like it's the same way on the premium SVOD is that there's a promise there, right? Yeah. There's a, yeah, there's a promise of a premium sight, sound, motion environment. Yeah. But on the other hand, there aren't that many impressions being served, and the churn is so substantial that promise is not being realized either.

And yeah, the question is, which ads are actually most effective? Which ads carry more weight? Which ads are more equal? Than others. And that actually gives us a nice segue.

Marion Ranchet: Segue.

Evan Shapiro: To our guest here Dan Callahan. How are you?

Dan Callahan: Hey Evan. How are you? [00:22:00]

Evan Shapiro: Good. Dan, you are the head of National sales at Spectrum Reach.

Did I get that title right?

Dan Callahan: Yes. That's appropriate group, vice President is what we call it, I think operationally, but National sales.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Too many words.

Dan Callahan: is the remit. Yeah, all these acronyms. GVP, I had to Google it when I started.

Evan Shapiro: And we were we were at an event yesterday, so Marion and I were just talking about the quality of ads, the quality of data.

You and I were at an event yesterday, the Go Addressable event where we were talking about addressable advertising. And Marion and I actually were just defining what addressable advertising was. But you said something interesting yesterday, which was, addressable advertising is not a what, but a how.

Did I get that right?

Dan Callahan: Yeah I quoted Ashley Arena. I repurposed that live on the spot. I thought it was very powerful, so I wanted to work it back in the closing, so it was reiterated, but yes absolutely right.

Evan Shapiro: And what does that mean to you?

Dan Callahan: I think it's now there was some demystification that's had to happen really over the last three or four years.

And, I [00:23:00] think Lisa Herdman leaned into that as well, of there was an education, it was deemed expensive or challenging or really mundane from a process perspective, right? So it was an add-on, a sidecar, a test budget. So in that world it was more of a how, like how do we do this?

And I would really say, over the last year and some of the statistics we shared about the growth it has become a what, right? Everybody's talking about it. Brands are asking for it. We joked yesterday, every, the most premium of media companies in the upfront are now promoting addressable light capabilities, which I hope we get into a little bit today.

But, even the most premium program has to have now a data capture and a signal identifier, at least from a streaming standpoint to say. Hey, this show's great, but, Evan's watching or Marion's watching it. 'Cause you gotta validate that.

Evan Shapiro: Let's back up a little bit for a second.

So what is, what for our listeners, especially those who may not be in the United States, what is Spectrum Reach? How do you, what's your elevator pitch for Spectrum Reach as a, as an [00:24:00] entity?

Dan Callahan: My elevator pitch is Spectrum Reach is the nation's largest connectivity company. We sit at the center of the home.

We provide high speed internet, video subscription packages, and mobile phone services to 31 million customers across the country.

Evan Shapiro: So your footprint's about to get larger. And then yesterday you made this point, and I'm gonna let Marion jump in here in a second. But you made this point about how, and we were just discussing this because I think social is seen as a performance vehicle because of the measurability of it and the data.

But at the same time, these walled gardens are grading their own homework as far as the measurement goes. But you made the point yesterday, which I wrote down that TV is becoming a performance vehicle. What does that mean and how does that work from your perspective?

Dan Callahan: I think there's this old adage, and it was one of the first things taught me in the business probably 20 years ago, right? It was tV works or the John Wannamaker quote, right? Of I know some percentage of my media dollars is working, I just don't know which half. fact of the matter is you now know which half right? Or which whole.

So you're making smarter [00:25:00] decisions that are rooted in data. You're measuring the efficiency or the efficacy of it. So you know right? The results are there. It is now measurable, and that is why TV is finally, I've said it for years, getting the credit it deserves.

For years we were getting credit but it was always looked as the top of funnel branding. And now it's hang on a second. TV is driving awareness, but it's also driving action.

Evan Shapiro: And Marion was just talking about the MVPDs in her home country, France. But how do you hear? Well, her first home country. Now, she has a second home country, the Netherlands.

But, how do you treat data with your clients? So Spectrum does a deal with a major national advertiser and they're using your footprint to reach these consumers across the country. You've got all this data, you've got all these what I call zero party data points from the consumer, and then you have all this performance data. This usage data that you are using.

What's a deal? What's a handshake look like between a brand or an agency and Spectrum Reach? When somebody comes in and says, we wanna [00:26:00] measure, we wanna target the most likely buyer on the front end, we wanna measure the campaign as it's running, and then we wanna see the transactional results on the other end.

Dan Callahan: That's the dream scenario is that a buyer comes in with that exact remit and asks those questions. We, we're using our data and our subscriber footprint on the front end to plan, the media inventory available to us through our distribution agreements to run ads and target those homes that are within the brand's desired segment.

And then again, able to tie back exposure to action that outcomes drive driven here piece of it which closes the loop, right? So I think for us end to end, it's a ideal scenario where our data helps in the planning process. We're doing first party data matches. We've got certain data synchronizations with certain brands and even certain agencies that is more unique and intimate and we're excited about it.

We want to continue to build those bridges and partnerships with everybody.

Marion Ranchet: Can I ask? So I have to say addressable TV in the US was, it's a fairly recent concept to me. It's been in in Europe for years. I [00:27:00] think even before CTV was. When I look at the US market, my first my first thought goes to CTV.

So what's your business case, so to say? How do make it compelling to advertisers to invest within your ecosystem? What's your USP versus the CTV ecosystem?

Dan Callahan: Yeah, look, I think Nielsen gauge is, has grown in popularity. A lot of people use that as a North star for what consumption looks like.

54% of that consumption is still traditional. I can't get my air quotes in the shot here. Traditional linear tv. And with our set top boxes, and again, our homes, that is becoming targetable, addressable. Linear is a big part of what we do and what we deliver, and it's almost like this is the next iteration of the education of addressable traditional TV or linear set, top box consumption versus addressable CTV.

For us, we look at it, we love both sides of our footprint, the same, the traditional piece and the streaming CTV piece. The capabilities are becoming more comparable. Like for like where we are running addressable in a set [00:28:00] top box home or a CTV home. A lot of our homes have both. But it's still a ton of time and a ton of viewership and a ton of ad supported tv, right?

Evan touched on that yesterday. We gotta hammer that home ad supported TV happening and still the traditional, modality if

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And you're, the homes who have MVPD relationships, that's their primary source of entertainment. They'll watch the SVOD, let's say 3, 4, 5 times a month.

But they're watching the MVPD product every day.

Dan Callahan: Exactly. For a lot of time too, I think we, we see on average it's four and a half hours, right? So if you think about time spent with content via our connection, via our device. It's astronomical, right? Even some of those more, I hate to call it appointment based 'cause it's really not appointment based anymore in the traditional day date and time sense.

But when you're entering a subscription service to watch a show that you're into, you're either binging it or you're showing up for that hour. You're probably exiting thereafter.

Evan Shapiro: and you had [00:29:00] some great you had Lisa Herdman from RPA, you had someone there from Densu. You had other clients on stage with you yesterday, and they seemed really educated in the addressable advertising milieu, if you will.

And that's a French word, I think.

Marion Ranchet: Stop butchering the French. Oh my goodness.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. No, I've been practicing a little bit. I was in Italy, but

Marion Ranchet: stick to Italian. Stick to Italian.

Evan Shapiro: Ciao. But the, how do you educate? There, there's does still seems to be a lot of mythology and wrongheaded thinking about what addressable is.

How do you educate your clients? And it seems to be working to a certain extent. 'cause you've doubled the number of orders you're getting for addressable advertising in the last couple years. But what is the challenge to educating the agency or ultimately the client around this offering?

Dan Callahan: It's repetition, right? I think there's a broad sense now, and this was an undertone in the back of the room yesterday of addressable as a definition has almost become too broad, right? As you laid out in the periodic table of elements here. So many things can call themselves addressable, [00:30:00] right?

So I was teasing some folks in the back. It's we gotta go get a better name, get a more unique, higher targeted name, right? Everybody adds a plus to their streaming service. Maybe it's addressable plus, but it's deterministic, right? It's education. I think, here's the thought, right?

If everybody kind of understands targeting. Everybody on the surface agrees to most of the extent of waste reduction. There are some brands out there like my buddy Vinny Hershey, where, they're looking for people with a mouth. So they're gonna be alright. But most brands, budgets aren't growing.

We know that you gotta be more targeted. You've gotta be smarter with the way you're spending your money. So there is some waste that is gonna happen. And now it's, they're asking all the right questions. Okay, I can target, I can eliminate these types of things. I know I don't need to reach these people and I'd really like to reach these people.

Great. Hold the phone and now let's come back and let's reeducate or reinform them of how the deterministic addressable set is differentiated and superior to an IP or an email address, or a modeled targeted piece of [00:31:00] media that still gets to call itself addressable in today's landscape.

Evan Shapiro: Dan, you brought this up, so I'm gonna bring it up here. It's the addressable table of elements and I made this in collaboration with Go Addressable, which Spectrum Reach is a significant, and I think founding member of. A. what is Go Addressable. Why are you in a trade organization with a whole bunch of your competitors?

Dan Callahan: Exactly what we were just talking about. Education. The rising tide of addressable lifts. All of these boats, we are competitive, frenemies if we want ourselves that way, but it's, we're all selling the same promise in the Go Addressable footprint, in the Ampersand footprint. We're not stepping on each other toes in the current construct.

So it, it's very complimentary. And again, we're collectively trying to educate the marketplace on our comparable capabilities that include deterministic subscriber first party data or zero party data. I'm gonna start using your

Evan Shapiro: That is your's to use.

Marion Ranchet: How much how much are, how many people are we talking about? Households are we talking about? [00:32:00]

Dan Callahan: For Charter specific or for Go Addressable?

Marion Ranchet: For Go. Yeah.

Dan Callahan: Oh, man. Go Addressable. I think Don shared the number yesterday that it's upward of 75 million. I've seen it published somewhere between 75 and even 91.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, on this chart it says 69.5, but yeah, I think you're right. It's probably over 70 at this point.

So you're talking about 70 million households in the US which is, where we have zero party data, you have zero party data, household level deterministic data. And that gets to a kind of another point there, which is we didn't, this lays out the entire addressable ecosystem from measurement to identity, from buy side to sell side.

And it doesn't really take an opinion on the quality of the different vendors there, except in one area, which is on inventory, and that's on the left hand side of this chart here, which it goes from deterministic or green, down to least deterministic or probabilistic IP addresses. And we were talking about that before you joined.

But, to me this [00:33:00] kind of defines the differentiation between the Go Addressable trade members and the pure CTV streaming providers. The idea that you're gonna have substantially more data on the way in, during the campaign and afterwards. How do you position that in the marketplace?

Dan Callahan: I think we just talk about the intimate connection that it has created from being a trusted service provider. It's, you're one of five or six companies, like you said, in that upper left quadrant. There's a number of choices. Some vary by where you live, it is differentiated.

The supply access we have, the targetability that comes along with it. And again we're in that same boat, all rowing in the same direction.

Marion Ranchet: How granular can you go?

Dan Callahan: We can go down to the household level. We are making some strides at trying to look at the devices and the device makeup of a home.

But right now, it is, we can confidently call it household level addressable.

Marion Ranchet: So you know who's in the house, how many people potentially a bit on the demos or

Dan Callahan: we know that [00:34:00] certainly the demo and the makeup of the person on the bill. We've got some other data sets that we partner with to have a better understanding of who's in the home or what the, let's call it the average Spectrum home looks like or is comprised of.

So there's some modeling elements of that. But for the purposes of addressability, it is the name and the individual with the credit card and the mailing address and all that good stuff attached to them.

Evan Shapiro: What I found fascinating about the event and the organization itself is in a week full of upfront presentations where everybody's fighting tooth and nail for every dollar and every moment of attention. You've got these massive organizations who are competing for dollars. Collaborating and cooperating around data, around messaging around a USP, why?

Dan Callahan: I think we've still gotta educate. There, there's this great promise and as we've talked about, it's growing significantly year over year.

27% growth in new advertisers is what we shared yesterday. So we're [00:35:00] still, getting folks to the addressable party. And we are differentiated in the sense that we are distributors. We don't have original programming, we don't have the A-list talent to walk the red carpet to come to our Upfront brunch.

We've got you there for that. And we've gotta all tout this capability, right? It's, we're, again, we're in this same boat. We're all gonna benefit from, addressable adoption, addressable budgets, I don't wanna call it stealing share, but it's educating the brands on what's possible, right?

It's with a cable subscription from any of us, right? It's access to 450 channels. A lot of the great services, the live sports, the things that people care about and are watching. The difference is we aggregate this fragmentation. We put it all together, and, oh, by the way, we can apply first party data to it.

Isn't this a stickier, better mousetrap than spraying and praying or buying programming and reaching an audience, having waste, doing it on a demo. So it's, I've always said to folks, it's like the best part about selling Spectrum Reach [00:36:00] is you're running ads in the programs that people are watching.

You're no longer selling a program hoping people tune in, trying to drive viewership to it, right? Like our channels and our ads are served into homes that are watching. ESPN, they're watching Bravo, they're watching Comedy Central, right? They can still choose what content they want to consume. The great part is we've got equitable access to all of that with our first party data applied to it.

Evan Shapiro: And that goes back to this idea that not all ads are created equal. You're talking about comparing that to a lot of the rest of the streaming ecosystem. But on the flip side, it's so much. Different from the walled gardens who are grading their own homework and not necessarily providing as much transparency because they have such scale they just hold everybody a bit hostage to keep coming back.

Dan Callahan: Yeah. It's those titles. It's, again, it's I don't know. Some of the subscription services, you asked the question yesterday. We always referred to 'em as resort towns, right? You'd buzz in for a week, you'd hit the go on the rides you'd hit the ski slopes, and then you'd come back next winter when the fresh powder hit again.

[00:37:00] It's that churn

Evan Shapiro: A great analogy

Dan Callahan: is real. That come in and come out is real. Where cable and aggregation is macro serving. It's something for everybody. It's lean in viewing. It's great entertainment programming, live sports, and then, yes, probably an element of channel surfing and news consumption, but it's all in one place.

I think that's the other thing that's gonna come out this year about the, just the user experience. We've talked a little bit about the discoverability of programs, how hard it's to toggle into one place and out another place. I hope you bring up the NFL bit of like, how hard is it gonna be on a Sunday if you're going into one streaming service to watch the 1 o'clock game, but you want to flip channels to go watch the other game and it's stuck in another service. It takes you 15 minutes to get there. Maybe.

Evan Shapiro: Or behind a pay. Yeah, no, that I was, before you got on, we were talking about how literally every single Upfront presentation except for one, all had the NFL. And how's that a point of differentiation anymore?

It's really just now table stakes. You gotta pay billions and billions of dollars to get the [00:38:00] NFL. Your point is we're agnostic. We have all of the programming. Yeah. So you can reach, all of these consumers across it. You've been in that business a minute. Yes. You look younger, I think, than you are.

You came from broadcast. Now you're in pay tv. What do you think? Where are we as an industry? Take a step, take your Spectrum Reach hat off for a second. And as a player and a, as a participant and as a community member and as a leader in this industry, where are we and where do you think we're going?

Where do you think we'll be three Upfronts from now?

Dan Callahan: I think the industry has gone through multiple phases of identity or rediscovery of itself, right? You want D to C with paywalls and no ads and then all of the ad free stuff. Were like, hang on a second, the ads thing works. Let's put ads back in.

You saw a lot of these platforms look to just aggregate titles and have mass scale and something for everybody. There's now a pivot back to niche, and we want the best and the [00:39:00] high quality stuff, and we wanna really attract certain audiences to come in and watch certain programs. They tried to all come up with enough stuff to be the one provider that everybody needed.

The fact of the matter is no one can do that. The NFL as you said, is now spread across a lot of things. Great shows are across a variety of networks as it always was. So you find yourself needing to describe to an average of seven, I think is what we read, yeah. That's more expensive than cable.

So from my hat and when I came here, it was really bullish on the moment in time of cable and a return to bundling, a return to the utility of services of connectivity. The ability to bring in this video package that does have everything that you're looking for in one place. So I, I do think we will continue to see the cable model become stronger again.

Consumers seeing the value in not just the price points and the access, but the ease of which they can get to what they want to consume quickly and efficiently. So I'm bullish on the paywalls coming down further. Ads coming back into the content and [00:40:00] really, cable in, its, former sense becoming the preferred method of subscription, once again to get access to everything you wanna consume.

Evan Shapiro: You've been Charter, Spectrum. I've been really impressed. You look at what Chris and your team did with Disney a little while ago. Basically resetting the market and dictating the new terms.

And now this Cox deal that's coming up, which, we won't go into too much detail about, but there is a sense of real leadership at your company in a moment where I feel like sometimes there's an absence of it and you as a leader in the industry has evolved, your approach to the marketplace as well.

If you were talking to somebody who was just entering the industry now and was interested in ad sales, what would the advice be that you would give to them?

Dan Callahan: Oof. Be patient, be curious, ask a lot of questions. I think it's the only constant, I say this to all the folks on the team is the only constant these days is change.

So what I love about our [00:41:00] leadership and what I love about that, that Disney deal you mentioned happened while I was still at Fox at my old job, and I do remember looking at, they'd be like, holy cow. And it validated distribution model, this connection company. Even if you cut the cord, hey, you still need internet, right? You still need these services to consume your now a la carte version of a cable bundle.

So I'm like, okay. That was just again, a confirmation of some stuff that we were already sensing or speculating. So things are gonna change, right? I don't think I, I would recommend like a place to start, but it's get in, start learning. Challenge yourself.

I had a great boss once who always said, once you're comfortably chewing what you've taken a bite of, take a bigger bite. 'cause it's a massive space and there's a ton of opportunity whether you start on the streaming side or the traditional TV side. There's no wrong way to learn the business.

And I always admire folks that start on the agency side too, right? You drink out of a fire hose. You get exposed to a lot. You learn about the various services and ad opportunities. So that's always a great place to start. If I were to suggest getting in on one side of the [00:42:00] business and, making a network and making friends, but, I do love this industry. I love this business, and as much as we talk about machines and algorithms it still is made up of a great community of people and it's a fun business to be in.

Marion Ranchet: So it seems like Spectrum gets to have it both ways. You can employ a national footprint and get hyperlocal.

Why does that matter?

Dan Callahan: We often say hyperlocal was the first form of addressability, right? When you were targeting a certain community, a certain market. And that still matters, right? We talked about outcomes yesterday and outside of a handful of big companies that maybe exist in the cloud and can, have goods and packages, ushered to your house, outcomes are oftentimes still driven by folks in a location going to a business. Taking an action on the ground.

So that hyper localness matters. I think it's the best of both worlds for us to have an, a national footprint that's sizable across the country, that we can do audience [00:43:00] addressable. And we've begun to combine both where we're starting to do local addressable and we're taking certain markets for certain businesses that exist in the Southeast. Or on the West Coast.

We're able to do audience targeting and geographic targeting by the makeup of our footprint and our subscriber base. So it is really excellent to, in my honest opinion, be able to serve the two best types of targeting hyperlocal and first party deterministic audience Addressable.

Marion Ranchet: Because there's one thing that is very poor digital is the fact that the medium is open, so to say, or accessible to everyone. And TV doesn't feel like that. So that ability to go local, does that also mean that potentially you can have small and medium sized businesses investing with you guys?

Dan Callahan: Oh, absolutely. Small, medium sized businesses. Tier three automotive, local grocery stores, tourism boards. Hospital healthcare services. Those are all massive pieces of business for us. And again it's been fun for me to learn about the local side of our business, lean into that more because there is such [00:44:00] a power of being in the community.

Our local sellers in those markets grew up there. They're part of the DNA and the fabric of that community. They know their clients' relationships there matter as much as they do on the national side. So it's really special to be a business operator ourselves in those markets.

Marion Ranchet: If you can share, can I ask you if CTV, can they do that too or?

Dan Callahan: Yes, absolutely. It's, we've got a lot of great data and I don't wanna butcher it. What I love is we have this slide that we call Only, Only, Both, right? So it's homes that only have a set top box, stream homes that are only streaming, and then homes that do both.

The numbers broadly are similar, where it's about 50 50, let's say linear to streaming. The folks that are streaming is probably 20 to 30%. The folks that have both are another 20, 25, 30%. Linear set top box, again, depending on the market, is roughly 50%. As you would guess it, it changes by geography. There's more set top boxes in certain markets, more streaming homes in certain markets, but that directional flow of how[00:45:00] the consumer is connecting to Spectrum TV, Spectrum Reach is pretty consistent across the board. So CTV on a hyperlocal level is a very real thing.

Evan Shapiro: What when we did before you got on, we Marion and I were discussing one of the major problems that buyers seem to have right now, which is just an utter lack of transparency in the marketplace from the providers, and it feels like you are charging straight at that problem.

Dan Callahan: A hundred percent. I think, whether it's transparency in the data, transparency in the programming, the content by network, day, parts, selling title. These are table stakes, right?

We're all making, these brands are making billion dollar decisions with these budgets to show up in these places. And I look I, we oftentimes say, maybe ask these things of your streaming media, right? Are you live, are you long form, right? There's those sort of check boxes of premiumness that maybe still is a little bit ambiguous or broad, but transparency into who you're targeting and transparency into what they're watching.

As an industry, we've [00:46:00] gotta hold ourselves to a higher standard. Those are things that we wanna pass. I think there's, there still is a little bit of a race to a lowest common denominator of just broad genre. Or, this type of show, maybe it's animated, maybe it's comedy. Hey, look I would push us to all, hopefully do better, ask the right questions but we believe in passing transparency into the content and in the data.

Evan Shapiro: Cool.

Marion Ranchet: I feel inspired by Dan. Sorry, Dan, we're meeting right now, but I love it. No, but it's important because I'm listening to you and this ecosystem we're in more globally, right? Screens, fragmentation, and we spoke about why you're doing Go Addressable, how you working with your competitors, et cetera.

Man, everyone should be doing that. I'm really sick and tired of those walled gardens. They're not serving anyone, right? So short term serving themselves, but no one in the long run. So what you're doing is tough but hopefully you'll be rewarded, right? At least you have our vote, right Evan?

Evan Shapiro: Yes, absolutely.

Dan Callahan: Those were the two I was going for today. So we're glad we have [00:47:00] those two, but thank you.

Marion Ranchet: Cool.

Evan Shapiro: And I'm a subscriber too.

Dan Callahan: Yes.

Evan Shapiro: Well, this is great conversation. Thanks so much. Thanks so much to Go Addressable for the assignment to chart the addressable universe. It was a lot of fun.

I've been saving the periodic table as a design element for the right assignment, and this turned out to be it. But thanks to you guys for being such great partners on this. And you did a great job yesterday at the event. You were, you really recapped the day incredibly well.

Dan Callahan: Thank you as well. Always fun to see you at events and appreciate all the work you do on behalf of the industry, but certainly the addressable side of it. Continuing to help be our press agent if we can even call you that. But appreciate it.

Evan Shapiro: Well, you know, I try.

Marion Ranchet: Thank you for joining us.

Well, that was a great episode, right Evan?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it was. Dan's a great guest but I feel like we really hit the heart of what is the debate inside the television advertising economy right now.

Marion Ranchet: It's actually even more complicated than you think because if you look at it, we've [00:48:00] been talking a lot about TV versus digital and then we, when we go within tv, you have tv, CTV, addressable tv, but hopefully everyone will be coming out of this episodes having learnt a ton, and you weren't breaking bad on us with this periodic table.

I love it.

Evan Shapiro: Like I said, I've been waiting to do that design for the right assignment and this turned out to be that. But I also love the idea that table and this trade organization Go Addressable is so focused on data first. Yeah. And that to me is the key to success in advertising right now.

So thanks so much for coming back from vacation with us on the Media Odyssey Podcast. Once again, that is Marion Ranchet. And your newsletter is called what?

Marion Ranchet: Streaming Made Easy. How about your's Evan?

Evan Shapiro: Mine is Media War and Peace. You can get it wherever you get, actually on Substack, we know where it is.

So it's great to see you again. I'm glad we're back together and I'm glad we're going on a lot of travels together in the coming weeks.

Marion Ranchet: I love it. We were on a break, but just the four weeks.

Evan Shapiro: Wow. [00:49:00] That's a good reference. Alright, thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Media Odyssey Podcast.