The Media Odyssey

TMO - Spectrum Cannes (audio)
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Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] And I'm interested in both of what you have to say, but you are a true unicorn here at Cannes. You are a buyer and we have you cornered in the Spectrum Reach apartment. We've locked the doors.

Welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast from Cannes Lions. That is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: And this is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: So this is as we talked about earlier today, we did another podcast episode earlier today. This is your first Cannes Lions.

Marion Ranchet: It is.

Evan Shapiro: And we talked about your first impressions there, the act, huge activations.

We did stop by the LinkedIn activation. What'd you think of the LinkedIn activation?

Marion Ranchet: They needed us to boost it up a little. Not much was happening, sorry, LinkedIn.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Microsoft definitely needs our help. But I tested out my theory. I had felt that there was this weird, anxious attitude, but a [00:01:00] bounce back kind of new renewed optimism here on the Croisette at Cannes Lions, and I tested that out since I saw you last.

Marion Ranchet: Okay. What did people say?

Evan Shapiro: And yeah there, I have heard from a number of both sides, sell side, buy side that they feel there's a weird corner that's been turned in the year for some reason. Maybe it's because our president is really coming through with the TACO and is ultimately, people are betting that things are gonna even out or, I don't know exactly what the rationale is, but there does seem to be a renewed optimism here in the Croisette.

But you've been paying attention to the news that's been breaking here? I have not.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah you do the feeling and then I do the news.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I do the emotion, exactly. What are the news stories out of Cannes Lions that you've been following so far?

Marion Ranchet: So I'm a bit biased. The one that I saw that really caught my attention is the one between Sky, Channel 4, and ITV. I think it's an interesting one because I think in the UK, the market is super, super advanced, but they still need to figure out an easy way to bring SMBs [00:02:00] to TV. So essentially with this announcement they're actually making it easy for SMBs to buy across Sky, Channel 4, and ITV. And as we know in Europe, linear TV is not dead yet.

Evan Shapiro: It's not dead yet. No. It's very much alive.

It's very interesting though. The oldest televisions in the world is in the UK, but their ad market is still relatively immature. They don't have this kind of automated SMB, it's not as prevalent in the UK as it is in the US. Which is, I think, an interesting segue. Also, there's been a couple of news stories been made about Amazon.

Here on the closet that we talked about.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, we'll chat about that.

Evan Shapiro: So we'll, we're gonna ask some of our guests that I think that's a good segue to bring on our guests. Shall we do? Let's bring on Dave Campanelli from Horizon Media and Dan Callahan from Spectrum Reach. So welcome our guests, Dan Callahan from Spectrum Reach, Group Vice President of National Accounts.

Yeah.

Dan Callahan: Yes sir.

Evan Shapiro: And Dave Campanelli, President of Global Investments at Horizon Media.

Dave Campanelli: That's right. Thank you very much for having [00:03:00] me.

Evan Shapiro: So you heard, 'cause this apartment is too small. Thank you, Spectrum Reach, for you not to have heard us talking about the mood here on the Croisette. And I always find that period, that kind of weird nether period between the Upfronts in May and June at Cannes Lions to be this strange temperature read for the year.

And I'm interested in both of what you have to say, but you are a true unicorn here at Cannes. You are a buyer and we have you cornered in the Spectrum Reach apartment. We've locked the doors. But I'd love to hear what you're hearing both in the mood and the Upfront and the mood here, generally speaking on the Croisette.

Dave Campanelli: Yeah. For the Upfront I think there's two themes that we're seeing in the Upfront to start with. Sports, and maybe it sounds cliche, but sports is just dominating the conversation. Everyone who's registering budgets and everyone who's selling sports is rushing to the table to get their, secure what they need in sports and everything else is dragging along behind it.

And that's been the case to some extent for the last several years. But [00:04:00] by far this year it's, it is just like the driver of the Upfront. And I think without that, the Upfront would be a much more subdued marketplace, but it's so strong. Super Bowl's heavily sold to, sold out already and I think that was, that's obviously way ahead of pace. It's usually in the fall where before it sells out. So it's been sports one.

And I think the second part is the currency question. I think it's maybe become my least favorite topic of conversation is alternative currencies. But everyone was ready to jump onto Nielsen Big Data.

And now questions are coming up.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. There are some glitches there in the past.

Dave Campanelli: There's some glitches, there's a lot of inconsistencies in the numbers, and big leaps in other areas. Big declines on some networks. There was a meeting with MRC and the buy side last week in Nielsen.

I think the VAB and networks in Nielsen are having a meeting or had a meeting to discuss it. So a little bit TBD on the rollout.

Evan Shapiro: This is not the first time that's happened. They were decredited, unaccredited, whatever you would [00:05:00] call it, a couple years ago. And I made some noise about this a little while ago.

And what do you think it means for the multicurrency world? I posited to you, I think at one point when we were talking about this, the concept that the buyer gets to choose the currency and it's gonna wind up being different currencies for different campaigns often within the same brand or from different agencies.

Is that how you feel like it's gonna run?

Dave Campanelli: That is how we have approached it for quite some time now. We are very comfortable horizon living in a multicurrency world. We unfortunately, or maybe fortunately work in an industry where it moves in monolith too much. It's very hard to do something different when you don't have acceptance from the sell side and other buyers.

So when we go to market and we try to buy an alternate, alternative currencies. Some sellers may adopt it, some won't. Some will adopt it for advanced targets. Some will adopt it for demos. So it's really hard to get any kind of consistency, even from our end to go to tell a client, Hey, we're gonna transact [00:06:00] on an alternative currency. But then we can only do it with three network groups and the other three we can't.

So it's a very, it's still in a very murky place. And and it's been, it's just been a real challenge over the last few years.

Marion Ranchet: I heard you say that you fill out, there's a lot of numbers, too many numbers that we're getting almost, overloaded.

So what does, what are the metrics that matter to you as a buyer?

Dave Campanelli: At the end of the day, performance is what counts. We can measure things by how many people are watching and the subs of a streamer, but really did our ad placements work. So the measurement of that is what's critically important.

And tying back to the multicurrency conversation, that means something different for every advertiser. So you're not gonna have one solution for that for the marketplace. Which again is another reason why we want to get there, we wanna get to a point where we're transacting with partners in terms of outcomes and not in measuring the number of views.

And so based on that, we're okay if we count the measure of views in VideoAmp or iSpot or Nielsen Panel or [00:07:00] Nielsen Big Data. 'cause that's not really, that's a proxy for it, but we really want to get to the measurement of it. So that's where we'd like to get to it.

Evan Shapiro: Dan, what's your approach on the multicurrency world?

Do you, when someone comes to you and says, we, this is the currency we want to measure this campaign on, are you open to working with various currencies or are you really trying to stick to one?

Dave Campanelli: No, we do today. We support both Nielsen and Comscore and then certainly lean very heavily on our own first party data.

So our addressable business has been taken off year over year. If I had my preference. I would suggest that everybody help move to our addressable first party data set. But happy to support Comscore, happy to support Nielsen and, understanding Dave's points. And like you said, the buyers get to make the decision.

We've gotta be able to be nimble somewhat interoperable in a multicurrency world.

Evan Shapiro: And are, and is this the same way on, on measurement? David, you were talking about, I think really more of an outcome. Some clients are more of an outcome based buying state of mind. Is that something that your footprint can lean into is outcomes based measurement with that level [00:08:00] of data that you have?

Dan Callahan: A thousand percent. I think if you look at Spectrum, and a lot of conversations along the Croisette here this week are about full funnel, right? And what TV's role is in

Evan Shapiro: Another phrase that becomes meaningless unless you put real definition around it.

Dan Callahan: Yes. So TV's always been this branding mechanism, reach, awareness. Then you've got mid-funnel, you've got low funnel. What I love about what Spectrum is able to do right, is we've got massive reach from a linear television standpoint. We can dive into geographical targeting, right? Where we have very large markets, people in those markets going directly to auto dealerships, QSRs, restaurants, driving.

Again, action and outcome are people taking those actions? Are they going to those medium to small businesses? And then addressable, right? So that's the cherry on top where you're able to track exposure, tie it back, website visits, attribution, really that digital, deterministic data set that ties it all together.

Evan Shapiro: Which is a real differentiator out there in the marketplace. You, Michael Guth, your CMO, and I were talking before the recording here in the Spectrum Reach apartment. Thank you very much Spectrum Reach. Gotta plug [00:09:00] it.

Dan Callahan: How many times? How many times are you?

Evan Shapiro: Gotta advertise. No, I know, you're CEO Michael drives a hard bargain. Pays attention. Exactly. But that you're able now to represent Amazon inventory in the markets across your footprint which, and then commingle the data to get an even deeper deterministic level of data for each campaign as well.

Is that true?

Dave Campanelli: Yes. The Amazon partnership has been tremendous. When we were looking at the different options, if you will, of streamers who had a massive ad supported viewership, Amazon was so complimentary to us from a reach standpoint, it was truly additive to what we sell. We've got, a great size of inventory ourselves. We've got other affiliates and partners that we work with. Amazon was that missing piece now where it's, I would say holistically, maybe added 35% on average across the market.

So it really has been well received, not only by our sellers and our teams, but also by the local brands that have been buying local TV from us.

This is a pure add-on and is an additional impression in their market.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I know we're not breaking news with that announcement, but I mean it's,

Dan Callahan: We've gotta promote it.

Evan Shapiro: I don't know a lot of people understood that you're combining those, does that make a difference when you're [00:10:00] making those decisions?

Does that make a difference? Something like that?

Dave Campanelli: Yeah, it does. That and also the Amazon Roku announcement we referenced earlier, it is a really good signal of some big players in the marketplace with Spectrum and Roku and Amazon working together and not being walled gardens. Not being our solution is the only solution you can.

If you wanna use our data, you gotta buy from us and we're gonna keep it in this little contained area. It's about sharing data, it's about allowing us access to these larger data sets which is a really good sign I think, moving forward. And gets to what we were talking about earlier.

It's a nice step towards how do you solve for some of this stuff across the walled gardens? And it really is those walled garden pulling down the walls and and making that data available to buyers.

Evan Shapiro: You talk about the walled gardens, the data there, and I asked you about this during our prep. They're grading their own homework. And yet, 60% of all ad buys or some large number of percentage depending on who [00:11:00] you ask, are going to the big walled gardens Amazon, who we just talked about sharing data and really opening that up a little bit. But Google and Meta and particular, feelings on that?

As a buyer, it's easy. I shared a slide during a speech the other day that showed in 1975, the top 10 shows on broadcast got half a billion viewers, which is how Don Draper could drink at work. He bought 10 shows. Now it's we can just buy these three walled gardens and drink at work again.

Is it not that easy or do you not see, as a buyer, do you not see it as simple or do you see it as bad for the industry perhaps?

Dave Campanelli: It is more simple in some ways and much more difficult and complicated in other ways. So a couple things. One, they do grade their own homework. We grade their own homework.

Evan Shapiro: Like on performance or?

Dave Campanelli: Yeah, we have our own tools that measure our campaign's performance within their ecosystems, but not outside of it. And we're building tools to try and equalize that across walled gardens to try and get to a more universal measurement. And that's really [00:12:00] the agency and analytics challenge.

So it is problematic 'cause what you're optimizing against is how well your campaign is, your Google campaign is performing against previous Google campaigns, not against everything else. 'cause there's no real metric to do that.

So it is easier to say, Hey, we can spend a ton of money with meta and it's one buyer, one interface and they can, run the campaign.

But, measuring that effectiveness and measuring that effectiveness against, again, upper funnel metrics like television is a much different animal, and that's again, part of the puzzle that we're trying to solve for, and there is an effectiveness to being in user generated content or short form content, but we know there's an effectiveness to premium, long form television and running 30 second premium ads that get awards at Cannes Lions in that content.

And we know that has a positive impact. We're not able to tie it down to the exact click through [00:13:00] the way that a Meta is, but it's getting all of that work to work together. So it would be very easy just to say, yeah, we'll just run this and like we, our Meta campaign performed a little bit better than it did last year, but that would be ignoring everything else that we need to do.

Marion Ranchet: And so what makes your, 'cause we're at the Cannes festival. What does make ads better? Is the creatives, do they still matter? 'cause we're we hear a lot about data metric, et cetera. What's that little, emotion? Does that still have an impact?

Dan Callahan: Yeah, look, I think creative is still extremely important.

We're in the business for a lot of our advertisers. 23,000 local advertisers we've made and shot over 15,000 creative, right? So understanding, again what's in the message, what's the call to action. We work with Waymark, which is an AI generative company that makes these creatives in minutes. Really impressive technology. So creative matters what's in this?

Evan Shapiro: Can we click on that for a second?

Dan Callahan: Yeah, I would love to.

Evan Shapiro: You just said you made 15,000 ads or some crazy made up number like that.

Dan Callahan: Not me personally.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. But explain that. 'Cause I think we toss, [00:14:00] those of us, I try to explain what Cannes Lions is to people who are not in the ad industry. Even people who are in the media industry. Marion had never been to Cannes Lions before 'cause she's pre predominantly been on tech side or the content side.

Marion Ranchet: Content, yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And MIPCOM, which is here, is nothing like this.

So I try to explain things like generative AI and its advances in advertising and I think we move so fast by it. It's become so normal for us. But explain what that means.

Dan Callahan: So for Waymark and the AI creation of ads we did something really cool two weeks ago at the ANA conference in Naples, right where we sat down with Ernst & Young and Plante Moran.

We ingested their brand brief simultaneously to our architect audience platform, planning the media across linear and streaming. Waymark was doing the same thing with those brand briefs. Plante Moran was looking to reach a tax audit professional, and E&Y was looking to reach, CTOs and technology professionals.

What was really cool is we both, went to our computers, did our work over the course of two or three hours, and we were from planning concept to live on the air within 72 hours.

Evan Shapiro: Wow.

Dan Callahan: So when you [00:15:00] think about just the time, right? And hearing those CMOs say, wow, this used to take four months, right?

Like from ideation to creation. The fact of, the people still are the inputs, right? You still have thoughtful creative, you still need to be human generated, but the AI, just the efficiencies and you can throw it out, you can scrap it, you can say shoot it again. Do it differently. So the ability to just produce more in an efficient manner hopefully makes us all better and stronger at our jobs.

Evan Shapiro: Do you see that infiltrating your workflow as much? That's a creative exploitation of it, but how are you seeing AI creep into your world?

Dave Campanelli: Yeah, so on. So on the buying side, we're buying agents. We have a creative division, but it's relatively small relative to the size of our buying operation.

What we're really leaning into, related to that is creative scoring, assembly and scoring. So we're not gonna build the creative assets, but using AI tools to assemble those assets in a variety of ways to reach different audiences or to appeal to different audiences and then [00:16:00] scoring how effective those ads are.

That's what we're really pushing forward, so we can do those when there are 15,000 different versions of it to iterate.

Evan Shapiro: So that's like mini AB testing within the spot itself. Is that different segments of the ad based on how it performs?

Dave Campanelli: Yeah. On the fly. Correct, yeah. Different elements of the ad assembled a different way, or if you have, whatever, a hundred different pieces, assets to combine these seven, create this ad and put and put it out. And that's more display digital.

Evan Shapiro: And that's digital video and digital television

Dave Campanelli: Primary display right now.

Evan Shapiro: Got it.

Dave Campanelli: But but we'll be video as well and so we're pushing for in that way.

And then, and I guess the start of the question was, does creative matter? I think it matters more than ever, and blending or matching the creative and the tone and feel of the creative with the content you're in, is more important there and more and more easily to be enabled than ever.

Go back years. There was ways to insert, digitally insert a carton of orange juice in the middle of a Will and grace syndicated episode. It's essentially the same thing or a similar thing, [00:17:00] but obviously with AI now it's just seamless. And you can match that in a way that obviously we never could in the past.

That's just more and more important.

Marion Ranchet: Fascinating.

Evan Shapiro: I, but I will challenge that though, that, they, that's contextual. And how important is contextual? Can you, can, do you sell contextual to the content you're in? I know that you do, but like, how do you, when you look at your entire footprint and someone says to you, I want a sports buy.

Do you, how do you put that into play across your entire footprint? Or I want a contextual against, let's say, not news, but daytime talk. How do you put that into play across your entire footprint when you have, how many homes do you cross right now?

Dan Callahan: We cross 30 million homes and yes, contextual is a big part of it, right?

Sports, like Dave mentioned, is in high demand. College football for us, Monday night football, even NHL playoffs. So we sell sports either by market or full footprint. So again, we can carve that, target it. I think contextual is great, certainly when you're looking to maybe do some broad inclusions exclusions.

What I love about what we're able to deliver is we can go deeper, right? So we can [00:18:00] actually go down to selling title, we can go down to network. I think we provide a greater level of transparency than maybe the marketplace has been willing to adopt at the moment, right? Contextual seems normal. Everybody's comfortable with it to some degree. We speak the same language in what those definitions mean, so it's helpful. We do a lot of it, but I would love to see us continue to push and the buyers continue to push to go deeper.

Dave Campanelli: Yeah. It's even, it's a, it is a step further than contextual now.

It's mood and it is the, you're coming out of a scene of a show that has a particular mood and your spot is gonna match that mood. And we've all watched some dramatic scene and you're crying and then you know, some ad starts blaring in.

Evan Shapiro: Scratch. Yeah.

Dave Campanelli: Yeah. So to avoid that and prevent that and really match the mood, maybe you don't want to a depressing scene, but match the mood is the evolution of that of contextual.

Evan Shapiro: And that's how you take media itself as a science to that next level.

Dave Campanelli: Correct. Yes. Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And that's how you're selling more often than not.

Dan Callahan: We're not down to mood yet. I love it. I think we need to get there.

I do [00:19:00] completely agree. As a consumer you want to see maybe more ads in tone with how you're feeling or what you're viewing. I think that would probably provide better ROAs, but yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And pretty advanced. That's really where reative does come into play is you want the, you look at the, some of the ads that you see in some of the sports programs and they don't feel like they fit there.

And then the others, you get one of the Kelsey Brothers or somebody else coming out, Saquon Barkley coming out into the ads from the game itself. Not really, but it just works better.

If you could boil down your takeaway from Cannes Lions this week so far, and I know it's still early on into one word, what would it be?

Dave Campanelli: Into one word? Oh, that was, I wasn't expecting one word. I was gonna go.

Evan Shapiro: Oh, you can go longer.

Marion Ranchet: Give you one sentence.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Although one word would be cooler.

Dave Campanelli: I would say so far, for me, and day and a half in, I would take collaboration.

Evan Shapiro: That's one word.

Evan Shapiro: That's one word.

Marion Ranchet: Good.

Dave Campanelli: We've had a lot of conversations that I think buy side and sell side collaboration on how to move things forward.[00:20:00]

Evan Shapiro: I think that's one of the things that's we've been snagged on for a couple years, especially as a, the move to connected television has been that collaboration.

Marion Ranchet: How about you, Dan?

Dan Callahan: Early, can I do two words?

Evan Shapiro: Sure.

Dan Callahan: It would be ROAs and attention. I think there's been more conversations around attention. You talked a lot about the other format, social, right?

Some of the studies that say, one 30 second commercial and television site sound in motion equates to one and a half YouTube ads, maybe four and a half Facebook feed ads and maybe 40 digital ads, right? So understanding, again, what are you buying, how much does it cost? And then what's the return on the ad spend?

I think that's certainly an acronym that was used a lot early in my career, but I've heard it more in the last 24 hours than I had over the last three years.

Evan Shapiro: Fascinating.

Marion Ranchet: So my question for you guys is what's coming next? 'cause this is all fine and dandy. We're gonna have lots of fun in the next few days. But, what's gonna keep you busy in the next few months? What's the main thing you're gonna be focused on?

Dave Campanelli: I don't know if it's the main thing, but I, [00:21:00] something that has come up a lot lately and maybe top of mind 'cause it's conversations I've had here as well, but I really think there's an overhaul happening in the programmatic space.

The I think CTV has changed how programmatic works and the ad server to SSP to DSP to buyer and all those hops and everyone taking a piece along the way.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, a lot of facts.

Marion Ranchet: Famous ad tech tax.

Dave Campanelli: Correct. And in a display world, when there's a million, literally infinite number of inventory sources versus CTV where there's 50, 30, 60 publishers that you care about.

Evan Shapiro: In the US, Yeah.

Dave Campanelli: It's a different, it's a different game. And do we need all of the help to get to the publishers? Or not? I can just call Dan and we can do a deal. I don't need to go through all these hops.

Evan Shapiro: Do you think that's gonna change?

Dave Campanelli: I think it is changing. The players within this space are the

Evan Shapiro: There is a fatigue.

Dave Campanelli: The DSPs and [00:22:00] SSPs and ad service who have all kind of played nicely are starting to tread on each other's territory and it's getting interesting.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I don't usually ask that question of buyers on in these types of public forum 'cause they don't necessarily want to talk about it.

But yeah, it does feel like this is gotta come to a close. 'cause everyone's tired of it.

Dave Campanelli: I come from the TV side from years ago and relatively new to the programatic side. So maybe I don't know what I shouldn't say, but I'm gonna say it because it's something that's happening.

Marion Ranchet: That makes for a perfect guest.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it does.

Marion Ranchet: Keep at it.

Dave Campanelli: Just get myself in trouble.

Evan Shapiro: We're happy to get you in trouble.

Marion Ranchet: How about you, Dan?

Dave Campanelli: Yeah. No. Look, we're, we traditionally start our upfront negotiations later, after a lot of the big networks do theirs. So we've got a few months worth of work ahead of us continuing to promote our addressable capabilities and our full footprint opportunities.

So we'll be selling like crazy hopefully through the next couple months.

Marion Ranchet: Nice. So as we were talking with you guys here in Cannes Lions, we just heard some news from Spectrum Reach. Dan, do you wanna share with us what happened?

Dan Callahan: Yeah, I found out here in Cannes that I was promoted to Chief Revenue Officer, so pretty excited to

Evan Shapiro: Congrats.

Dave Campanelli: Congratulations.

Evan Shapiro: Our silent [00:23:00] audience can clap.

Dave Campanelli: That's awesome. Congratulations.

Marion Ranchet: I think it's our cue to wrap up this episode and open champagne, right? I think that's it.

Evan Shapiro: Rose Champagne. Well, thank you both for coming. Dan Callahan. Spectrum Reach. Dave Campanelli from Horizon. This has been great.

Thank you, Spectrum Reach for hosting us at your apartment in Cannes on the Croisette. This is Marion Ranchet, and your newsletter is called

Marion Ranchet: Streaming Made Easy on Substack.

Evan Shapiro: and I'm

Marion Ranchet: and yours. You're Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: I am Evan Shapiro:

Marion Ranchet: Everyone knows that, I should stop presenting this guy.

And your newsletter is?

Evan Shapiro: Media War and Peace, also on Substack.

Thank you so much. It's been great coming to you from the Croisette. We've got one more to record.

We'll see you soon.