GUEST POST: Steve Schildwachter, rVue
Having spent the entire day and evening at the DPAA’s Video Everywhere Summit in New York on Tuesday, I thought I’d add some points to Dave’s whirlwind report of his two hours at the conference.
My overall impression was summarized nicely in a quote from media industry analyst Rich Greenfield, who observed that “TV is soft in a relatively strong ad market, which makes Digital Place-Based interesting.” Jack Myers added that DPB’s double-digit growth makes it “a good business to be in right now”. As evidence, a lot of agency media planners showed up.
As Dave observed, many of these agency folk complained about the state of DPB audience measurement. Yes, the industry needs better answers, and I should point out Nielsen was there. Advertisers want reassurance that DPB will deliver eyeballs.
DPB should also deliver engagement, which is often catalyzed by Mobile, but the panel on Mobile delivered an embarrassing moment when the moderator asked for examples of great campaigns that combined DPB and Mobile. The answer was silence.
I followed up by asking the panelists, a mix of advertisers and agencies, what the barriers are to making these DPB + Mobile campaigns happen. The answer was “we don’t know if it will work.” So I suggested a test case and the answer was “we don’t know if it will scale.”
Take heart, Digital Place-Based fans: We will connect with people who have a little more imagination and courage.
Another theme of the day was having the right message, or right creative execution, not just the right medium. (This cartoon on the subject was circulating among attendees.) It’s hard for clients and agencies to keep up with the myriad creative formats required across TV, Online, Mobile and Digital Place-Based, and like it or not, we’re last on that project list right now.
Because advertisers are juggling so many options, it’s impossible to sell Digital Place-Based effectively unless you understand the client’s overall media mix. So it was good that the conference agenda included topics like programmatic media buying and multi-screen media strategies.
I admit this could be patience-testing for some people. At one point another attendee complained that the programmatic panel wasn’t explicitly talking about DPB Media. That could be because DPB isn’t bought and sold programmatically. But we still need to understand it because our clients are thinking about it. There’s a whole media ecosystem out there. DPB won’t develop alone in its own petri dish.
Kudos to Barry Frey, who clearly has a game show host living inside him somewhere, for bringing not only great content, but great energy to a day well spent.