While TV’s most visible transformation over the last decade may have been consumer migration to multiple screens and a change in viewership behaviors, an equally transformative evolution has been happening behind the scenes: the use of data to make reaching precise audiences via TV advertising easier. An explosion of new tools are now available for advertisers looking to combine the reach across premium content with the targeting and attribution tools they have come to expect from Big Tech. OpenAP CEO David Levy sat down with Ryan McConville, EVP & Chief Product Officer, Advertising Platforms & Operations at NBCUniversal, to discuss the power of first-party data in reaching audiences across platforms.

For so long, video advertising has been a bimodal ecosystem: there was Big Media with its massive reach and premium content prime for reaching large swaths of audience, and Big Tech–characterized by its user-generated content and walled gardens to drive primarily lower funnel outcomes. But technology has evolved, and those two worlds have collided. “There is an opportunity for [media companies], as we start to develop these ‘Big Tech’ capabilities, to do it in a newer and smarter way,” McConville stated.

Advertisers asked and media companies answered, and now the message to advertisers is clear: now is the time to lean in and take advantage of the technology and capabilities available to be more precise about reaching audiences and proving ROI. Clients ahead of the curve, McConville explains, already are. “The smartest clients, instead of treating TV as the old-school “Big Media” bucket and using the old tools, are bringing the new tools to bear in these premium environments,” he stated. Leaned-in advertisers and agencies are applying data to targeting and lower funnel measurement, standing up clean rooms, and investing in automation and DSPs.

“For a long time, we’ve all suspected that TV drives lower funnel outcomes. Now we have the data to prove that is the case.”

- Ryan McConville