How Are Data Quality And Supply-Side Intelligence Changing CTV?

Okay, welcome everyone to our session on supply side intelligence. I am Tomeka Kea, I'm an advertising futurist and your moderator. Advertising futurist basically means that I spend all day thinking about how advertising is going to change the world, hopefully for the better, not for the worse. Um, and I'm so excited to have our discussion with Tom Srchavsky from Goodway Group, Tyler DiNicola from DirecTV, and Erica Loerberg from OpenX. Hi. So, our session is around the the rise of supply side intelligence and I I think So, everybody in this room, let's take a let's take a quick temperature test. I'm sure some people are from OpenX, woo. But, how many people are from the buy side in here? Crickets. Tom, it's just you. How many people How many people are from the sell side? Hands raised. How many people are from the So, if you're not buy side or sell side, in between are you a platform? Are you in between? Very cool. Um, and so, well, supply side intelligence is all about kind of bringing the decisioning closer to the inventory, bringing the decisioning closer to to the to the sell side, to the source of the audience and the source of the inventory. Um, and this this has this is a shift, I think, from sort of the way our industry has operated before. Tom, I want to start with you though. You Goodway has actually undertaken a new initiative recently, more specifically to kind of get a little bit closer. Do you want to talk about that? Sure. Uh, I wouldn't necessarily say call it new, but it is certainly revamped. And some of you guys might have have heard this already. We have what we consider what we call Good-Path, which is part philosophy, part product on our end specifically that deals with supply side intelligence. And I would like to call it SBO on steroids. I think that's the best way of thinking about it in a way. Um, we've done a case study with Jounce recently, released it last week actually, and understanding a little bit better on what it means to have quality and premium inventory in our set. And how do we get there with less intermediaries in that process? And so, the philosophy behind it was always to get to a place where the only daisy chain that makes sense for us to get to the publishers and support the creators and the content that's behind it was to make sure that the intermediaries if they're there, they're adding value in that process. I'm really happy to say that based on what John said, we're 98% of the inventory that we buy is what they would consider premium and quality. Um and we're very proud of that cuz I guess it's about 20% over the average of what they've seen. But, we always kind of looked at it more so about ensuring that quality and premium is defined by our advertisers and what does it mean for their business rather necessarily than our some arbitrary definition of premium in some way. That is the perfect segue into this question. So, I think, you know, for the past couple of years, maybe say the past 2 years in CTV, there's been this kind of push and pull in terms of what premium is and and who gets to define premium. And a lot of people say it's the buyer who gets to define premium. Tyler, would you agree with that? Uh yes, I would. 100%. Um and Tom, too, I love like hearing your definition. I will say this since you are the one buy-side person, I think, in here right now. You're the most important person I need to woo. Uh for any of you that are selling as like an extension of DirecTV, this is also important for you guys. But, hearing your definition of of premium, I think it's really great because it's not just about the content in itself. It's also how you're actually transacting against it. So, that's really important for our brand in itself and the partnerships that we work with like partners like OpenX is really trying to reduce the amount of additional players within the space that don't truly represent who we are as a brand and how premium that inventory is. Um but, on our side, too, the premium aspect, I think we struggle and I may be biased, right? Because I sit on the pub side. But, as an authenticated platform, our definition of of premium is very different than I think some of the rest of the industry looks at premium. Especially within CTV, it's very easy to say, "Okay, this is the living room, right?" So, I already have the big screen. Therefore, it's just premium in itself, and then I'm getting some IP address and device ID, but there's so much more that goes into it, and I think for us, the way we look at premium is really about transparency and what transparency we provide to buyers like yourselves. So, ensuring that you're getting both paths of uh signals both on the PI side, so you're getting all the personal identifiable data, and then you're also getting the transparency on the content side, so you can support things like brand safety as well as contextual targeting depending on how you want to slice and dice that. But, I think also authentication, so us having a a footprint that has 100% authentic authentication with subscriber base and being able to tie that into digital identity graphs and partner with partners like OpenX to just strengthen that matching is huge and critical when actually looking at what is premium. So, that makes sense. You as the You as this inventory owner with all of this great inventory, you want to kind of own the the definition of premium or at least be able to be be able to communicate it to Tom the way that you want to. Erica, we talked though, and you're like, "Premium is a useless word." [laughter] Sorry, Tyler. Do tell. Sorry. [snorts] And why why Let's explore that though. Like, what what what's driving that sentiment? Sorry, Tyler. [laughter] Um I think premium it's not useless in its entirety, but I think it's subjective to the person who's using it. And I think that's the problem that we see on the supply side when you're using it just as this blanket statement to talk about everything that's going on, that definition of it is going to change depending on who you ask. So, if you shift that from which I think you'll agree from premium to actually looking at quality and having this baseline that you're deciding that this is quality because it has X, Y, and Z. It has that authentication. It has the identifiers we're looking. It has really what you want in that environmental sense. Um it's just shifting. It's using a different word for the right definition because it has those qualifiers. No one says premium is this because it's X, Y, and Z. Someone says premium cuz they know what that content is and they're familiar and they decided. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's uh it's an interesting take and I appreciate where you're heading with [laughter] this. I don't I don't appreciate it. Uh Well, here here's where I would say they're not mutually exclusive from each other. Quality as you define is correct. That is exactly what we want. We want an authenticated. We want to make sure there's no fraud. We want to make sure there's a person on the other side. Premium is what drives our customers' business at the end of the day. If it can be verified down the line. And sometimes we confuse that with it's you know, published or it's produced very professionally. That's wonderful. That's a great thing and that's fantastic. But if I'm buying a publisher that has a late night show that is beautifully produced, but it's doing absolutely nothing for my advertiser, is it premium to my advertiser? It really isn't, right? Especially if that end process, let's say that everybody from their audience side is watching something completely different and they're resonating with something completely different. Maybe that morning show, that morning talk show is actually what's premium to them because that's what's driving their business. That's what's getting things off the shelves in some capacity. So, I do think quality as us as marketers, that is vital to our business. Like everything we buy should be quality. That's the That's the business we're in of verifying it. Premium is how do we define the strategy for our clients and how much are we willing to spend to ensure that we're actually moving their business forward? Can I can I piggyback on that? Please do. Uh and I'm and I'm kidding. Obviously, I appreciate your take. I do. I think there's so many different flavors of how you want to look at it. I mean, Tom, you said it in the beginning, too. It really is dependent on how the advertisers perceive premium as well, right? Which which supports your kind of concept on this. And but for us, I think where the premium gets a little confusion is when you're looking at price point. And that's where there's some misconceptions I think of what premium is because for a platform like DirecTV, set aside like the authenticated signals, but when you have live sports now in the mix, right? Live sports impressions or shoulder content associated that to me shouldn't then be correlated to just a bunch of tonnage inventory that's coming from an O&M that might be a lot of light like uh recycled library content. So, I think that's the piece where the premium is important to differentiate the two cuz if not Well, it's interesting. I mean, the the point you just brought up about the recycled content. Let's talk Let's talk about the the new generation Gen Z who's just discovered Gilmore Girls. Like that is And if you're trying if you're trying to reach them, right? Then that perhaps is a premium experience even though it's old content to to many of us. Erica, this is a healthy tension, right? That you were in the middle of between [laughter] the buyer and the seller. Is this is And is this kind of where a platform like OpenX can help kind of I don't know, maybe bridge this gap? Yeah, and I think that's the point we're arguing over linguistics to a certain degree. I believe you should be buying premium content. I just believe that the definition that you asked the person, which is basically what you said, premium's not the same to everyone, which makes it a hard hard when you go into a platform like us to say, "I'm going to buy premium." Okay, what does that look like to you? When you're adding this I don't know, intelligent way of looking at that quality metric that's actually going to get you to something that's a giving you a value point on premium, that's getting you to that level. And that's where we can all agree then, cool. All quality is doing is telling you're buying those things that are important to you. Um you're getting it in the way you want you want, and that's going to be in a way to equate the inventory or value in a different way. So, when we look at it, a big piece of what we're doing is trying to give that transparency across the board so you can equate that quality, premium, whatever you're going to call it, um whatever you're both going to attack me on, um [laughter] and just make sure we're on the same page. Yes, DIRECTV is a name recognition brand with a good user base. That comes at a price point. Um if that your user base is only watching user generated content on their phone, that's not really going to be premium to them. But having that transparency to know what value Tyler's bringing on this side so you can decide if it's worth the price point on your end, I think it's where we can help meet in the middle and just give those metrics back to both sides. And I think that's key. And honestly, it kind of when you close that loop in that sense, what you're defining is the concept of what DIRECTV brings forward as you guys define as premium isn't wrong. This is not us telling you guys that's a wrong set of definition behind it. Totally understand, especially like live sports, you know, there is a content where the production value is so much greater that I understand why it would be labeled that way. It just doesn't necessarily always means that the right audience is attached to it. And so when we as buyers think of premium sometimes, it is truly getting out to the idea of what is it that is going to work for the collective strategy of what we have. And that's how we define it. So it's a nomenclature thing. It's not necessarily a value thing. Well, let's talk about let's we cuz we could do this we could do this whole for the 30 minutes, right? But let's talk about why this the moving some of the decisioning to the sell side helps alleviate some of the problems for Tom and possibly possibly for you, Tyler. [clears throat] Um you have your authenticated audience, you have the signal from someone who's logged in, you have contextual metadata, all of the things that make your inventory premium. Um but how does that what does that change what he can actually do? Like what is what does he know about the audience now that he didn't two years ago? Especially specifically at the bid level. Yeah, I think and I think it all ties back into this narrative around transparency. I think you hit the nail on the head in that aspect because that probably is the one single most important piece of what what premium is. I think for us as DIRECTV, like this is very deep rooted and embedded in who we are as a culture. We've been doing addressable since 2012. So, audience is our bread and butter, which is one piece of this equation. Um and on top of that, too, last year we went through a whole transformative year in which we took our linear footprint and we've converted it to be live DAI. So, then we're supporting that to also be like more premium, affluent households to have that authenticated data at programmatically enabled. I think where we can partner together is having more transparency and alignment based on your KPIs and working more together more directly to understand what signals are most important for you, right? So, that we can make sure that we are modifying and customizing the bid stream through a partner like OpenX to ensure that you have everything you need that supports, again, brand safety, things like that, as well as the addressable aspect of it. And that's where we can marry the two together, but we are the source of truth, especially as a distribution platform, cuz in addition to the the audience addressable signals, we have all the content metadata. And our goal is to just get more direct relationships with partners, again, to to build up. So, you're saying that the on the sell side, sort of this decisioning piece, if you have a little bit more insight from him, you can give that you can give him more intel to make his bid more intelligent. Yeah, I think transparency is a two-way street and like I'm going to be very candid in this room, obviously, too. And it's and not every buyer is the same, but there's a lot like oftentimes, especially within programmatic biddable, there's limited transparency that we get in return. And I think that's one of the biggest pros to create that workflow efficiency and autonomy for buyers to be able to go in and say we can create an open pipe for you guys and you just buy it as you wish or you can buy it through multi-pub or or different paths. So, for us, like that's where we want to partner more closely because there are buyers that will come to us and say, "You know what? Actually, it's not aligning with our KPI." And I'm like, "Well, what what is the KPI?" So, that's where like I'm like, "We might not even be able to do everything that we think we can do if we don't know that." So, that's up to the buyer. Not everyone has the same bandwidth to be able to support that, but I think it's important. I want to drill down into transparency, but before we go to that, Erica, OpenX works with many partners. Some of and everyone's inventory is premium. Some people's inventory may not be as premium as DIRECTV's just because maybe they don't have Maybe they don't have as the authentication, maybe they don't have to contextual data, maybe they don't have all of the elements, they have some of them. Um what How how does a partner like this not I promise it's not a softball, but how does a partner like OpenX actually sort of help close the gap for some of the other the some of the other media sellers that may not have all of this signal. I mean, I think closing that loop, which Tyler mentioned, is a big piece of this, right? Um him knowing what the buy side wants and what they want to see, so we can communicate to him in a better way to send that, how we can read it, how we can send it. Even just something as simple as some DSPs want to read it differently. If they don't have that visibility, we can at least help and close that loop on it. Um but at the end of the day, not to bring us back to transparency, even though I know we're getting there, um it is about that transparency, and that feedback feedback loop is going to be really important, and I always equate it to the value in the impression you're paying. Um a lot of times everyone assumes more data is better. More data is not necessarily better if you don't know what to do with that data you're getting or it's the wrong data being given. So, open those floodgates, you might get 90% of things that you don't want. So, if you don't know exactly what you want, everything and more is not necessarily better in that sense, and I think that's another really important thing when you talk about the magnitude of data we see on the supply side and the magnitude that the DSPs do, um there's still a middle ground where we could be speaking completely different languages and the wrong signals being passed or being communicated back and forth. Tom? So, completely agree. Honestly, with both you guys where you're heading to. The one thing for the sell side of things that I would implore you guys, cuz I think it is a very common question that comes up is can you please tell me where your KPI is? How about change that question is can you please tell me and explain me your strategy? Because to that point like you just mentioned is like you can open a floodgates of data and it's fantastic and it maybe it fill fills the KPI on my end that we get briefed on through the process, but it's not the way the right way to evaluate you and what you're bringing to the table that can support my strategy. So, maybe start there to begin with. Oh, but then wasn't that good? No, I love that. I'm going to steal that now for [laughter] a client. What what's your strategy? Tom, I did want to ask you you know, I you are acting on behalf of your clients. They come to you because you're smarter, you have better technology, you have better tools. Are they asking you for all kinds of signals that they don't necessarily need though? You know, it depends. So, we represent roughly about 220 clients. It's a pretty vast array. So, from incredibly sophisticated to the ones that essentially still think that television is bought on TRPs and all they want to do is see why they ran on Seinfeld on a given day, right? Um so, it does depend. I will say that in terms of what they're really asking from a transparency perspective and what we're wanting to see is there's an increased need for understanding where they ran, why did they run there, what is the value that's associated with that, and how can they actually go back in front of an entire board in front of their CMO and tell them that the buy that they've gone is actually impacting the bottom line of their business. That is the most challenging thing in what we do every single time. And this goes back to the answer Aaron, you gave specifically sorry Aaron. That we talked about in terms of like creating a floodgate of all the data that is available to us. Great, but we need to be able to attach it back to them and essentially say, "And your business moved by X amount of points forward because your media buy is the collective." That question does come up a lot lately. And it's more so now with kind of the you know, fluctuating economy and people are thinking about it a lot differently. So, we're starting to see that being a little bit more at the forefront. So, you said transparency. Actually, all three of you said transparency at different times. So, we're going to get into the We You know we're going to go there. Um you said, "My clients want to know if I ran on Seinfeld." Show-level data. Um you know, and so this is the issue, right? Uh Erica, we when we talked about this on the prep call, you were like, "That's one of the one of the things that's one of the last things that's kind of holding linear dollars back from moving into CTV." Um but Tyler, you're like, "Hey, everybody asks me for show-level data all the time." And I think you made a really interesting distinction. You You said, "I It's o- Jonathan's here. I'm not going to say anything to make him get in trouble. But you said, "I can You said, 'I can I can provide show-level for perhaps reporting or measurement. I can't necessarily provide show-level for targeting or decisioning.'" Like, can you talk through kind of the distinction between those two? Yeah, and and first and foremost, too, Tom, like again, I know you're the buyer. I'm not trying to jazz you up here, but I did [laughter] But I loved your answer on setting expectations about you can provide all this data, but what are you actually doing with it? And how is it actually getting you to your end results and your goals? Um because we see that all the time. Being on the publisher side, I mean, since programmatic has really taken off within CTV, publishers have been asked over and over, "We need more transparency against data. We need more data, etc." And we just keep plugging more into the bitstream, but there's a lot of challenges to and things that we need to abide by to make sure we do these things correctly. To one, make sure, since we're a distribution platform, that we also support and honor our carriage agreements with our programmers, um both out of business standpoint and just out of proper ethics. But then there's also concerns around things like VIPPA, and how does that also potentially put us at risk for the the ask that clients are looking to do. So, for us it's really important in making sure that we're not just opening up these things that could potentially make us vulnerable. So, for if it's really that they just want to know and be able to show that they delivered on these specific shows and align how that performs their KPI, well, then we'll do the reporting for you. But, if it's putting that in real time more for targeting purposes, I will have questions around, well, how does it actually allow you to scale your overall campaign knowing that you're going to layer on first-party and third-party data targeting. So, for us it's again, that involvement of being included in that conversation to make sure we could support it. But, the way I look at it, like even the VIPA, not to nerd out too much on it, it's challenging because there's kind of two different paths. We can include series level transparency within the bid stream for purposes of targeting, but then we're technically supposed to withhold any of the PI data associated to it so that you can't marry those two together. Now, you have an impression that's solely just contextual base, and for a lot of buyers that's not good enough. And that's where it's kind of what's more important in the equation. Or, we can go the route of we'll give you all the PI information of IP address, device ID, authenticated signals, and then we'll include things like network name and genre and production quality and all these different signals that go along with it. But, it's not going to be at the series level and we'll do that for you behind the scenes and partner with partners like OpenX to be able to do that and just ensure that it stays at the right level. Tom, you're nodding. Well, I I think Taylor is right and I think the way you're explaining it is correct. I think not necessarily the way that we communicate between buyers and sellers that really the way it falls through, right? So, when you're making show level data available to us, there are three kind of pillars of where it's used, right? One is verifying where we ran. That's a simple one. That's what we all ask for, right? That's an easy one, especially for more seasoned CMO that's been around for a long time, it's an easy conversation. Second one is planning. One that we really really overlook a lot of times is that information stored and available to us allows for us to then go back to you and go on, "Listen, these four shows that you've made available to us are just not working. Let's strike a deal differently next time we go back to market and make them more sense. Understanding there's some limitations on your side, but we need to steward the money of our clients a little bit better. When it comes to that show level decision-making and you kind of brought up a content, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this being just purely contextual play without having overlay of additional data layers in some capacity, but it goes back to that question that I posed earlier. Ask me about my strategy, not my KPI. Because that contextual play could fulfill the exact strategy that I need, but I need to also understand to connect those dots in between the two. Um so, I think you're on the right path of what you're trying to do with the buyers themselves. It's just make sure that it's rooted in a conversation around what are you trying to collectively accomplish. And if it is a contextual play, let's go ahead and do that. Let's play there. But I want to ask you about the money because because that you know, and and sort of many of the things that I've heard often is is sort of on the sell side is the buyers just want to cherry-pick. They just want and and we're going to give them the show level data and they're not going to pay us more for it. So, will you pay more for it, Tom? Why wouldn't we pay you more for it? No, I'm kidding. They're recording. He's kidding. [laughter] And there's this conversation. This is where we jump off the panel and no longer talk. Um No, I think there is an aspect of and this goes back to like that. We pay more for quality then eventually what we define as premium will essentially have, you know, more information behind it as well. I think you can define show level data as part of that premium structure, right? If you are going to say this is something I'll make available to you at a cost that's fair, but it goes back to that conversation. If it's fulfilling my strategy and I absolutely need it to fulfill my strategy, then I will be willing to pay more, you know. Erica, how do you help kind of facilitate this kind of in between, right? Because you you exist to help the buyers get what they need and also the publishers on your platform you exist to kind of help protect their needs. So, where do you sit in this and and how do you balance that? I think for us cuz we do sit in that middle, um it's about building the tools that help the buyers get the transparency they need, the comfortability to spend the dollar that's worth that premium tag for you guys, but also give our publishers and Tyler on that side the comfortability to give us the transparency to help the buy side. Um so, we do sit a little bit in the middle and a good example is something let's talk content singles signals and what's coming through in that content object field. We build tools where our publishers can keep complete control of how far down the bid stream those signals go. That becomes really valuable because I can still help curate and build a deal and use that to give visibility, but the DSP might not necessarily get that reporting and that makes them a little more comfortable on the cherry-picking piece, but I can still give you the confidence that hey, with our visibility and how we're doing this you're getting exactly that to make sure you're comfortable paying that CPM. So, um I think that balance in the middle comes from dealing with both sides, but that goes back to the investment you have in a platform that's going to give you the tools you need to give comfortability both sides built on that transparency, but then using the curation tools and what might not what using the curation tools um and what not to be able to do that in a way that's helping both sides and staying in the middle. It's not biased. No, right. I mean that's I mean this is always the tension in ad tech, right? This is tension between SSPs and DSPs which people are like, oh they're going away, but tension between SSPs and DSPs and all these platforms it's very hard I think we have to acknowledge, right? It's very hard to to really meet in the middle and be like, yes buyer you can have you can have all of my amazing inventory for the cheapest price possible, right? Like I'm not that's not I'm not saying that's what you want, but I think that's what that has been the perception for a really long time, especially with programmatic, right? And and and I think that's always been the concern with CTV. So, I have one last question for each of you, and this is kind of like a jump ball. So, there's also new signals. Um so, there's attention, which is a newer Well, it was new last year. It's not new this year anymore, right? So, there's attention, which is a signal. There's context, which has been around forever, but new flavors of context. And then there's identity, which is also kind of been in the mix. We'll start with you, Tom. If you could pay more for only one of those signals, attention, the identity, or the context, which would it be? Do we have to start with me? [laughter] I can answer that. Oh, Tyler. Go ahead, Tyler. Tyler's like, it's my audience. Um in Yeah. If I had to cherry-pick, if I had a chance, I would have picked attention if I believed in the way that it's verified. And I think that's the challenge, right? Like, do we What we're trying to do at the end of the day is get as many eyeballs in front of the brands as possible, and get them get them involved. Get that relationship going. Build it with the end consumer. Build it with the customers. The reality is verifying attention is near to impossible. I appreciate everybody that says that it is. There are things that could be done as a proxy, and you know, prove me wrong by all means. I'll be right here. But, [laughter] at the end of day, we haven't gotten anything that actually attaches ourselves back to the business goal. And kind of what I mentioned at the beginning, it's we are in a business of understanding how we move somebody else's business, right? And that understanding can be coming in from a very different KPIs for every single one of our engagements, but we have to fulfill the funnel from top to bottom. Then then come back to our advertiser and say, "Let's talk about where are you today? How much did advertising help you push your business forward in some way?" And sometimes it does mean that it could be a proxy like an attention, and then we'll pay premium for it. But, it will again come back to that idea as what is my strategy? What am I trying to accomplish today? Uh and then let's define what am I going to pay that extra premium for? Which one of the visibility pieces that you're going to make available to me to make sure that I can verify that we're making that impact. So, verified attention. Vendors, if you're watching, verified attention is what Tom and Goodway will pay more for. Just kidding. We would love to see that. Erica and Tyler, which if if you had to pick one of those signals? Um, I'm going to take a bit of a cop out answer. I'm sorry, but the same reason if a buyer came to me and said, "Here's $10 million, Erica. What do I do with it?" You need more context there to what's going to be the most valuable. Um, there's absolutely a world where content or context down to the show level and that reporting is going to be more valuable than the addressability or something coming with an identifier. Um, and then there's some that verified attention, paying attention is really important. And attention, I do think is something that's a bit undervalued right now. Um, my favorite example, and I apologize everyone at OpenX who hears me use this example all the time, is Netflix is changing the way they write TV shows because your attention is bad. That is going to become something you have to think about when you're trying to place an ad and why that's so important. Um, it's going to be have to catch someone off guard, be disruptive, or make sure their eyes are on the screen and keep keep their attention. Sorry, I'm running out of adjectives. Um, but that I think is going to be one that's undervalued and will take a bigger piece, but each one has its value for different reasons. Tyler, you get the last word and it has to be one or two. You don't get a cop out of it. No, it's funny because this wasn't planned, but mine is going to be more geared towards the identity piece. And the good thing is is like we can support all these, I think on the attention aspect. There's a lot of challenges. I think looking at attention, there's different components, but that's where like working with the publisher directly really becomes key. Like we just integrated and did a launch of CABs, our conversion APIs, to help buyers understand further, are they actually driving conversions on what they're doing? Therefore, it should result in high attention associated to it. But I think for me it's always going to be an audience and not a biased answer or at DirecTV, but if you look at the entire funnel of whether you're upper funnel for brand awareness or lower funnel for purchase intent or actual outcomes, it all is catered towards or stems from the audience in itself. Whether it's mass reach or more like uh finite scalable reach. So, I think the audience piece of it, since that's who you're really trying to address, is going to be the key component in my opinion. Well, thank you all so much. Let's Let's surround them with applause. Thank you for having us. Thank you, everybody.