Linear addressable advertising is here: What ad sales, ad operations, and engineers must do to make it happen now

After a long period of waiting, linear addressable advertising is about to meet broadcast companies head-on. A handful of networks have been quietly testing campaigns on live TV, and linear addressable has proven its viability. Get ready for a flood of questions from your clients and board.

This opportunity to net an estimated $3.6 billion in new dollars annually will breathe new life into TV ad sales — and make heroes out of the early adopter teams who get it right.

There are a few challenges ad sales, ad operations, and engineering teams need to solve first, but they’re manageable. We’ve been working hand in hand with the industry’s most ambitious players, and have a clear picture of what each function must do to scale up linear addressable quickly.

A handful of networks have been quietly testing campaigns on live TV, and linear addressable has proven its viability.

Ad sales: Scaling linear without disrupting existing business

Hitting the right balance isn’t easy. You must protect existing contracts and revenue streams while activating addressable ad inventory.

That means learning the new business models. For example, multiple advertiser spot optimization (MASO) unlocks new revenue by selling the same advertiser spot multiple times to different advertisers for different audience segment targeting.

It may be new and painful, but linear and digital ad sales teams need to work together to activate more addressable ad inventory. Take advantage of your digital ad sales team’s experience in digital advertising to make MASO work. That may mean, for instance, selling unsold advertising spots programmatically.

It’s also critical that you work with your advertising operations team to ensure your addressable advertising technology stack can protect competitive separation agreements.

Linear and digital ad sales teams should think about selecting an ad signaling solution that delivers single addressable advertising campaigns across any network, distribution platform, and business model to allow scalability while minimizing cost.

It helps to think ahead, too. Linear addressable advertising will be even more valuable when advertisers figure out how to use contextual information (like plot points or news segment topics) to serve up the right ads at the exact right time.

Linear and digital ad sales teams need to work together to activate more addressable ad inventory.

Ad operations: Protecting ad integrity and championing addressable advertising delivery

While linear addressable offers lots of benefits, ad operations players probably won’t sleep at night until you know ads will be delivered with frame accuracy and correctly: The right addressable creative in the right distribution platform.

Look for visibility over the operations workflow and well thought-out automation built into your ad signaling solution. By automating the processes across ad decisioning and downstream systems, and delivering the monitoring capability to identify any disruptions before they occur, you can retain control over the workflow and protect your business.

...ad operations players probably won’t sleep at night until you know ads will be delivered with frame accuracy and correctly: The right addressable creative in the right distribution platform.

Engineers: Managing interoperability and workflow disruption

Engineering teams face an avalanche of ecosystem fragmentation with varying platform, network, and system requirements. You may not exactly relish the challenge of transitioning to linear addressable advertising but it might be easier than you think.

Hear us out: While you may prefer developing technology solutions, features, and capabilities in-house, that might not be the easiest or most sustainable course this time. Platform fragmentation isn’t slowing down and automating ad delivery at scale isn’t efficient for individual broadcasters. You may want to consider a managed service that can automate ad signaling and will keep up with the evolving ecosystem of platforms.

While moving to addressable may feel onerous, being proactive will make you the revenue-advancing hero linear broadcasters desperately need.

While moving to addressable may feel onerous, being proactive will make you the revenue-advancing hero linear broadcasters desperately need.

Our solution: Addressable advertising through universal signaling

Linear addressable advertising enables media companies to deliver what their customers want: more value for their advertising spend. Linear and digital ad sales, ad operations, and engineers have a rare chance to seize the early adopter benefits and spotlight — and our universal signaling service will make it easier than you think.

We’ve worked in lockstep with broadcast media companies to build a solution that works for every aspect of the advertising sales business and operations. Our managed service, LTN Target, is a market-first automated universal signaling solution for live and linear programming. The service integrates with all parts of the advertising ecosystem and enables seamless addressable advertising campaigns on any:

• Network
• Playout automation and traffic system
• Ad decision system
• Distribution platform
• Business model

LTN Target solves fundamental challenges, enabling media companies to increase the value of your ad inventory without disrupting viewing experiences by ensuring:

• The addressable creative that will replace the default content is loaded into the distribution platform
• Frame-accurate signaling prompts the seamless replacement of the default content with the addressable creative

LTN Target enables interoperability at scale by acting as a communications proxy between the various disparate systems in today’s complex advertising ecosystem. The solution interoperates with ad decision providers; ad insertion platforms; and broadcast automation, traffic, and scheduling systems. We’ve built in automation at every step to ensure competitive separation requirements can be met while paving the way for new business models.

With the many hurdles blocking linear addressable advertising’s take-off removed, this is the perfect time for ad sales, ad operations, and engineers to band together quickly to capture additional revenue. LTN Target delivers game-changing capabilities that enable media companies to lead the addressable TV revolution.

With the many hurdles blocking linear addressable advertising’s take-off removed, this is the perfect time for ad sales, ad operations, and engineers to band together quickly to capture additional revenue and lead the addressable TV revolution.