ATSG releases audience targeting guidelines for linear TV advertising

clypd-led Standards Group Releases Advanced Audience Targeting Guidelines for Linear TV Advertising

NEW YORK — The Advanced Target Standards Group, a consortium of eight of the leading network TV programmers working with clypd, today announced a set of guidelines and best practices for the use of advanced targets in linear television advertising.

The acceleration by advertisers and agencies in the use of advanced data sources to bring more precision to national TV advertising has prompted leading television networks to address the complexities associated in moving beyond buying audiences strictly on an age and gender basis.

The Advanced Target Standards Group (ATSG) has been meeting regularly since August 2016 to address priority issues. Chaired by Pete Doe, Chief Research Officer at clypd, a sell-side platform for audience-based TV advertising, the members of the group have focused on a number of industry-related challenges including:

• Target definition and sizing
• Availability and suitability of advanced target data to enable campaign planning, activation and reporting
• Calculation methodologies that deliver transparent and accurate estimates
• Standardization across network groups

The ATSG has created guidelines for the use of advanced targets in linear TV and a detailed specification of calculation methodologies for managing advanced audience segments, to ensure marketplace consistency for buyers across media owners.

Some best practices include:

• National linear TV is a brand building medium: a suggested minimum advanced target size is 10 million (about 3% of the US).
• Age and gender targets are fairly consistent year-on-year but advanced target definitions (e.g. brand purchase, attitudes) may be less so. Any deal needs to consider the possible or probable inconsistency of any advanced audience target in size and composition.
• There are many TV viewing data sets that can be used for advanced target deals. Most of these data sets do not have MRC accreditation, so buyer and seller need to be careful in understanding the pros and cons of the data source.

With regard to calculation methods, the group has aligned on approaches for calculating basic metrics for advanced targets, such as target population sizes, impressions and ratings, across a wide variety of data sources. While these are taken for granted when using standard demographics, advanced target data sets present different challenges including varying population sizes, data latency and classification completeness.

“Having a standard approach to measuring the performance of advanced targets across media owners is essential to make these deals work smoothly and at scale. Alignment among a group of industry leaders like this provides a meaningful step forward,” said Pete Doe, Chief Research Officer at clypd. “The goals of the group align with those of the OpenAP initiative announced recently – to make advanced audience buying and selling more accessible, consistent, and transparent for the entire industry. I’m excited to be a part of this consortium, helping to move the advertising ecosystem forward.”