Go Addressable Launches Unified Industry Guidelines for Addressable Advertising

The guidelines, which span addressable types, creative format, creative length and more, come as addressable TV advertising is expected to generate U.S. $7.5 billion dollars globally this year.

Industry group also introduces agency and programmer committees to ensure addressable advertising continues to meet the needs of buyers and sellers.

Go Addressable, an industry initiative launched by television distributors to advance addressable advertising, today introduces a set of common industry guidelines – spanning addressable types, creative format, creative length and more – to facilitate and accelerate addressable advertising’s scale, enablement and adoption.

The goal of the guidelines is to inform and allow for appropriate agency planning and expectations of campaign launch schedules, and to drive confidence through efficiency and consistency in processes and implementation. They are outlined in detail at GoAddressable.com.

Go Addressable is an industry initiative formed by Altice USA, Charter Communications’ Spectrum Reach®, Comcast, Cox, DIRECTV Advertising, DISH Media, Frontier and VIZIO to help maximize the scale, impact and value of TV as a marketing platform. Founded in 2021, Go Addressable provides thought leadership, education and advocacy around the topic.

Today’s announcement marks a milestone in one of the initiative’s stated goals to provide clear steps for all advertisers interested in buying addressable advertising. It also comes as the addressable TV advertising landscape is expected to grow to U.S. $7.5 billion dollars globally in 2022, per a Deloitte Global study. Addressability, too, was a key theme during this year’s upfronts.

“We’re at an important time in the trajectory and future of addressable TV advertising, and we’re excited to be one of the inaugural Go Addressable agency forum participants,” said Michael Piner, EVP Advanced Media, Mediahub Worldwide. “Addressable TV advertising is a fast-growing and promising new frontier in media. Yet, we’ve lacked an industry group to help simplify the addressable activation as well as chart a course for future progress and innovation. We’re happy to be working with Go Addressable to help pioneer that course.”

To ensure that it is working to address the needs of the industry, Go Addressable today also introduced two committees, one comprised of agencies and the other consisting of programmers. Both committees will meet twice a year and will include advertising companies and programmers from across the industry.

“While addressable has been around for 10 years, it’s still in its early stages, and because of that, many providers are using different criteria and guidelines to deploy it,” said Matt Van Houten, SVP, Product, Operations and Business Development, DIRECTV Advertising. “This has caused unnecessary complication and friction in the process. With the unveiling of our easily accessible industry guidelines, all advertisers can be comfortable with the medium, knowing these guidelines are supported by many of the distributors operating in the space. And this is exactly why Go Addressable was created. By working together, we are providing more paths to acceleration for the medium.”

Below is a summary of the aforementioned guidelines:

• Addressable Types: Go Addressable identified two naming conventions that are consistent with how buyers deliver addressable campaigns, using aggregated data and with a commitment to protecting personal information:
  • Audience addressable refers to the ability to dynamically deliver various advertisers’ advertisements targeted to different audiences in different homes all watching the same network at the same time.
  • Creative versioning describes offering the ability to deliver different creative messages to different audiences (households) within the same spot for a single advertiser.
    
    

• Creative Format: The group identified that a creative format meeting the criteria below can now be deployed and used by all programmers and distributors, removing friction, costs and timing from the process. The guidelines are as follows:
  • Stream Type: MPEG-2
  • Audio Type: MPEG1 Layer 2
  • Frame Rate: 1080i
  • Width/ height: 1920 x 1080
    
    

• Creative Length: Go Addressable members each support standard 30-second creative length for addressable advertising, with the goal of simplifying implementation of addressable campaigns.
  
  
  
  
• Cap & Edit: Distributors each have an established process to ensure that ads delivered addressably have a chance to be seen and are not being inserted or counted when the TV is off or when/if viewers are no longer watching.
  
  
  
  
• Data Match Vendors: Go Addressable has identified three vendors for onboarding audience segments from buyers that currently work across operators: LiveRamp, Experian and Epsilon. Additional vendors may be announced in the future.
  
  
  
  
• Attribution Vendors: Go Addressable also has identified three companies that currently provide attribution studies for buyers across operators: LiveRamp, Experian and Neustar. Additional vendors may be added in the future.
  
  
  
  
• Campaign Execution Timeline: Go Addressable has established a timeline for launching and/or reporting on a campaign to provide consistency to buyers and programmers when planning and activating campaigns. The process spans the early planning stages all the way to attribution.

“Consistency is critical in advertising and is something that previously hasn’t existed for addressable campaigns, which are often executed across multiple operators. The industry guidelines created by Go Addressable give programmers a roadmap and guidelines that can be utilized when activating addressable campaigns across a national footprint. There is a lot of exciting work happening and we look forward to participating in the programmer council as we continue to scale our already robust addressable TV advertising capabilities for our clients,” said Julian Zilberbrand, EVP, Advanced Media, Paramount.

The new campaign execution timeline, as well as details around all of the new guidelines, can be found here.

About Go Addressable

Go Addressable is an industry inclusive initiative led by TV distribution companies to help maximize the scale, impact and value of TV as a marketing platform. The group’s mission is to further accelerate the advancement of addressable TV advertising in a way that is trusted, scalable and effective for both advertisers and programmers looking to make their inventory addressable. Go Addressable will achieve this through advocacy and education within the industry; problem-solving and action around industry challenges; and by working to facilitate the use of addressable advertising campaigns for buyers and sellers of TV inventory. For more information on how to participate, please visit www.goaddressable.com.

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