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Local CTV and FAST Services Sales 2024 Outlook with Premion's John Vilade · Leading Local Insights

• 0:01
  Rick Ducey: Hello and welcome to BIA's Leading Local Insights podcast, where we examine the trends, technologies, platforms and industry activities related to local media revenue.
• 0:11
  Rick Ducey: I'm Rick Ducey, BIA's Managing Director, and I'm pleased to host this podcast today because we're going to talk about what is arguably the fastest, the most innovative space in local media Before we start spending in 2024, I'm talking about CTV/OTT streaming video.
• 0:28
  Rick Ducey: As we'll discuss in this general election year, CTV has become even more important for political and issue campaigns, for media investments and, as the local inventory has increased in programmatic trading, makes it even easier and more powerful to activate specific audience segments and optimize those buys.
• 0:47
  Rick Ducey: In CTV.
• 0:48
  Rick Ducey: We're seeing significant tailwinds benefiting CTV/OTT.
• 0:53
  Rick Ducey: We'll talk about the difference there in just a second.
• 0:57
  Rick Ducey: But today I'm really excited because we have from Premion head of sales, John Vilade, John has a solid sales leadership background and linear CTV, programmatic and ad tech, certainly from your position that premium John but also with earlier leadership positions NVCU, Hulu, Discovery Networks and TRUSTX.
• 1:18
  Rick Ducey: So you've been with content and tech and sales.
• 1:22
  Rick Ducey: I mean when people think CTV a lot of times they're thinking premium, and when I think premium they're thinking John.
• 1:28
  Rick Ducey: So you're kind of a guy to talk to about all of this.
• 1:32
  Rick Ducey: And 2024 is the kickoff.
• 1:34
  Rick Ducey: It's just a really interesting time in CTV.
• 1:37
  Rick Ducey: So many things seem to be coming together generally in this part of the media business, and then specifically some of the things that you're doing at Premion, some of the way that technology has evolved and coming out of the COVID fingers crossed, we hope where consumer behaviors have really reshaped and the number of subscriptions, the type subscriptions, has been kind of evolving a bit, but their commitment to this platform streaming video platform is solid and more players are coming into the ad supported space.
• 2:08
  Rick Ducey: So there's so much dynamic activity here.
• 2:13
  Rick Ducey: So let's talk about that.
• 2:15
  Rick Ducey: But first premium, which of you?
• 2:18
  Rick Ducey: Let's start off by learning a bit more about Premion, what you're doing there, how premium positions itself and arguably the most complex video marketplace we've invented so far.
• 2:29
  Rick Ducey: How do you bring your offer to the marketplace?
• 2:33
  Rick Ducey: How have you organized your sales operation?
• 2:35
  Rick Ducey: Again, we'd like to focus on the local side of things, both internally at Premion and then TEGNA's, your majority owner, along with great television and other partner.
• 2:45
  Rick Ducey: So just list the premium on story and how do you come to local market?
• 2:50
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah, Rick, it's first and foremost great to be here.
• 2:53
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I know we've been trying to get together and it's good to be in your studio here.
• 2:58
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I love it Exactly.
• 2:59
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So, yeah, great question.
• 3:00
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I mean, I have to go back and credit a 2016 vision from TEGNA.
• 3:05
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I mean my colleagues at TEGNA and I wasn't even at TEGNA in 2016, but they recognized this significant viewership shift in local television due to what you and I both know IP connectivity and digital and they invested early in this branded B2B service called Premion, to really solely focus on the aggregation of that ad supported streaming opportunity for locals.
• 3:30
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So Premion's become a pretty important aspect of the local media ecosystem, and not just for advertisers but for publishers.
• 3:38
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I mean, it's one of the areas that often gets overlooked.
• 3:41
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Our publishers are very reliant on making this local marketplace for them.
• 3:46
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: They don't have the capability to go out and cover all of the agencies and all of the clients that we cover.
• 3:53
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We'll get into that a little bit.
• 3:55
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So our business model to your question, Rick, revolves around partnering the acquisition of Inventory from top to your premium publisher brands, both publisher direct and also the major fast services, and we leverage our targeting and attribution capabilities to deliver a 95% connected TV audience.
• 4:15
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We are in the living room heavily and predominantly.
• 4:18
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We have organized our sales organization at Premion and Premion is a sales company, Three primary channels.
• 4:26
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: One is what I call our national spot channel, so that would comprise of what you would probably think, Rick, it's an east and a central and a west, and we also leverage our partnership with TEGNA national sales in that regard.
• 4:40
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Then, as you mentioned earlier, with TEGNA and Gray, we have our stations sales channel, so that's TEGNA stations and Gray stations.
• 4:47
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And then we have a political sales channel and that covers 100% of the marketplace.
• 4:53
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I mean, you know, the stations cover 80% of the households alone.
• 4:56
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: But I would also consider a another sales channel, if you will industry thought leadership, like what we're doing right here.
• 5:03
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: That's a fourth sales channel for us.
• 5:07
  Rick Ducey: It's super important.
• 5:08
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah, yep, and look, we cover every market, every category, Anyone who wants to spend ad supported streaming locally.
• 5:15
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We have over 400 sellers out there and it's interesting.
• 5:19
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I was just having a conversation with our head of local sales recently and it's this heart surgeon metaphor.
• 5:25
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: My grandfather, when I was very young, we were talking about an issue and he said you know, Johnny, it's like picking a heart surgeon.
• 5:32
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Do you want a heart surgeon that's done just a few of those heart surgeries or do you want a heart surgeon that's done hundreds of them?
• 5:39
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So here we are, from 2016 to 2024.
• 5:42
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I looked at this yesterday.
• 5:44
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: The stat yesterday 35,000 campaigns later, 15,000 buying entities we've dealt with since 2016.
• 5:51
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And our teams are still running out with a very high care factor.
• 5:55
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: They're local experts, they're leveraging these relationships and I think, in the age of algorithms, we are built by local for local and we're doing it a terrific scale and we've really flipped the model to a total TV focus.
• 6:08
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And look, I'm happy to say this and I love all of my colleagues from TEGNA and I love all my colleagues from Gray, but it takes a lot to move those tried and true linear and traditional broadcast organizations into this and I think we've done that very successfully.
• 6:23
  Rick Ducey: Yeah, I mean you've got a huge presence in the marketplace.
• 6:26
  Rick Ducey: I mean great brand leadership, great performance, great reputation.
• 6:29
  Rick Ducey: So a lot of things have been going right per plan and, as the markets evolved, you've always been in the forefront of it.
• 6:37
  Rick Ducey: Just one thing quickly you mentioned CTV and it's in a living room.
• 6:41
  Rick Ducey: 95% of the inventory is being delivered over a TV set.
• 6:47
  Rick Ducey: So when we do our ad forecast we talk about CTV/ OTT.
• 6:50
  Rick Ducey: That's sort of a feral label for now we're trying to keep up with the industry, but we originally call it OTT over- the- top television.
• 7:00
  Rick Ducey: But then actually what happens in terms of viewing and ad units being sold as a TV set?
• 7:06
  Rick Ducey: That has really become interesting.
• 7:08
  Rick Ducey: So most of the viewing and most of the monetization of those impressions is in the living room and the big TV set.
• 7:14
  Rick Ducey: So when we say CTV, the way we distinguish that is that those are impressions on TV sets delivered from streaming video and OTT.
• 7:23
  Rick Ducey: People do watch on their phones, their iPads, whatever.
• 7:26
  Rick Ducey: So there's some of that, but a lot of the inventory that we're talking about actually is connected TV impressions going to the TV set.
• 7:34
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah, absolutely, Rick.
• 7:35
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And you know our head of marketing, Annmarie Gatti, who I absolutely love, and we even go into market and ask those questions how is this nomenclature in this business working for you?
• 7:44
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Is it OTT, is it CTV, is it ad supported streaming?
• 7:47
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And I'm glad we're We've started to focus on connected TV.
• 7:51
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: It's really where the value creation is, at least in our world and our ecosystem.
• 7:57
  Rick Ducey: Yeah, and that's what we're here to and that's From some of my conversations.
• 8:02
  Rick Ducey: That becomes a differentiator.
• 8:04
  Rick Ducey: It's like, no, we're actually selling CTV, not OTT, because that's a different experience than an ad unit on a phone.
• 8:12
  Rick Ducey: Anyway, so we're in the political season We've had, as we're recording this, we've had Iowa.
• 8:19
  Rick Ducey: We're on the precipice of the Hampshire.
• 8:21
  Rick Ducey: Who knows what awaits the country?
• 8:23
  Rick Ducey: There are awaits the country, but we're in it and there's a lot of spending already and the parents, TEGNA and Gray TV local TV stations love the political season.
• 8:35
  Rick Ducey: Whatever happens politically, there's a lot of ad activation happening in local TV stations, which is good.
• 8:41
  Rick Ducey: So CTV just looking at our numbers in this general election year, we're seeing overall it's going to be about $11 billion, $11 billion spent on political for ad targeting local audiences.
• 8:52
  Rick Ducey: That's going to fall to TV, to CTV and some other media.
• 8:59
  Rick Ducey: About 6% of that $632 million is what we're forecasting will be spent on CTV local ads.
• 9:06
  Rick Ducey: Much of it will be sold by you, I suppose, sean.
• 9:10
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We only need 20% of that overall budget.
• 9:12
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah right, we'll take it right.
• 9:15
  Rick Ducey: So this is for the 2024 cycle, the last general election cycle in 2022, so we're saying $632 million will be spent in CTV in the 24 cycle.
• 9:26
  Rick Ducey: It was less than 1%, or about $74 million in 2020.
• 9:31
  Rick Ducey: So from the last cycle in 2020, $74 million.
• 9:35
  Rick Ducey: Now we're talking $632 million Rough numbers, almost 10 times the spend, 9 or 10 times the spend, say, in CTV between these two cycles.
• 9:44
  Rick Ducey: So I started off saying so much is happening generally in terms of tailwinds for CTV technology.
• 9:51
  Rick Ducey: You went through all your different sales channels, the organization that you talked about to bring this offer to market and the ability to optimize short distribution.
• 10:01
  Rick Ducey: Some of the things are happening In political.
• 10:04
  Rick Ducey: They've always been so sophisticated around developing and targeting and activating audience segments.
• 10:10
  Rick Ducey: So what do you think for political?
• 10:12
  Rick Ducey: I mean obviously a big revenue lift, and why is CTV growing 9 or 10 times since the last general election cycle?
• 10:21
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah, I mean.
• 10:22
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: The good news here is there is a bottom line to this one, and the bottom line is connected TV now reaches 85% of all US households and we need to look no further than sources like Nielsen Gage.
• 10:33
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I think Nielsen just came out with another number in terms of the pie.
• 10:36
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Our pie is becoming like a true north for buyers or, by the way, any trade headline in any given week.
• 10:44
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: To understand the audience shift away from cable and traditional broadcast.
• 10:48
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I mean cable alone and nothing against cable, because cable is still needed in our total TV environment.
• 10:52
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: But cable was losing 20,000 paid subs a day.
• 10:56
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So without a total TV strategy, they political, are just missing massive groups of voters, and that's a fact that used to be something that maybe was debatable right In elections past.
• 11:10
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I really need this.
• 11:11
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Can I rely on the old, tried and true ways, but shifting gears though from?
• 11:15
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Another aspect of this is much deeper targeting capabilities within connected TV, so far beyond age and gender.
• 11:22
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Right, I mean, in the old days of advertising was by the demo, by the audience, and away we go.
• 11:27
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: But we benefit now and connected TV from the ability of targeting at things like the congressional district level, more refined by set issue, interest, affinity.
• 11:36
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: These are all table snakes in the capacity of streaming, and also one of the basic things that we don't talk about is that's a reduction in waste.
• 11:45
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Remember we used to talk about waste wreck.
• 11:48
  Rick Ducey: Right, exactly, yeah.
• 11:49
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: That's a reduction in waste.
• 11:50
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I like some of the promise of what we all hope for years ago in this business is now coming to fruition.
• 11:56
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I also like it as a base case local aggregators like Premion, and I'll include everyone that we compete with.
• 12:02
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: They excel at delivering budgets at smaller GEOs and anytime you walk into a room we are.
• 12:08
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: The political landscape has become so sophisticated that again it goes beyond districts.
• 12:13
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I've got to reach these smaller GEOs or their smaller cohorts.
• 12:17
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So one of the things that I've been really thrilled about and proud about and I thought I knew about political until I got to TEGNA we have a super experienced political team and we combined our TEGNA sales team with our premium sales team and we're having extremely important discussions campaign impacting issue impacting discussions with regard to why connected TV is so important.
• 12:44
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I might mention this down the line here, but it's not just about the volume of what's moving in connected TV and ad supported streaming.
• 12:51
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: It's about efficacy.
• 12:52
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And look, we're also bringing other issues into the inside the Beltway and outside.
• 12:58
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So issues like brand safety and ad fraud.
• 13:01
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I mean gosh, what could be worse for a political campaign to find out that you invested in fraudulent inventory or that your ads were running adjacent to challenging content?
• 13:15
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We're talking co-viewing.
• 13:16
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We're talking about all of the attribution options that come with connected TV, even things like dynamic creative and brand live.
• 13:22
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: How do you, how do you test that your campaign creative is working?
• 13:25
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So, anyway, one of the major points I was talking to our head of political sales yesterday, who just came to us from Freewheel, a terrifically experienced guy.
• 13:36
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: He said one thing to remember JV it's also key to keep multiple inventory activation paths in play, and we might be in an environment in 2024 where we start to see some runaway CPMs around Labor Day.
• 13:49
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So, at the very least, if you're listening to Rick and JV today, make sure that you understand all of your options, and that should absolutely include connected TV.
• 14:00
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: It'll help win elections this year.
• 14:03
  Rick Ducey: And then the other thing we hear a lot is the Gray and TEGNA local stations will get a lot of this spend but they run out of inventory as they get closer to the election and you know.
• 14:15
  Rick Ducey: So it's almost sophistication of targeting and attribution and optimization that you're talking about.
• 14:22
  Rick Ducey: But to get to those people the waste I mean with broadcast TV, arguably there's some waste.
• 14:29
  Rick Ducey: I live in DC, so if you're buying a DC station and you're trying to drive voters in Virginia, I'm in Maryland, I don't care about the Virginia races, but you can target that with CTV of course.
• 14:38
  Rick Ducey: But even so, that is scarce inventory in the local stations and once it's gone, it's gone.
• 14:44
  Rick Ducey: Where else can you go?
• 14:44
  Rick Ducey: So that's another important demand driver for CTV, specifically on political that's right.
• 14:51
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We play an important role there with our stations.
• 14:53
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: That's well said, Rick.
• 14:55
  Rick Ducey: And then yeah, and then the in political.
• 14:58
  Rick Ducey: One of my other favorite things that I hear from time to time is the ultimate attribution for political is played a definitive Did your candidate win?
• 15:08
  Rick Ducey: and there's a definite date when you find that out.
• 15:10
  Rick Ducey: So we talked about viewing and spending and you mentioned the gauge study.
• 15:15
  Rick Ducey: So there is this.
• 15:17
  Rick Ducey: I talked about the fast growth rate between political 2020-2024 and, generally, I think, ashhawn numbers.
• 15:27
  Rick Ducey: Our new forecast has been showing that CTV is the fastest growing medium in terms of local ad spending and but there's a discrepancy really between spending and viewing and we saw this in mobile and other digital media as it kind of grew up, and you premium did a study last year looking at CTV OTT advertisers Two thirds of those using CTV plan to increase their investment and is that platform Great news for 2024.
• 15:56
  Rick Ducey: And so certainly this is encouraging.
• 15:59
  Rick Ducey: But there is that opportunity gap between spending and viewing.
• 16:02
  Rick Ducey: Ctv accounted for about 20% or so that total CTV and TV inventory from 21 to 23 in your study, as it was showing.
• 16:12
  Rick Ducey: The share of viewing for CTV is now up to 40% and I think that's still about right with the latest gauge study and that's actually a measure of national viewing.
• 16:22
  Rick Ducey: But you know, probably that's fairly representative of local.
• 16:25
  Rick Ducey: So linear TV, broadcast TV, has less than half of overall video viewing.
• 16:31
  Rick Ducey: Streaming, you know, is out performing broadcasting cable in terms of viewership.
• 16:36
  Rick Ducey: We have this gap and that's that's the role of viewing, is that's where the viewer impressions are.
• 16:40
  Rick Ducey: But a lot of this spend is still with linear TV.
• 16:44
  Rick Ducey: From that study and things you're seeing in a marketplace.
• 16:47
  Rick Ducey: What do we expect is going to happen next there?
• 16:51
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah, that's an excellent path.
• 16:53
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We could probably do an entirely separate podcast on that.
• 16:57
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Rick, we love that study and I blame it on my Six Sigma training.
• 17:03
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I was a GE and NBC owned by GE.
• 17:06
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I was in Six Sigma for a year.
• 17:08
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I was a black belt and the number one rule basically that I took out of that was capture the voice of the customer and when in doubt, capture the voice of the customer again.
• 17:17
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So my obsession with capturing the voice of the customer led us to do more and more studies like this and, by the way, the results of that study can be downloaded at premion.
• 17:26
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: com.
• 17:28
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So marketplace education, I think, is the way to and through this and it's been a hallmark for us.
• 17:33
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So pushing thought leadership has been a hallmark.
• 17:35
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We actually have spent a lot of time and a lot of money also on our side with our own sellers to make sure that they are not only experts on connected TV and the movement of budgets, but also more experts just in terms of the total environment.
• 17:51
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So what we've been doing over the last several years is investing in that market education to get marketers and buyers more comfortable with the level of investment flow into streaming, to match audience movement and also, as I mentioned earlier, where the bang for the buck is.
• 18:06
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And there's a lot of bang for the buck in streaming.
• 18:08
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So if you're not looking at streaming in this way, you're only capturing half of the American living rooms these days.
• 18:14
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So a few superpowers, kind of that I think about in this area.
• 18:19
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: One is it's easy to have a discussion with somebody when you're talking about simplifying and aggregating audiences in an otherwise potentially confusing market, when you talk about targetability, measureability, relevancy.
• 18:34
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So I'm going to aggregate, I'm going to target, I'm going to measure and I'm going to make sure that everything that we're working on has relevancy.
• 18:42
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: That's a great way.
• 18:43
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: That's a group of four great pillars, four great superpowers to use in having the educated discussion.
• 18:49
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So, again, it's not just about the level of the audience, it's about the efficacy of that connection that that ad by reaches.
• 18:56
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Rick, I was thinking about this the other day In early 2019, the conversation around streaming was hey, john, thanks for the deal we just did, but I didn't see my ad last night when I was watching streaming and I might want to cancel my order.
• 19:12
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Right, okay, now fast forward.
• 19:14
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: 2024, it's John.
• 19:16
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We're getting into planning for 2024.
• 19:19
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: How much more should I be putting into streaming as each quarter progresses and consult me on how I need to shift my strategy at the end of 2024.
• 19:28
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So bottom line we'll get there.
• 19:30
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Rick, we will get there.
• 19:32
  Rick Ducey: It's interesting, JV.
• 19:33
  Rick Ducey: So there's for the targeting.
• 19:35
  Rick Ducey: My son-in-law grew up in Maui and so for the fun of it, sometimes I'll watch a local Hawaii station and see the news, see what it's like back there.
• 19:44
  Rick Ducey: So I was watching.
• 19:45
  Rick Ducey: I don't remember the specifics but it was a Hawaiian station, probably from Oahu and then they go to break and I got an ad.
• 19:56
  Rick Ducey: I mentioned I'm in a DC area, so a very large community college run here actually, where my wife is a professor at Montgomery College.
• 20:02
  Rick Ducey: So I'm watching this local TV newscast in Hawaii and then I get a spot for Montgomery College.
• 20:08
  Rick Ducey: So I said, okay, that's targeting.
• 20:11
  Rick Ducey: So I told my friend who is in sales for this platform this story and then she says, yes, our targeting is working.
• 20:18
  Rick Ducey: And I said, man, is it?
• 20:19
  Rick Ducey: I mean you kind of have that personal experience and say, okay, I didn't see my spot last night, but the targeting works.
• 20:29
  Rick Ducey: You do get some slates, but I mean pretty much it's becoming a much better experience from an audience perspective.
• 20:34
  Rick Ducey: So one thing you had mentioned aggregating content from premium providers and then I think you made a quick reference to fast channels and, as local TV stations Gray, TEGNA, all the group owners looking for revenue growth.
• 20:52
  Rick Ducey: Your TV viewership is softening, we're seeing that and the spending the digital the big players and digital are taking up a lot of the spending.
• 21:02
  Rick Ducey: They're also moving into video as well, of course, and so fast channels are something that the TV groups are coming into with more and more commitment.
• 21:14
  Rick Ducey: So there was some launches of fast services last year, more coming out this year and that's becoming a very interesting competitive strategy for local TV group owners to have more video inventory.
• 21:26
  Rick Ducey: And what are you seeing in the fast space for 2024?
• 21:32
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah, I'm a huge fan of what the fast services have accomplished in a very short period of time.
• 21:38
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And hey, look, a few Super Bowl ads, maybe some backing by Amazon, major networks, investment Pick, your poison voila.
• 21:45
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We have anyone who says this industry doesn't move fast.
• 21:49
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Take a look at how that has happened over the course of just a few years.
• 21:54
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So, while some of the hybrid and subscription models are still struggling for what I would call consumer fit, the fast channels are, as we both know, are growing really rapidly and consumers love free, big surprise, right.
• 22:07
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So I read recently, rick, that there are over now over 2000 unique fast channels out there across all the fast services.
• 22:15
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I believe it, ironically, you know where a lot of that growth has come from are the local stations.
• 22:21
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: The local stations are pumping their content in as fast as they possibly can really smart, and this is a whole other subject.
• 22:29
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: But there's a younger cohort of discovery now out there finding local stations.
• 22:35
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: A lot of these 20-somethings probably didn't even know that these stations existed in their market and now they're beginning a new love affair with oh my gosh, these people are reporting a local news on my fast service.
• 22:45
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: That's really cool.
• 22:46
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So there's also this perception that there's a lot of overlap between these fast channels and again, I've seen recent research saying that that's not the case.
• 22:53
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So I always try to disabuse anyone who's investing with us saying, hey, I have enough, let's just call it Roku, channel 2B or Pluto.
• 23:02
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: You know, we'll have to educate them again in terms of the differentiation and the unique value between those fast services.
• 23:10
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So we're really proud to be partnered with these fast services.
• 23:14
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: And I think you'd also asked about AdLoads.
• 23:17
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Adloads are something that I'm looking at pretty vigorously with our partnerships team.
• 23:22
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: These days, we haven't necessarily seen scarcity in inventory, particularly in the fast channels, but we're all very cognizant and I think as an industry, you have to be cognizant of the impact AdLoads have on overall audience engagement and ad performance.
• 23:37
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So, again, data geek, trying to understand what the customer wants, trying to understand how to deliver value.
• 23:44
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I've been voraciously reading media radars, reports on AdLoads, so I think Freewheel did a pretty nice white paper on this, and then Love what Yiann Lu and T-Vision is doing with regard to AdLoads engagement in the living room.
• 24:01
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So my net summary is the fast channels have been great for the industry.
• 24:05
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: They've been great at pushing competition.
• 24:07
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: They've been a great home for consumers that want free.
• 24:10
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I am cognizant, though, that we need to pay attention to how the AdLoads start to work and not every impression is created able.
• 24:18
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We've got another podcast.
• 24:20
  Rick Ducey: That's right, exactly.
• 24:21
  Rick Ducey: Yeah, I mean there's so much in here and yeah, so to make it easy, let me transition to the next, I guess, set of topics, to have a common theme hopefully.
• 24:30
  Rick Ducey: But I'll just say maybe a half a dozen words to kind of tee things up and a couple thoughts about that.
• 24:38
  Rick Ducey: So in this fast breaking space, and, like you're saying, whoever says this industry doesn't move fast has a bit of tension over the past few years.
• 24:47
  Rick Ducey: So I'll say a few words here that are sort of top of mind and occupying a lot of energy and focus, and we'll see what the outcomes end up being.
• 24:56
  Rick Ducey: But planning, currency, measurement, performance, activation, optimization, I mean those are the things that are superpowers.
• 25:06
  Rick Ducey: You had mentioned that, you know, I think, of the CTV space.
• 25:09
  Rick Ducey: So currency for a long time you know it ends up being Nielsen.
• 25:14
  Rick Ducey: Nielsen has faced some competitive challenges by other companies.
• 25:19
  Rick Ducey: Nbcu did its review of services, and companies like iSpot, video, way Up and others have kind of come into the mix.
• 25:28
  Rick Ducey: It seems like all the companies somehow involved in the space, with all those words I threw out there, are facing a time now where like, okay, you know, we have to run this like businesses, we have to be careful of our expenses.
• 25:42
  Rick Ducey: We need to time what our expenses are based to our revenues.
• 25:46
  Rick Ducey: It is a competitive market.
• 25:48
  Rick Ducey: So you know, seeing some adjustments by Nielsen, by Video Am, by pretty much all the players in the spot of telling us what's happening with our audiences and telling us what's happening with our ad campaigns.
• 26:00
  Rick Ducey: So with that kind of setup and talk about having enough for another podcast, obviously you pick and choose.
• 26:09
  Rick Ducey: I mean, what in all of that do you think is super important that you're really going to be focused on in 2024?
• 26:16
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah and look, we're all for better measurement across linear and streaming and I think that lab work certainly continues across all of these players mentioned and they will figure out, figure it out eventually.
• 26:26
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We're not there yet.
• 26:27
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I'm not sure 2024 breaks through that barrier, but there's certainly growing pressure.
• 26:32
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So you know, what I tend to ask our sellers to do consultatively is shift gears in this area to talk more about return on ad spend and return on investment.
• 26:43
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So we're going after the right audience leading to the right outcomes.
• 26:49
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Right, we're very outcomes driven.
• 26:50
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So in this business and I may have said this long ago, but attribution is really the new rating, so we're strongly consulting to that persistent reach and frequency measure wherever a client can.
• 27:04
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Sometimes you run into some statistically insignificant issues and you've got to work around that site visits, brand lift sales, lift mechanisms, which we've started to do a lot more of, and then also things like what can dynamic creative do for you in terms of measuring the total efficacy of the campaign?
• 27:22
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So getting audiences there, but ROAS and ROI are critically important.
• 27:28
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: One other thing I've been hammering on is co-viewing right.
• 27:33
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So, especially as co-viewing links to engagement when tied to premium content.
• 27:41
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So I think the industry has largely overlooked that value ad, and it also gets me to kind of the Axiom of, you know, buyers needing to be able to discern what their deal CPM is from their effective CPM.
• 27:53
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So as these major players are figuring out kind of core linear plus streaming measurement, don't forget all of these other things that are becoming new proxies for ratings and outcome.
• 28:05
  Rick Ducey: l love the attribution new rating, and then the emphasis on co-viewing makes so much sense.
• 28:10
  Rick Ducey: It just kind of seems to me like there is some inertia going on, since CTV OTT is digital and people think of digital, as you know faces buried in the phones based in their tablet or faces buried in their PC.
• 28:23
  Rick Ducey: So that's what this OTT CTV thing is.
• 28:27
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah, that's a political for a minute though too.
• 28:30
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: You know these conversations used to happen in the kitchen.
• 28:33
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Now they're happening in the living room, and a lot of that viewing is co-viewing.
• 28:37
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: You don't think there's a political discussion happening in the living room through streaming.
• 28:41
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I'll tell you what got to pay attention to that.
• 28:44
  Rick Ducey: Dangerous, it's dangerous but you're right, no, so co-viewing is a big thing to bring up.
• 28:48
  Rick Ducey: There's a lot of uncredited audience, so that gap that I was highlighting before that you certainly see, john, is how much viewing is happening, the impression inventory, versus the spending, the monetization of those impressions.
• 29:03
  Rick Ducey: That gap is actually bigger when you factor in things like co-viewing.
• 29:07
  Rick Ducey: John, this has been fantastic.
• 29:09
  Rick Ducey: Thank you so much for being with us.
• 29:11
  Rick Ducey: Before I let you go, I would like you to talk about I think you've already done this, but give you another chance to say what are you excited about?
• 29:22
  Rick Ducey: I mean so CTV, you've done so much and talked so much already today, but is there any particular thing that you're like?
• 29:30
  Rick Ducey: This is going to be really excellent if we can pull this off as an industry or as a company.
• 29:35
  Rick Ducey: I mean, what's something that really has you kind of charged up?
• 29:39
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Yeah, I'm reflecting back a little bit as I answer this question.
• 29:42
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So NBC, circa 1999, I had a technologist there who told me that basically, television would never be reliably delivered over internet protocol.
• 29:56
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: That was 25 years ago.
• 29:59
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So 25 years later, I'm thrilled that we're here and we're here big time.
• 30:03
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So I'm excited about the fact that a future that everyone might have even been doubtful about 25 years ago is here and we have that true connectivity and we are leading to an industry of choice, convenience and control.
• 30:14
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Really quickly.
• 30:17
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Premion is a terrific place to be these days.
• 30:18
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I think we're in the right place at the right time to serve local.
• 30:21
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I am super optimistic about 2024 and I think the industry is leading to 24 with some more optimism.
• 30:28
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: Connected TV is going to help political.
• 30:30
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I am interested to see how the Olympics will perform with streaming and Peacock and other entities that they will leverage.
• 30:41
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I'm also excited to see how strategists, planners and buyers are going to continue to leverage up and level up on investment in ad supported streaming.
• 30:50
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: I think the economy is going to be just a little bit better than it was in 23.
• 30:54
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: We hope and streaming should see some organic low to middle, low to mid double digit AGR this year from everything that I'm seeing, which is great.
• 31:06
  John Vilade, Head of Sales, Premion: So, and what I'm most looking forward to, rick, is maybe doing this again with you at the end of 24.
• 31:10
  Rick Ducey: We can't let this time go by so long again.
• 31:13
  Rick Ducey: We'll definitely check back with you, Maybe even mid year, to kind of assess what the first half look like and then move we should expect for the second half.
• 31:21
  Rick Ducey: John, this has been a fantastic discussion.
• 31:24
  Rick Ducey: Thank you so much.
• 31:25
  Rick Ducey: I'm glad we had a chance to get together.
• 31:26
  Rick Ducey: Thank you for joining us and sharing your insights and knowledge about CTV and where we're all headed.
• 31:32
  Rick Ducey: It's a very complicated, fast moving space and you did a great job bringing it to life for us.
• 31:38
  Rick Ducey: So thank you very much, and we you know so the numbers I shared.
• 31:44
  Rick Ducey: That's from BIA's local ad forecast.
• 31:46
  Rick Ducey: If you want to know more about our local ad forecast for CTV and the other local media ad platforms, please check us out at bia.
• 31:54
  Rick Ducey: com.
• 31:55
  Rick Ducey: If you're one of our clients, hopefully already know where to find data, but we're always happy to help you find more data or different ways to use it.
• 32:04
  Rick Ducey: Thank you again for joining us, John, and our audience too.
• 32:09
  Rick Ducey: Thank you for spending time with us today for this leading local insights podcast.
• 32:12
  Rick Ducey: We do this for you.
• 32:13
  Rick Ducey: If you have ideas or any kind of feedback for what we've done or what you'd like us to do, please let us know, and if we can help you with your planning for 2024, we're certainly available to do that.
• 32:24
  Rick Ducey: That's why we're here.
• 32:25
  Rick Ducey: We love to do that.
• 32:26
  Rick Ducey: I'd love to chat with you about that.
• 32:29
  Rick Ducey: My email is rducey@ bia.
• 32:33
  Rick Ducey: com.
• 32:34
  Rick Ducey: So with that, John, I guess we'll call it a close.
• 32:36
  Rick Ducey: Happy New Year everybody.
• 32:38
  Rick Ducey: Thank you so much.
• 32:39
  Rick Ducey: Have a great day and have a good year.