The Past and the Future of Marketing & Advertising: The Perfect Storm

I came across this article over the weekend, ‘Peacock Strikes Direct Access DSP Deals With The Trade Desk, Yahoo'.

It struck me as interesting. Could this describe the perfect storm of all things that have been happening and a glimpse into what is to come with advertising and marketing?

What has been happening? For a bit over a year, I’ve been listening (week) daily to this podcast.  I have been fascinated by their ever increasing number of episodes about CTV, ‘streaming wars’ and the future of media buying.

And what does this Peacock article highlight:

Streaming wars

Connected TV (CTV)

The impact on media buying these deals have

“The deal will extend the reach for marketers’ connected TV (CTV) campaigns, as well as extending the reach of NBCU — 70% of the Peacock audiences are incremental to other NBCU digital video platforms.”.

The bottom line is that with convergence of CTV and media buying becoming a blend of digital and traditional (old ways of buying media now being applied to CTV and other online options), it seems we may be moving into a world where everything is trackable. And then not.

What does that mean?

If tv advertising is now digital – then theoretically it can be measured. That, of course, is why marketers love digital – performance marketing – proving ROI/ROAS – shifting spend.

But just when we get to the holy-grail of all marketing being potential ‘performance marketing’, we get the rug pulled out from under us.

‘How so?’ you ask…

The demise of the 3rd party cookie. (Yeah, don’t get me started on that).

But in a glance of the world to come:

“The Trade Desk, which has been offering marketers core NBC digital video ad inventory, has been working with NBCU on an identity graph — NBCU ID — using NBCU’s first-party data. Additionally, The Trade Desk is developing a programmatic shoppable ad unit for NBCU’s streaming platforms.”

So maybe there is hope for the world of advertising becoming truly measurable and performance based. It will just need to be in a privacy friendly, first party world.