Cable MSOs back Go Addressable TV advertising initiative

June 24, 2021
The industry collaboration will seek to address the challenges facing the addressable TV ecosystem and recommend solutions while protecting personal information.

Altice USA, Charter Communications, Comcast, and Cox Media are among the TV distributors who have collaborated to create the Go Addressable initiative to enhance the attractiveness of addressable TV to potential media advertisers. The industry collaboration will seek to address the challenges facing the addressable TV ecosystem and recommend solutions while protecting personal information.

Joining Altice USA’s a4 Advertising, Charter’s Spectrum Reach, Comcast, and Cox Media in the effort are DIRECTV, DISH Media, and Frontier Communications, as well as TV brand VIZIO. Their efforts will focus on three areas:

  1. Increase access to addressable inventory and reduce fragmentation by identifying best practices. These practices likely will include establishment of common terminology, technical standards, and enhanced measurement approaches, using aggregated data and with a commitment to protecting personal information.
  2. Provide advocacy and education about addressable advertising, including the formation of the http://www.goaddressable.com/ website. The site is the current home of an industry guide as well as the future repository for other educational materials, webinars, and industry working groups.
  3. Simplify the enablement of addressability in the linear TV environment, including the ability to execute addressable campaigns across multiple distributors in a more streamlined manner.

“Addressable capabilities open up tremendous new opportunities for advertisers by marrying the reach of TV with the precision of audience targeting,” commented Mike Dean, senior vice president, advanced advertising, at ViacomCBS. “ViacomCBS is delivering national addressable campaigns with many distribution partners, but the growth of addressable requires standards, scale, and industry participation. The Go Addressable initiative is an important step toward achieving unified marketplace solutions that work across the TV ecosystem to drive meaningful expansion and accelerate adoption.”

Go Addressable, which has brought multiple distributors together, is an exciting introduction and advancement for the TV ecosystem,” added Sean Cunningham, president and CEO of the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB). “The appetite and outlook for addressable TV advertising is strong, and industry forces such as Go Addressable are instrumental in resolving existing challenges and helping to pave the way forward for the industry, which is currently at an inflection point – with audience-based buying growing dramatically.”