We have a guest here - Will Shields from Comcast Media Advertising is here with us today. Welcome. Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at Comcast.

 

W: I’ve been at Comcast for about 6 years, and before that, I was in the radio industry for 20 years here in Atlanta.

 

J: We love Will. One of the things that agency media reps do for us at Reformation Productions is maintain expertise over their viewership, data, offerings, etc. They are our first contact when gathering information to determine how we construct media buys for our clients. We reach out to people like Will to gather the necessary information to ensure we are making the best, most effective media buy possible for our client businesses. So thank you for being here. Zachary, that being said, why did we invite Will to join us on Straight Shot today?

 

Z: I was meeting with Will the other day about a client media buy that we have coming up and he started sharing some new things with me and I thought it would be beneficial for our audience to have him come on the show where we could talk about it together.

 

What is Advertising? 2:42

Advertising is the use of purchased media to communicate your business to an audience. Whether through print, TV, radio, internet, social media, whatever method. It’s using purchased media (time or space) to communicate your business. Advertising is one of many marketing strategies businesses and agencies use to bring awareness to targeting consumer audiences. Now, Public Relations is un-purchased media. But that's a separate podcast....

 

J: Now, we’ve talked a bit in previous episodes about the importance and relativity of video in marketing. This is not new. People have been using video to market their businesses for years. It has been considered the #1 avenue in Advertising since the invention of the TV. Before that it was radio. Before that it was print.

 

Z: Times change, and technology continues to change how we live our lives. The internet has completely changed the print industry. One of the national agencies that I worked at earlier in my career had a yellow page marketing division, the internet has completely changed the directory industry. Newspaper as well. MP3s and the internet changed the radio industry. People no longer listen to music on their radios anymore, now they listen to talk shows. And Cable TV changed the broadcast/station-based TV advertising. And now online media habits are further changing all the above. - everything keeps changing all the time. Cable TV has always been quick adopters of the ever-changing industry. When Broadcast TV advertising first came out, one of the benefits came from it being a network. Local stations were owned by a network of stations - ABC, CBS, and NBC were the big three. This was good for businesses because you could purchase advertising based on DMA through the individual TV stations, then with Cable TV you could specifically based on zip code and specific networks and TV shows.

 

I want to talk a little about the benefits of cable TV advertising. One of the challenges in marketing is getting your messaging in-front of the right people. We’ve been utilizing cable advertising with our clients for this reason for many years. Because we not only determine what are client’s brands are and how they should differentiate from others in the marketplace, but we also do the consumer targeting and consumer research that tell us about their lifestyle - where they live, work, and play; what they like and dislike; what their media habits are, what shows they watch, and why, etc. With that information, we can select which networks, TV shows, times, and geographic areas in which we should run their advertising so that we hit the target very specifically. You can also prioritize that channels based on viewership numbers. Doing this, saves us from wasting our client’s marketing budget, their money, by putting our message in front of and audience that is the right fit for our client businesses. Cable TV has helped us meet that challenge.

 

Will, I don't know if you've every sat with someone on THIS side of the table to discussed why it is that we use you?

 

W: Well, we're appreciate that you do.

 

Z: What is your input into the way that agencies have used Cable Advertising?

 

Consumer Behaviors 8:40

W: Well, you bring up a very good point - when you look at the evolution of television, from when it was network television and really started off with must-see TV and people really felt that Walter Cronkite on the nightly news was the way to advertise and reach people because everybody watched that. Nowadays, people don’t watch the way they used to.  When you have all these different networks with all this different content and distribution platforms, the way people are consuming has changed so much that it’s important for marketers and advertisers to change the way they buy media. If you don’t market properly to them, take the data into account, and listen to the expertise of your ad agency and media rep, you are probably going to end up wasting your money and not reaching your target audience.

 

<discussion on MTV, OJ Simpson, the development of paid tv, viewership habits, and consumer targeting>

 

Z: Technology changes our habits and our habits change technology.

 

It all goes back to viewership and it's changed. With TV habits changing in our society, people are beginning to move “on set” to “online.” Cable TV is meeting this challenge as well. Now, this is very new and doesn’t replace the viability of traditional Cable TV advertising for some audiences but getting in front of the curve is paramount to making the most of new opportunities. Will is here to tell us a bit about the change and what Comcast is doing, very proactively, in this area.

 

<Will discusses "following the eye balls" and viewer habits and how Comcast is changing to meet those changes with multiple points of distribution>

 

Distribution 17:06

In order to reach these consumers, we need to have multiple points of distribution. For example, if an advertiser feels like they don’t need to buy “streaming video,” they’re going to miss out on that opportunity to reach those consumers who like to stream different content in different ways. The other piece of this is the data.  Nielson is the industry standard for measuring audiences for both television and radio. They bought Arbitron, the old rating service, so Nielson numbers have been ad agencies live and die by. Depending on the numbers of how many people watched different programs, the ad agencies would decide which programs to buy. Now we have much more targeted data available. So it’s just as important that people look and do things a little bit differently -  as consumer behaviors change, you also have to change your marketing strategies.

 

<discussion on targeting data and social media>

 

Z: Right. Now you’ve also partnered with people who aren’t Comcast?

 

W: In addition to being a cable provider, Comcast also provides an internet service through Xfinity. Through a partnership with Xfinity and Free Wheel, we have really been able to reach people who are non-Comcast customers. So if you are watching other services, we can still reach you. Not in all cases, but with most streaming applications, we can reach those folks.

 

And another aspect, a little different subject - prime time doesn't really exist anymore. With DVR, on-demand, and streaming platforms, WHEN someone watches is completely dependent on them. So we've had to adjust our advertising to be target based rather than time-of-day based.

 

<discussion on dvr, on-demand, and live viewing habits>

 

<discussion on other offerings through Comcast>

 

Z: In our last episode, we talk about how important video was particularly internet video and social media video. With this new offering, the same thinking applies to entertainment viewing - the same targeting and strategies.

 

STRAIGHT SHOT 38:12

Z: A lot of business owners don’t think that they can afford TV advertising. But as we talked in our last episode, video productions costs have come down so now ,if you do the homework, brand development, and consumer research up front, you can take advantage of the opportunities like Cable TV that are out there without worrying about wasting your precious marketing budget. You must know what is available, what relationships you need to have in place, and what questions to ask to make the most strategic use of any marketing tool – including advertising.

 

<Open discussion on Agency problems with media sales reps abusing their clients, how Agencies protect them, and the relationship between Media and Agencies>

 

<Media advice to Businesses>