“To understand my role in Samsung Ads, it’s important to understand what Samsung Ads is,” Evans said. He explained Samsung’s shift from purely a device manufacturer to creating services that would integrate their customer experience with their devices. “With the 73 million TVs we have in the US, and then many more globally, we created a service called Samsung TV Plus, a Free Ad-Supported TV (FAST) service that gives the consumer an out-of-the-box free streaming television experience with hundreds of channels. We established a gaming hub and other places where Samsung customers could come in and spend time with services. On top of that, once the users spend time with us, we could put advertising in front of them and create that business. My original role at Samsung Ads was to be the data guy and the head of analytics, and my teams were servicing clients and doing custom data work for many clients, especially in the Fortune 500. My role has shifted and expanded to innovation, so I’m responsible for the data-driven innovation portfolio that we use to help brands and advertisers be successful in advertising on our streaming TV platform.”
Shapiro noted the shift in the importance of data in advertising. “The star of every deal seems to be the data itself,” he said.
“You have a new product that you’re introducing that helps your clients who are buying across your platforms better understand the efficacy and the outcomes,” Shapiro said.
Evans discussed the new product, Optimal Reach. “What Optimal Reach does is it updates the value proposition that we offer in CTV and updates it to a world where streaming is a major part of the mix. So, for your average brand, you’re shifting dollars from linear to CTV and CTV-connected television. And with that increase in budget, you need more visibility. The problem that we’re seeing our clients face is what they call fragmentation, which is [they] spent 50 years building up an ecosystem and processes and data for managing the biggest item in [their] media plan, which was linear TV, and now suddenly, March 2020, the streaming revolution happens overnight.”
He said this shift was disorienting because clients didn’t have the data, the processes, or the technology to help them. “We created Optimal Reach, built over multiple years to address that need. We will show a client for your target audience, let’s say it’s luxury car buyers. What’s the universe of people you could be reaching on our platform?”
“So the target is now more traditionally profiles as opposed to demographics. Is that an accurate assessment?” Shapiro asked.
Evans broke it down between traditional linear and CTV. “In the linear world, when you’re targeting and measuring, it’s really all about broad demos. In CTV world, you’re really talking about massive addressability. Virtually every impression is targetable to an opted-in TV in our platform. And I think with 56 million households that we reach in the US, we’re the largest single addressable platform in the country.”
The dynamic benefits of Optimal Reach for both customers and advertisers
Shapiro noted that, essentially, customers are forced to opt into data targeting on Samsung TV just to get the device to start, but Evans denied that.
“I’m really proud of this about the Samsung platform – when you take out your TV and you walk through the process, there’s this huge 50-point font opt-in page, you can’t miss it. Do you want to opt into internet-based advertising? Do you opt into viewer information services, which is content optimization? If the user opts in, we can target them. And what Optimal Reach does is [detect] who’s being reached by linear only, by AVOD only, who’s being reached by both, who Samsung is reaching, and then all the little combinations therein. And where it really gets surprising is when you get to the slice of the pie that’s unexposed altogether, [we’ve seen] that the average campaign misses 40% of their audience.”
“So how is it possible that so much is missing the target audience?” Shapiro asked.
Evans said, “In a linear environment, there’s a lot of duplication between network buys. There’s a small number of people watching lots and lots of television, and they’ll just eat up all your impressions and, therefore, eat up all your budget. I think most of us walk into the world of streaming assuming that there’s a lot of incrementality and a lot of unique reach in the streaming ecosystem. But the fact is, there’s not as much as you think. And so what we’re trying to do with Optimal Reach is equip the marketer with the data to know who’s being duplicated and who’s being missed. And that way, they can ship the money from where they’re wasting it with duplication and reinvest it to where they’re missing customers.”
