Hethersett-based TV commercial production agency JMS Group hosted a seminar last Thursday evening with AdSmart from Sky in the sophisticated St Giles House Hotel, Norwich. AdSmart is a revolutionary addressable advertising technology designed and operated by Sky. Now in its seventh year, AdSmart has an enviable record of delivering exceptional results, especially for new television advertisers. In attendance at the seminar were several major East Anglian brands intrigued to look under the hood of modern TV technology, and how it could boost their advertising strategy in 2022. As an advertiser, you would have traditionally purchased a television campaign by geographic area, time of day, channel, and audience demographic, i.e., you would figure out what type of programmes your desired audience were likely to view, then place your commercial in them. It was an effective – though blunt – method, and usually required significant financial investment. For many SMEs television was a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Yet – despite revolutionary developments in ad-tech during the past decade – there remains a lingering perception that TV advertising is expensive or inflexible. The AdSmart seminar tore apart those archaic beliefs. AdSmart’s Andy Grant explained that the platform is remarkable because it pairs 1st party data from Sky’s 12.5m subscriber base with 3rd party ‘big data’ from consumer intelligence agencies including Experian, Mastercard, Nectar, Dunhumby, and TwentyCi. Several thousand household-level data-points allow Sky’s viewing hardware to seamlessly tailor unique commercial breaks (regardless of the content they are viewing) to suit a household’s makeup and spending patterns. Put another way, your commercial will only be seen in homes that meet criteria selected by you; after all, if you sell pet food why should you spend money to show your commercial to homes with no pets? Additionally, you will only pay for impressions of your commercial when it has been viewed full screen on a TV for at least 75% of its duration – a high benchmark that other targeted advertising does not come close to. JMS Group’s Senior Editor Tom Vaughan-Mountford closed the evening with an introduction to the process of producing effective television campaigns, and discussion continued over cocktails and canapes. JMS will announce the date of a future seminar later in the year for those who missed out. Meantime, if you’re interested in discovering why AdSmart from Sky should be a key part of your SME advertising strategy this year, contact Francesca de Lacey at JMS Group on 01603 811855.
