Transcription ****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.**** [intro music] Shark 0:16 Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, your host and Chief Shark Officer. If you know anything about addressable TV, which is basically targeted television ads to specific people based on their interests, habits, etc, rather than just straight linear ads, then you also know that there are a lot of changes in the industry. But with that state of continuous change in evolution, what is needed to really move the industry forward was so many more changes that need to come. Should you watch ads that are targeted to you? I hope so they just bring more value to the advertiser, the agency, the publisher, and well you the viewer, Larry Allen is the vice president and general manager of addressable TV enablement for Comcast advertising, and he is responsible for guiding the addressable TV solutions across Comcast leveraging data and technology to enhance the consumer experience while delivering optimal results for clients across all screens. And on this episode, we'll discuss the state of addressable TV measurement, walled gardens scalability time to launch a campaign data privacy TV during a pandemic, bacon and goat cheese, brussel sprouts, four rings in a better legacy, river sharks and a lot lot more. And you're also going to hear about another new awesome sponsor of the show, who I'm really excited to work with have worked with for years, and again, helping this shark swim just a little bit faster. So let's tune into an addressable VP with a shark that obviously deserves his own TV channel on this episode of A Shark's Perspective. Shark 1:36 Well, Larry, thank you so much for joining us today on A Shark's Perspective, if you would tell us a little bit about your background, your career today and the journey that got you here. Larry Allen 1:54 Yeah, thanks for having me today. So currently, I'm the VP and general manager of addressable enablement at Comcast advertising. So leading a lot of those efforts around how do we stand up addressable for our national programming partners, my career's been, you know, really, an ad tech. And you know, online advertising since the late 90s. started at one of the first ad serving companies and ran an ad network, early in the days, rolled that into rich media and some analytics businesses, lots of startups for the first 10 years of my career, and then move to the agency side of the business, I was at xaxis, when we launched the programmatic trading desk for group M. So that was a lot of fun. And, you know, made my way to a big media company at Warner media, Turner at the time, and spend some time there running product strategy. And, you know, really thinking about the addressable space, which got me here, you know, I started as a client of Comcast, and then ended up being fortunate enough to take this job and help move the industry forward. Shark 3:05 As we just said, that industry or the the people that we know, it is a small, small world, to help move this forward cutting level set where you think the state of addressable TV is today, in 2021, we're coming out of a pandemic. And obviously, we've seen a lot of consumption habits changed. But all things being considered being able to target people has only gotten better, not worse. But that also presents some challenges. So where do you see sort of the state of the market? Because it's one that is constantly in flux? Larry Allen 3:36 That's a good question. You know, I think addressable has been a pretty stable for, you know, four or five years, and people are probably shocked to hear me say that. But in the kind of local TV space, you know, the two minutes of time that the distributors get, in order to sell inventory within their footprints. They've made those minutes addressable for a very long time. And I think that that is hit kind of maturity. And what's interesting is now, the agencies and buying community in general, they really want to ladder that up and scale to the 14 minutes of time that the national programmers run, and combine that with the connected TV inventory, which is arguably also addressable. And so we're at this inflection point where a lot of buyers have been buying addressable TV, yourself included, you're quite experienced at it. And so I think we're at that moment where it's time for scale. And so if it was a baseball analogy, probably second third inning, where, you know, we're basically now laying the foundation for other partners beyond our own inventory to basically take advantage of this amazing capability and drive effectiveness and value for marketers. Shark 4:57 Yeah, I've sat on several panels where I was concerned to pioneer and addressable TV, which was a little disconcerting, because it made me feel like I was going to be in a black and white photo somewhere, you know with it, make it make it look old with that sort of sepia feel. But when you think of that 14 minutes that we're trying to get to, how do we bridge and start really advancing that to to 14 minutes? Cuz I that's funny you say that because I've been thinking about this two minutes. Question. Every time I speak about addressable TV for a long time, we are in a very mature phase, but what's going to start bridging that gap is simply the pressure from advertisers who are clamoring for more inventory. Larry Allen 5:35 I mean, I think that will help. You know, in the upfront negotiations, if they say, as part of our deal, I want to 10% of my spend run aggressively, that would apply some pressure and people would move pretty quickly. That's the wonderful thing about that cycle, is it actually can be a, you know, a catalyst for change. Shark 5:57 But that really does require a lot of the larger agencies who are in those upfronts to demand that because most of the advertisers don't have that kind of purchasing power. Yep. Unless you're a major automotive. Larry Allen 6:09 Yeah, well, I mean, automotive is a big buyer of addressable today, know, if they came to the table and said, Hey, we want this to be a significant portion of our, then I think the market would move pretty quickly. I think the other part is really within the programmer. They they've run TV campaign management systems for probably 20 years. And so they're very hardened, the process is hardened, the organization is hardened. And it is a well oiled machine. I mean, being in digital, I was always like a digital inventories, the most efficient TV is old and slow, and whatever. And then I worked at a TV company, I was like, wow, actually, these guys are efficient and have a lot of data and are really smart about how they optimize and manage yield. And man, they're proficient at their trade. So, you know, I think that's an area where I spend a lot of time with our programming partners thinking about how do they change, literally every system start to finish to really consider from a planning and execution standpoint, how do they take advantage of this inventory that they can now create, or convert, as well as introduce their connected TV inventory into that same pool, right, so they need to combine two different types of inventory that are today managed a little bit differently, but more similar than kind of your traditional, you know, digital online, digital or mobile digital inventory. So I think that systems are a big area of focus that needs to be addressed and kind of enhanced for this new world. The other thing that we often talk about as a blocker is the measurement. So all TV is basically transacted on a Nielsen c three or C seven measurement currency, that being able to consider and understand the addressable insertions and be aware of it as they are resetting their ratings is paramount, because if that is still going to be the majority of how TVs transacted for the next 235 years, probably because there are plenty of clients that buying on abroad demo still make sense. Now, we think addressable is an amazing complement to that, and can actually supercharge campaigns by reaching, you know, the lower frequency viewers by reaching those hard niche audiences that you know, don't either fit into the broad demo, you know, people that are over 54 as an example, that still have a lot of spending power. So measurement piece is a big one, because the programmers are gonna have a hard time converting, you know, a significant portion of those 14 minutes to addressable until the measurement can actually suss out which pieces of the inventory were addressable and which pieces were delivered on a traditional demo. Shark 9:24 So now let me tell you about a new sponsor for the show making again a big splash again, your favorite shark would only work with the best and I've known and worked with AC and his team at Drips for years. Looking for an outbound push? Then take a look at drips the founders of conversational texting where they use conversational AI to help you reach customers where they're most responsive, and that's on their phones. And working with major brands like Three Day Blinds, Liberty Mutual, Credit Repair, and Gaines Co., Drips is leading the way for some of the biggest brands in the world to improve engagement rates and outcomes for their prospects and customers. Thank you Drips! And now back to the show. So one of the biggest challenges of that, though, with measurement. And this is a challenge, of course, with all digital channels as well, is really having those walled gardens where you everybody's competing for the money. This was some of the same arguments that have been going on forever. And Facebook's competing against Google, Google's competing against, you know, Comcast, TV inventory, and so on and so forth. I mean, they all are competing for those dollars. And it knows no real expectation to necessarily ask them to play nice and share Everybody stay together, because that wouldn't happen. But how does an agency even a sophisticated one, and with the smarter brands, how do they push for better measurement, having a client in today's world wait 3060 or 90 days for attribution reports? Post campaign is that's a Jurassic mentality and a lot of ways for a lot of people. But for so many digital marketers, especially they think that they've got a measure today, what they see in Google Analytics, and they go make massive changes tomorrow. And I think that's sort of the the myth of how some TV's done. And I wish you'd sort of elaborate on how you think we can improve measurement. Larry Allen 11:13 Yeah, I kind of think about measurement in two buckets. So I think about measurement on the kind of rating side of the equation, which is really heavily focused on the planning, and just validation of delivery, right. So that's, that's bucket number one. And as much as people like to beat up on Nielsen and comScore, I think both of them are may have made tremendous effort, and have actually moved the needle with regard to getting access to data, whether that's the underlying kind of set top box and platform data on for kind of traditional linear television. But also you think about, you know, the deals that they've done with Roku, with Facebook, even with with YouTube and others, where they're able to actually measure some of that inventory now, which, you know, five years ago, you would ask me, if that's going to happen, I would say, absolutely not. Why would the men but I think even those big technical technology platforms are recognizing that if they want to participate in kind of the traditional advertising ecosystem in a bigger way, they have to play nice there. And that validation is important. Clearly, that's not the majority of their business. I mean, for most of those platforms, it's less than 20% of their revenue, probably. But I think they want to participate in the recognizing that they have a place in the ecosystem. And I think they're starting to play a bit more nicer. Now, the attribution side is very different. I think we as kind of participating in the core television ecosystem recognize the benefit of attribution, the power of television. And so I think if you talk to any distributor or national TV programmer that's experimenting or driving towards delivering a scaled addressable product, attribution is part and parcel to that campaign delivery, because they recognize that it just puts a fine point on the power of TV, and that TV has always worked. And now it works even better. And they can they now have a mechanism and attribution tied to, you know, deterministic exposures, that it actually did work, and it delivered and you can now kind of tease out, oh, yeah, TV drove the search activity, but TV also participated in the downstream benefit searches, probably in the not too distant future, not going to get the majority of the credit for that downstream activity, you know, so that's a big one. But on the platform side, they all have their own internal attribution tools. And they're not necessarily participating with the attribution vendors from, you know, normalization, and hey, let's compare how to a video ad on the Facebook newsfeed compared to a video ad that ran on my big screen TV in my living room. I don't know that they're going to participate there anytime soon, because they will probably not bode well. Shark 14:18 How was the pandemic really affected accelerated influence change the way we look at TV today? Larry Allen 14:28 Well, I think people are watching more TV than ever before. I think they are desperate for high quality content, which is all good that they know that will enable this ecosystem to thrive for many years to come. On the advertising side, clearly, there was a big blip in the middle of the year because of the pandemic. You know, you can read kind of any article about that. But, you know, the good news is, you know, I think we're on the other side of it. I think, you know, the the market has come back. I think people Delivery tune their messaging, that was the biggest issue. I think a lot of advertisers that are big advertisers, auto CPG, telecommunications, those are all categories that were highly sought after an in demand during the pandemic. And the biggest issue for them wasn't that they didn't want to keep spending because there the consumer demand was up. It was actually that the messaging was that they previously had in the market was tone deaf. And so they needed to change creative, that takes a quarter, I mean, producing a million dollar commercial, you don't do you don't shoot that overnight, you know, so, oh, and when you're in a pandemic, right, getting access to talent, and, you know, support. So, you know, that was a big part of where the money why the money was paused in q2. But now, you know, q4, I think across the board, most programmers you talk to, or inventory owners would say, they were they were over a year, kind of moving into 21. Everything looks good, overall, General economy looks to be growing. So that all bodes well, for what we're doing. I do think the pandemic gave people an opportunity to kind of hit the pause button and say, Hey, do I need more flexibility in how I manage my business, from an from an ad spend standpoint, and I think people do need or are requesting more flexibility in how they execute campaigns, we may finally move away from the Save as mentality of TV where I ran a plan next quarter, I save that plan as next quarters campaign, and I rerun it like that happened. And, you know, we saw many advertisers that would just basically rerun the same schedule over and over and over again, with slight variations and tweaks. Of course, I'm not suggesting that the agency or the brand, you know, were lazy, it was just that it worked, and why mess with the good thing. But that limited their opportunity to invest in other things that could make that campaign work better. And I think now we're at, we have that opportunity. And people are saying, Hey, I if I eliminate a little bit of waste over here, I could use that money to fund these new things like connected TV, or addressable TV, which work really well in tandem with a national linear schedule. Shark 17:38 So now, let me tell you about a new sponsor for the show making a big splash if you will. Your favorite shark would only work with the best. And I've worked with a great team at Invoca for several years now. From marketing to sales and commerce to CX, Invoca’s active conversation intelligence platform enables revenue teams to create better buying experiences, drive more leads, and increase revenue. Trusted by top brands like Dish Network, Mayo Clinic, Mutual of Omaha, Pods, and SunTrust, Gregg and the Invoca team are doing some amazing work in turning conversional data into automated action to enhance digital touchpoints and human interaction. Thank you Invoca! So now back to the show. Are there any myths about addressable that that you can think of that you hear that are still sort of fallacies in the market that you want people to not think of anymore? Larry Allen 18:33 Yeah, I mean, the one that I would absolutely want to debunk is scale. I mean, people think that addressable has no scale. And that's, you know, just not true. I mean, there are billions of impressions available on a monthly basis across the ecosystem. Now, they, today, you have to either work with an aggregator or do the aggregation work on your own to bring that scale together, but that's exactly what we've solved for, with our national programming partners. You know, they we've got a number of them now that have addressable inventory, you know, lit up at at scale. And so, you know, they're all running campaigns and read open and ready for business. So I think that's a big one that that I would let people know that you can confidently come to the table with a reasonable budget, execute it and and deliver it, which is important. Obviously, you don't want to have a budget go unfulfilled. It's never good. The other thing is also that it's hard. I think it's a lot easier today than it was four years ago. And that's I think, primarily because the supporting systems like audience distribution, attribution, you know, pacing and delivery measurement. These things have all gotten better over the last couple years, and now I think people will actually have experience right so if you call attention Inventory owner that has addressable capabilities. I think you can execute a campaign in you know, three to five days at this point, whereas Shark 20:10 years ago, it probably was a month out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Larry Allen 20:14 So, uh, that that is another area that I think is probably people just aren't aware. Right. And, and also the education within the buying community. It started as a, you know, specialty inside the agency. And now I think, partly because of the growth of streaming and people like, oh, wow, this is where a lot of the viewership is moving. I think it that the skill set is moving broader than those specialty groups, which which is great. So now it's it's an education process that all of us need to participate in, to be basically get general video buying community to understand addressable TV should be a core component of their, their budgets. Shark 21:00 Yeah. But do you see the market any time in the near future, really being able to address addressable TV buying it on that scale, if you are the agency in Minneapolis, as opposed to the small click of groups that are broader in knowledge and internally, that live in New York, or Chicago or San Francisco or LA, for example, there are very few really smart players in this space, that although that that has broadened greatly than that four year period, it's not necessarily at the retail level, for a lot of even large companies to really dip their toe in the water, if they're married to that agency that's in Des Moines, or I don't want to pick it on the Midwest, if you're, you know, a St. Louis space agency, again, we find, if you're an Atlanta based company, for example, with an agency, not a lot of those, I still find them dipping their toe in stride addressable TV now they're doing it more from a digital standpoint, but not necessarily from a larger national scale TV campaign. Larry Allen 22:03 If you kind of take a step back, and you know, say, Look, I'm not talking about addressable, let's talk about audience buying, as a, you know, a mechanism for success for brands, I think, that has not permeated the industry yet. Right? You know, they're doing it maybe in niche digital opportunities, where the audiences are ready made for them, they can literally click a drop down and just buy. That's easy. That's great. However, I think in, you know, the more traditional space, whether it's audio or video slash television, those those shops aren't yet skilled in audience buying, they're still buying demos, or spots, right. And so I think that's the education comment I was making earlier. Yeah, we need to do a better job. I can tell you from my time, at Warner, we had an agency in Cincinnati, that was one of our Top Producing agencies buying data driven linear, they got it, they saw the RV, they recognize that, you know, it was a way for them to be competitive for them to win business that, you know, they would walk in, and they basically said, Look, we're the advanced to the future. And they were small, they, you know, they didn't have a lot of clients, but they were winning clients. They leaned in, they educated themselves, and then they executed. And they recognized that when they bought on an audience, they delivered better results for their clients. And it's a self fulfilling prophecy. So I would encourage those smaller agencies in the markets that we don't want to pick on, basically, you know, lean in and educate themselves. And I think it would be a really good thing for their business and their clients especially, but would probably enable them to grow. Shark 23:55 Yeah, I agree. I think I've just so often, I live in the central part of the country as well. So I think if I had not necessarily worked heavily in TV would have necessarily had the exposure that I had working with the fortune 200 of these campaigns, a lot of people in my area or similar areas, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, most of them don't have addressable TV knowledge. And I just, I'm wanting to see more of that broaden. Larry Allen 24:20 Well, so I would, I would add to the easy comment. Those agencies that are smaller, they don't have the resources to invest in infrastructure, or, you know, data, like there's a number of things that kind of surround the process, that if you weren't part of a big holding company, it's gonna be tough, which is why the platform businesses have done so well. An audience yells with them, because guess what, they made it easy. They said, My you Why? I'm going to give you all of the information you need that doesn't cost you anything to build a plan to set select some data, to upload your budget and execute it. I think we're moving in that direction. I mean, if you look at what's happening with programmatic in digital space, you know, all the agencies are basically, you know, trying to spend their money in programmatic first outside of, you know, really high end. tentpole events and things where you do need like a customized interaction, I think that is inevitable that we will see more automation come into the TV buying process, you know, we've got in our local sales environment, you know, we try to go into our markets and our individual customers. And basically, we have a platform for them, where they can pull up and buy television in an automated fashion. It's not programmatic, you know, using a DSP, but it is a UI that you log into, you can input a budget and and, and your creative and spend money. So that is just going to start to permeate more and more, and make it easier for these agencies and individual buyers to execute TV campaigns, more like the platform businesses, it won't be, you know, 100% of the business. Right, but it will be a growing percentage. Over the coming years. Shark 26:09 You mentioned something earlier, I wanted to touch base on how is this affected that you see across the board? Maybe with mvpd? He's not necessarily Comcast, but how does ccpa and the other privacy laws now? How are you seeing an impact in this industry, to where that's affected? How we're targeting people where people were leveraging so much on third party data? Larry Allen 26:30 Yeah, you know, I think, as distributors are very fortunate that we have direct to consumer relationships that are valued, you know, we're delivering a product and service that they want to pay for on an ongoing basis. We all take privacy extremely seriously, and, you know, are delivering the ability for people to opt out or opt in based on, you know, the the rule of law in whatever state or country that we're operating in. And I think, you know, the mvpds traditionally have taken that very seriously because of you know, oversight, and so that will continue. And that actually makes me really proud, because we are looking out for the consumer, first and foremost. And, you know, there were definitely practices in kind of the wild west of early days of digital that, you know, you kind of look the other way a little bit, you sort of did the right thing, but if you were able to, you know, build your business, maybe you took advantage of it for a little while, and that never made me feel good, you know. And so like, that's something that I'm proud of, that we actually can take that stand and have a business that, you know, collectively is looking out for the consumer, and I would say generally puts the consumer first I mean, our video product business, if you want to call it that is the most important thing, you know, and then advertising and how we make that work kind of tucks in as a very, very close second. But we always try to err on the side of the consumer first. So that's, that's a nice thing. Um, you know, look, in individual markets where the laws are more strict, we have to enforce them. And, you know, an entire state become not eligible. Maybe. But you know, which is, would be unfortunate, because I think that's, that's also doing a disservice to the consumer. If you basically make all the advertising in a state dumb, like that is not good for them. Because then they're going to be over frequency, they're going to be getting, you know, ads that they don't care about. And survey after survey after survey shows consumers prefer ads that are more relevant to them now, do they want them to be creepy and spooky and commit? No, of course not. But generally more aligned to their sensibilities is beneficial. Shark 28:55 Yeah, and I was just trying to think as you were talking about this, I can't think of one TV publisher or one of the big agencies or even one of the big brands who wouldn't remind me even though I was on the side of the folks that were pulling all this data together and had more insights than all the other parties, and we were very respectful to consumer privacy. But it was refreshing to hear other people remind us to be private, because they just they understood the power of it. And it was it was very well respected despite everything that's going on in the normal data world. So Larry Allen 29:29 yeah, you know, the other thing I like about it, actually, I feel like it just makes everybody's job harder, but at the same time, it does sort of level the playing field. Yeah. Because then now all of a sudden, you don't have these kind of unfair situations where a platform that has a closed ecosystem has all of the power, right? They have to follow the same rules. So that that's actually also refreshing because it seems like it gives everybody kind of an even footing Yeah, good Shark 30:00 point. So what is Comcast doing in respect to addressability? What have you guys been doing over the last several months to a year really, with respect to advancing addressable TV? Larry Allen 30:12 We've been leaning in, I think the best thing they did was hire me. No, seriously, you know, they kicked off an initiative in 2019, where we came together with Cox and charter to basically try to unify the footprint and the workflow, make it easier for a programmer, and importantly, a marketer to execute campaigns on, you know, a large footprint of addressable inventory. And we've been pushing on that initiative. Now, I picked up that baton, and it's been running really fast with it over the last year, and we've made a lot of progress, we've got multiple programmers now signed on to that service, and making great headway. We're pushing with our measurement partners, I think I mentioned before, you know, we're trying to be, you know, much more collaborative with them, because that is a key obstacle that we have to solve. And so, you know, putting, making, making our data available in the right way for those services, to be able to measure campaigns within our footprint is, you know, critical path. And so we've invested a lot of time and energy there. And then, you know, internally, you know, just things with the workflow, you know, upgrading systems, to my point about programmer systems need to be changed, our systems needed to be enhanced as well. So a lot of development work happening, to streamline, you know, the creative distribution process, the conditioning process, you know, make sure that when a programmer says, Hey, this is a spot that I want to make addressable that we actually understand that and, and can do it across the entire footprint, you know, a lot of cable companies are became as large as they are through mergers and acquisitions. And so there's a lot of tech out there, that's legacy that needs to be enhanced and normalized. And so we've spent a lot of time focused on that. And we feel good that our platform is in a place now where we are ready to light up these programmers at scale and, and deliver value for the market Shark 32:25 where the advancements you'd like to see in the mid to near long term future. Larry Allen 32:33 You know, a big one is, I think, better alignment across the ecosystem, I think we've done some good work, you know, individually, with with Coxon charter as part of this initiative, but having all of the distributors or or even the set Smart TV guys that are doing addressable enablement, you know, see some alignment around how programmers make that happen. You know, there's, there's conversations there, but it can go, it could go faster, because that will make it easier for again, the programmer to execute, then that gives them confidence, then they'll be able to sell the mark. So I mean, I think there's some work there, that that needs to happen. The other area that feels that people push back on that I don't know, is as big as of an issue is maybe they make it out to be, you know, people are spoiled with digital reporting, because it's near real time you deliver an impression, you refresh your webpage, and you can see, you know, that impression added to your, you know, impression column, right? Like, it's like all of a sudden, boom, it went from 142 to 143. Wow, that was really cool. That kind of level of speed, and kind of reactive review of the data. I don't know if that's necessary. But moving to a, you know, more real time kind of reporting and analytics capability for television, I think would be beneficial, not just for addressable, but TV in general. When I was at Warner, we were working on that, like, how do we get a dashboard that our sales team and the support teams could have access to like, what's the health of the system, you know, next day, that would be amazing, because in a lot of cases, it was maybe next next day, but in a lot of cases, it was weekly. And so having kind of a dashboard that could give you some better intelligence about how your business is running, I think would be a big one. But again, it comes back to lots of systems need to be upgraded, you need to be able to manage that data and TV data is big, and people don't quite realize the volume associated with TV data and the number of systems that are involved. So You know, dashboards and analytics is a, I think a very fast follow to these foundational items to make the addressable ecosystem work better. Shark 35:10 Larry, what do you do for fun? Larry Allen 35:13 Well, during pandemic times I've been cooking a lot, which is great. Shark 35:18 Yeah. What do you like to cook? Larry Allen 35:21 I've become a fan of the iron skillet. So pretty much anything I can make in a skillet. I've tried. I'm very partial to my bacon and goat cheese. brussel sprouts. Shark 35:37 Well, that's a combination. Larry Allen 35:39 It's unbelievable. Shark 35:40 Hit while you're on A Shark's Perspective, with a guy nickname shark. Can you see the sharks in the background on a zoom call? What is your favorite kind of shark and why do you have one? Larry Allen 35:53 bull shark? And I would say it's because they can survive in murky water Shark 35:59 and and in rivers? Larry Allen 36:01 That's right. We've had them in the Hudson River, Shark 36:03 the Hudson River. Yeah. Larry Allen 36:05 It's a brackish water all the way to Albany actually. And so there's been bull sharks spotted you know, at least by where I am here in New Croton. Interesting, you know, they can survive in varied waters. And you know, sometimes I think we all have to have that capability brings out your inner bull sharks are our industry. Shark 36:29 Alright, well, let's, let's jump to where we get to know you a little bit better. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today? Yes. All right. Number one. Live or VOD? Larry Allen 36:44 VOD. Shark 36:45 Yeah. I don't I don't remember the last time I watched anything of the news that was alive. Number two, you're a Steelers fan. Right? Larry Allen 36:53 That's correct. Shark 36:54 All right. Terry Bradshaw or Ben Roethlisberger. Larry Allen 36:59 Terry Bradshaw. Why so? Shark 37:02 It's kind of hard to argue with four rings. But Larry Allen 37:05 yeah, legacy. Shark 37:06 Yeah. All right. Number three, the Yankees or the Mets? You're in New Yorker now. Larry Allen 37:14 Yankees just because I'd like to win. Shark 37:20 Number four, here's an ad question. Six second ad on video or a 32nd. TV spot? Larry Allen 37:30 A 32nd. TV spot. And so extremely effective. A great storytelling. Shark 37:40 Yeah, good. Exactly. Number five. And the most important question that you're going to be asked today and you'll appreciate this having watched probably too much food network like me as well over the last year biscuits or cornbread, biscuits. Larry Allen 37:54 sausage gravy. Shark 37:56 Exactly. Alright, so Larry, where do people find out more about you what Comcast is doing the space your thought leadership and more? Larry Allen 38:05 Short? Well, they can look me up on LinkedIn, of course under Lawrence Allen, not Larry Allen, or they could check out on addressability comm we have a huge playbook there talks to all about addressable TV and how people can get involved. Shark 38:20 And I'll see you at a TV conference soon. So Larry, thank you so much for joining us today on a on A Shark's Perspective. Larry Allen 38:26 There's a lot of fun. Thank you shark. Shark 38:33 So there was my conversation with Larry Allen, the vice president and general manager of addressable TV enablement for Comcast advertising. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him. First, I love the way he addresses the state of the state, if you will, with addressable TV. As he says it's time for scale. He used the analogy that we're in the second or third inning, and he's probably right, but I hope the industry will start driving some home runs and soon and in the setting. If you're familiar with addressable TV, then you likely know the capabilities and value of addressable TV advertising. But many of the limitations that existed, say five years ago, still exist today. We're on the tip of the iceberg. But we need to continue to really push to take advantage of the opportunity before it passes us by second what would expand the true addressable two minute per hour inventory? Well, if we could collectively all together demand more than maybe that money would talk collectively, the industry needs to come together to tell them what it wants and leverage the economics to make that change is hard to do in most companies don't work together in any kind of environment. But I sure wish we had done the same with Facebook for when they went their way with advertising. It's almost an easier ask though, with TV, because TV is a more closed ecosystem. We need more minutes. We also need to continue the level of speed, more real time reporting analytics, more education, more alignment, we need more of it. Third, one of the things that I found interesting is just a few years ago, all addressable TV advertising was basically done by just a handful of agencies that has Since expanded, but it's not at the retail level, if you will for agencies in Dallas or salt lake or Miami or anywhere else. knowledge of the concept Yes, but operational knowledge this still exists within a smaller group of players. So as he recommends lean in, and I hope wherever you are, you'll lean in as much as possible to this great advertising capability. It will help the audience needle move forward as the knowledge base grows. And as he reminds us being able to buy from a platform will definitely help move this forward to execute these campaigns. Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective calm. Thank you again for the privilege of your time. I'm so thankful for everyone who listens. And thank you to the amazing sponsors invoke in droves that helped make this possible. Today is going to be an amazing day for you. But tomorrow, it'll be amazing too. And I hope you'll join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective. [music]