Ryan Afshar recently celebrated 25 years in the media and advertising industry. In addition to his role as VP, Publishers & Platforms, International at LG Ad Solutions, Afshar also serves as a mentor and advocate for Bloom UK and MEFA (Media For All), working to improve inclusivity in the industry.
In this edition of the Sell-Side View, Afshar discusses the importance of DEI initiatives, the evolution of free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels, and how LG uses data to build advertising solutions.
What is the greatest challenge facing CTV publishers today?
I think one of the biggest challenges, not just for CTV publishers but TV/broadcast as a whole, is content discoverability. How do viewers find their content? There’s so much choice now from a viewer’s perspective, be it through linear or BVOD, SVOD, FAST and AVOD. There used to be an “if you build the content, they will come” mentality. Content is still very much king, but discoverability is queen. So having that strategy to enable users and viewers to find that content is really important. So that’s a big challenge.
And that ties into the fragmentation of audiences across so many different streaming and content offerings, all vying for eyeballs. So I think fragmentation of audiences is definitely a big challenge. And then with all of the change and all the shifts in consumer behaviour around content consumption, it becomes important to make sure that the buy-side is aware of what each partner has and what they’re offering. That’s certainly what we take to market, making sure that we’re differentiated and people understand what LG’s offering is versus another content owner or streaming partner.
Which ad tech vendors deliver the most value to your business?
I’m not going to name names, there are a lot of good vendors out there. What I will call out is that there’s technology that’s purpose built for CTV and streaming, and then legacy tech that’s built for other media, which are now trying to move into the CTV space. What we see from the partners we work with, is those that have been built from the ground up with TV and streaming in mind, tend to work the best. They do a great job and understand the nuances of CTV versus display or mobile or even online video, to some extent.
There are also a lot of intermediaries and a lot of them are moving into CTV, because that’s where a lot of media investment is going. And when you have intermediaries, there are some that aren’t really providing any value. So I think it’s about identifying the tech companies and vendors that provide value, whether it’s incremental demand, whether it’s interesting measurement solutions, whether it’s ID solutions, or even capabilities for building creative. I think as long as the partners are adding value, we’re willing to test those partners. But there are a lot of tech companies that aren’t adding that value, and I think that’s creating much more confusion and clutter within the ecosystem.
Also those that have a consultative and service-led solution tend to add value. A lot of companies will promise the world from a product perspective, and then you go live, and actually, when you see it in action, the service isn’t there, the consultation isn’t there, it doesn’t really do what you were saying it was going to do, or there aren’t any folks to work with to try and troubleshoot. So I think that service layer is really important as well, and marrying up to what’s promised at the beginning of the pitch, for example.
If you could change one thing about the buy-side, what would it be?
I think on the whole, the buy-side is doing a pretty good job of navigating the ever-changing landscape. It’s not that I would necessarily change something, I would encourage more to explore and experiment with all the different capabilities of CTV and streaming. We know that it lives at this intersection between TV and digital, be that the unique data, measurement or targeting that CTV can do. So I would encourage more of that.
There is choice paralysis as well. For the same reasons that audiences are fragmented, the advertisers have never had so much choice when it comes to large sight, sound and motion on the biggest screen. And so they tend to do more of what they already know. So I would encourage them to try new things, experiment more, see what works and what doesn’t.
I think in agency groups, silos can sometimes be a barrier; in some agencies it’s an AV team buying CTV, sometimes it’s a digital team. So I think that standardisation works both ways. I think there has to be standardisation on the sell-side, but I think some normalisation of how things are bought would also be helpful.
And bring more clients to the table. I think agencies are pretty well equipped and clued up on FAST versus SVOD versus BVOD – some more than others. But we don’t hear enough from the clients as to what is happening in that space, because for the planners, that’s their job, they plan across different media. More clients in the room, hearing what their objections are against moving more budgets into streaming, would be great.
Which content types, third-party channels and ad formats are working best for you today?
In terms of formats, FAST is obviously hugely on trend at the moment. I think the quality of FAST channels has really improved in the last 18 months and is really accelerating – both from a publisher standpoint, because it’s a new revenue stream for publishers to be able to monetise that inventory, and then of course advertisers as well.
We have our own FAST service, LG channels, which has 150 channels, and it’s in 29 different countries. And we’re now starting to look at first-window content; we’ve just launched an exclusive with DriveTribe, Richard Hammond’s auto enthusiast show, which is now exclusively on LG Channels. So I think you’ll start to see much more premium in FAST.
The other format, if you want to call it a format, is our native placement, which is on our home screen. And the home screen is quickly becoming a media channel in its own right. Is it CTV? Is it digital? It sits on the home screen, and people are spending up to 11 minutes deciding what to watch. If you look at the carousel unit, which is almost half the screen, it’s really high impact and gets a lot of attention. And actually, if you think about the user journey, not everyone, when they turn on the TV, goes into an ad-supported environment. Some people don’t even go and watch what’s traditionally called TV. They might go into gaming. They might just stream music. They might do some shopping or a workout video. In which case that ad impression on the home screen is maybe the only ad that they see in that user session. So that is a really high-impact unit with a number of different use cases, both for media and entertainment brands, and also more non-endemic advertisers as well. So we’re seeing a lot of success with that.
What is your company’s strongest USP?
Obviously being a leading global OEM (original equipment manufacturer), we have over 200 million devices, so scale is a big USP. But not all devices and smart TVs are made equally, so there’s varying quality of devices. At LG, we’re fortunate enough to work for a brand that won over 100 awards at CES this year, and tends to do that every single year. So we are much more on the premium end, which then obviously lends itself well to what kind of audiences buy LG devices that are behind our FAST services. So it’s a much more affluent audience.
And it’s pretty well documented that we have access to proprietary data, such as our ACR, on-the-glass data. And then we also have our operating system data from webOS. And those two data sets, all privacy compliant, are at the heart of all the ad solutions that we build and craft for our clients. So that’s really the USP.
So when we go back to the beginning, what are the challenges for publishers? Our USP and how we take it to market is really trying to solve problems for the brands. One of the biggest problems for brands is, how do you manage your linear buy versus your streaming buy, making sure you’re deduplicating those audiences? With ACR you can do that. You can suppress linear households to make sure that you’re only reaching the devices that don’t watch linear. So when we go to the planners, we can demonstrate that increased incremental reach, and that really resonates.
What does your data strategy look like, and what targeting capabilities are you having the most success with?
What’s really interesting is our webOS data, which tells us what’s plugged into the actual device. So what gaming devices are plugged in, what apps are being used, for how long are they being used, what’s that session length? So a good use of our data would be knowing that the PlayStation is plugged in, we can target households that have a PlayStation with the latest game, and know what kind of games they like. So if it’s sports or if it’s a first-person shooter, that’s a really good targeted way of reaching those audiences.
The other way is through media and entertainment brands on those home screen units. We know, for example, if someone had an Apple TV subscription, but no longer pays for it. Apple can then target those households with a special offer to re-subscribe for their streaming service. So really effective forms of attribution for some of these media and entertainment brands.
Which person in the industry inspires you most today?
I’ve just just completed 25 years in the industry, which is pretty shocking, and I can’t believe it’s gone so fast! And I’ve done a lot of work in recent years with the likes of Bloom UK and MEFA. I’m very passionate about DEI and trying to make our industry as inclusive as possible. And I think both those organisations are doing a great job of raising awareness of the challenges that are still to come around diversity and inclusion. I think that’s very much needed in this sector; not just in CTV and streaming, but across the whole of the advertising industry. How do we tackle discrimination, whether it’s gender, ethnicity, neurodiversity, age, or sexual orientation? I think they deserve a hats off and a huge amount of respect to the people who volunteer for those organisations, and give up their time to try and make our industry better.
What are the biggest changes that you expect to occur in CTV advertising over the next year?
I think we’ll continue to see the shift to streaming. 60 percent of all of our viewing time on LG devices is streaming. That will only increase. But also the continued shift to ad-supported streaming. We already know that all the big SVODs have launched ad tiers. People like free TV. It’s something they’ve been used to since the beginning of TV. So that’s a natural habitat, and a way of understanding that value exchange of content versus ads. So we’ll see that shift continue.
As a result, we’ll start to see the investment follow. I think more advertisers will see the value, and we’ll start to see those budgets shift from other areas – not just streaming cannibalising linear, but actually social and online video budgets starting to move into streaming. So we’ll start to see a lot more spend from advertisers.
We’ll also see greater use of AI in helping the viewer find that content. We know that discoverability is a huge challenge. One of our responsibilities as an OEM is to make sure that the user experience is really great. And that’s down to the UI, that’s down to content discoverability and recommendations, and at the same time FAST will become more premium.
I think what’s really interesting is brands as content owners. We talk about content discoverability from a publisher standpoint, but we know that brands can produce a lot of great branded content, and one of the biggest challenges is getting that seen. And going back to the home screen, that’s something we’re starting to see advertisers lean into, where they’ve produced this great 20-minute piece of content, but how do you get people to see it outside of social channels? They all want to see their content on the big screen. Anyone that says they don’t is probably lying!
And then it would be remiss to not talk about shoppable. It’s much bigger in the US, but I think the convergence of retail media and CTV will be a big shift. There’s obviously rich data on all sides, and I think it ultimately comes down to attribution, whether it’s clicking on a QR code, whether it’s data clean rooms. Think about the amount of investment that’s coming into CTV, and the opportunity that we all know exists in retail media. If they can be joined up in a much more succinct and flawless way, that’s a massive opportunity.
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