“If you are just looking to buy inventory, then you can do that directly from the various programmers and you can buy that inventory very cheaply. But you are not getting any sort of targeting,” notes Raghu Kodige, CEO of LG Ads. “Whereas when you buy directly from LG ads, you are buying a specific audience based on a very strong layer of data. We can give you data about viewers across linear TV and across all the other apps, because we can capture what is on the glass.”

ALAN WOLK (AW): How does the audience for your FAST, LG Channels Plus, compare with other streaming audiences and with cable audiences? 

RAGHU KODIGE (RK): They are very similar to both other streaming services and to broadcast. To begin with, there’s a lot of overlap—our viewers aren’t necessarily cord cutters—many of them have MVPD or vMVPD subscriptions and LG Channels Plus is just one of the ways they watch TV.

That’s why we don’t just sell inventory on a particular channel—we sell audiences. We go to a brand and say “tell us who you want to reach and we can help you find that audience on our channels.” That is the advantage of having the sort of granular viewership data that comes from owning the device, which in our case, is the actual TV.

AW: Do you work with advertisers who come to you to try and get incremental reach?

RK: We recently did a webinar called “You Can Have Your Cake And Eat It Too” and that sums up our approach to incremental reach, which is it doesn't have to be “you can only get reach” or “you can only get precise targeting.”  Because the reality is, you can actually get both. 

I think when brands first start running a CTV campaign, they see it purely as a reach extension mechanism. But then, if they work with one of the three or four major players in this market, they very quickly understand that you can do more, and then they start to apply things like audience targeting and measurement.

What that means in practice is that if you want to use CTV to reach people you may have missed on linear, you still want to qualify that CTV audience and target them more precisely. Then what you’ll do—because you’re likely willing to pay a higher CPM if you’re going to get a more qualified audience—you measure your linear TV yield, and you measure your CTV yield, and in almost every case, you’ll see that even though CTV seems more expensive, it’s actually getting you a better return on your ad spend. That’s the direction we are advising brands to go in right now and we see it happening more and more.

AW: Given that you own the interface, how much emphasis are you putting on things like recommendations and content discovery?

RK: I think it is very important and owning the interface means that when people give us permission, we are able to see what they are watching on linear, on VOD, on streaming and even on their DVR.

It’s important to us that users see value from that data and one way to show value is to provide them with better discovery and recommendations.  When you look at what made Netflix or Amazon special, it was their ability to correctly anticipate what a consumer might want. We want to be able to provide the same experience for TV.

Right now there are just so many options, so many places you can watch TV and people are always talking about how they forget which networks shows are on and how they can’t find a movie they wanted to watch.

This is where having all that data really comes into play, because if you can create a personalized experience via the content you recommend, then you’re also going to create an environment that’s more conducive for advertising, one where viewers are more likely to want to see your ads.

AW: Given the many new streaming services out there, how are you using data to help them grow their audiences and retain subscribers?

RK:  If you are a broadcaster and you want to drive tune-in, you can use our data to target people who have watched your previous seasons or who are watching competitive shows that have similar audiences. That’s going to be very valuable.

But it’s the streaming services who have very specific targeting needs right now, as they are all competing against each other for audiences and subscribers. In the past, their audiences tended to be small. But now they’ve got much more scale and we can run really effective campaigns for them because the larger your data set, the more precise you can get with your targeting.

AW: What about excess frequency? How does being an OEM help on that front?

RK: As an OEM we have access to what viewers are watching on streaming and on linear. And we can help them to understand where they are running too many ads—which networks and which dayparts are giving you excess frequency.

At the same time, we can help you find those apps where your target audience is, but where you’re only reaching them four or five times a month. These aren’t niche apps either, but apps where you can reach something like 50% of the population. And so if you shift your money to them, you can begin to eliminate excess reach. 

This interview was done in conjunction with TVREV’s Special Report on the Emerging Smart TV Ecosystem, sponsored by LG Ads, Samsung Ads and VIZIO. Download your copy here.