Hot Takes: Local TV's Transformation In The Age Of Streaming

Next month TVREV is going to be rolling out our newest special report on Local TV and Streaming. We’ve spoken to dozens of key executives from around the industry to get their takes on how local broadcasters and local advertisers are handling the shift to streaming and what they see in the years ahead.

The report also includes a breakthrough consumer study from Publishers Clearing House and Evan Shapiro which asked over 60,000 U.S. consumers about their local TV news and media habits.

To give you a taste of what is in the report, and to get the conversation rolling, we asked both the report sponsors and our TVREV Thought Leaders Circle members to give us their Hot Takes on the topic.

First up is Cadent’s Executive Vice President BD and GM Platform Direct, Tony Yi, who talks about the emotional connection that local content provides. 

While technology enables national targeting and customization, it cannot replace the emotional connection and engagement that local broadcasters provide through their content. Local broadcasters have a unique ability to resonate with viewers on a local level, covering topics that are specific to their communities. National programming often lacks that level of intimacy and engagement. However, there is an opportunity to leverage local engagement and replicate it on a national scale, allowing local broadcasters to extend their reach and impact. This ability to bridge the gap between local and national campaigns is powerful and sought after by many local broadcasters.

Premion’s President Tom Cox pointed out that streaming gives local broadcasters the opportunity to monetize additional inventory while also reaching the sizable number of US households that can only be reached by streaming.

Historically, local broadcasters have been limited to selling mostly their own inventory. But now, thanks to streaming, we can monetize local inventory for a wider range of premium publishers. That’s really the great thing about the emergence of streaming—it creates a new advertising paradigm for local broadcasters.   Additionally, today, nearly 40 percent* of US households can only be reached through streaming TV. So, if an advertiser wants to reach a total TV audience in a given market, they need a converged strategy of linear plus streaming, which local broadcasters are uniquely positioned to deliver. 

Amagi’s Co-Founder, Srinivasan KA, offered insight into the level of personalization that is available around local content, local news content in particular, as a result of the move to streaming.

More and more, we're seeing personalization take place due to the ability to micro-target viewers. Personalization is becoming an extremely critical part of the future of local news. Whether I express an interest in neighborhood crime stories or indicate less concern for political news in favor of weather and local business updates, local broadcast news can deliver more of that. This might even occur automatically, similar to what digital publishers do, where your homepage is customized based on what you usually read.

CCR Media CEO Shea Kelly noted that the current media landscape creates a high degree of complexity around distribution, which is why local broadcasters need to pay greater attention to the way their content is measured. 

The distribution has become more complex. With the increase in distribution, there is more to monitor. Sending out a stream does not guarantee that it will arrive intact. Previously, monitoring was limited to the local cable company and ATSC 1.0. Now, there are 10 cable companies and 10 different platforms, along with the continued presence of ATSC 1.0 and the upcoming ATSC 3.0. The complexity has grown exponentially, and as a result, there will be even more to monitor as distribution continues to become more intricate.

Madhive’s SVP Sales, Kristin Wnuk had another take on distribution, pointing out all the various platforms—including mobile—that broadcasters now have to consider when planning for the future.

As the marketplace becomes more competitive, local broadcasters are looking at an array of content distribution strategies. Distribution now ranges from traditional over-the-air broadcasting, MVPD, vMVPD, and OEMs, to beyond the television screen including mobile and other devices. While there's no definitive formula for success, broadcasters who combine both traditional and digital approaches are likely to prevail.

Samsung Ads’ Vice President of Sales, Brand, North America, Michael Scott brought up the key role that local news plays, both for brand advertisers and for political advertisers, who are promising to turn to streaming in a big way in 2024.

With the 2024 election looming, free ad-supported streaming will emerge as the go-to destination for streamers to get their news as it offers the broadest range of options. Local news on streaming offers advertisers the best of both worlds, with the ability to cater to the specific needs of local audiences with tailored messaging while aggregating total campaign outcomes on a national level. While local news is center stage heading into the election year, a well-rounded national news offering is still imperative. 

LG Ad Solutions CMO Tony Marlow brought up the way that data is being used to create more relevant messaging for local audiences, taking external factors such as weather into account when deciding which ads to run on rainy days.

In the rapidly evolving media landscape, the significance of hyper-relevant and localized ads within connected TV environments continues to grow. For example, think about a national food retailer that leverages weather triggers to decide whether to promote ice cream or the ingredients for S'mores to a given person at a given moment. They can tap into real-time weather conditions and execute a customized advertising experience with geographical precision while maintaining National scale. The increasing adoption of such data-triggered creative within streaming environments has the potential to redefine our understanding of contextual relevance. It is no longer solely about ad adjacency; it now also involves a person’s surroundings or their current activity. 

Magnite’s SVP of Streaming Platform, Ryan Kenney looked at the value of local news broadcasts, their position in the community and the role of programmatic platforms in helping to provide local news content with a steady stream of advertising dollars as it makes the move to streaming.

There will always be a place for local news and these businesses have really become leaders in the movement towards FAST channels; they have invested in this type of offering and distribution to become as ubiquitous as possible. Streaming is a necessary strategy, not only as viewing habits change but because local news can be a very personal thing. People will always want to know what’s going on in their neighborhood and are emotionally invested in its happenings. As a result, you're reaching a highly engaged audience that is underserved. Local and regional advertising represents a very large, highly transactional opportunity for local news stations. Programmatic platforms will continue to play a significant role because they provide contextual technologies, scale across DMAs, and offer granular targeting capabilities to further enhance the value exchange between local media owners and advertisers.

Mediaocean COO Ben Kartzman talked to us about the possibilities that personalized creative messages have for advertisers, especially when they are running campaigns across multiple platforms.

When it comes to local TV and streaming, creative takes center stage. Brands can really differentiate with customized messaging and offers for regional markets. The key is scaling across linear and digital through automation to create all the variations efficiently and effectively. By leveraging new forms of Creative Ad Tech, advertisers can do this in an integrated way as part of their marketing stack. At Flashtalking, we're focused on unleashing the power of creative to make media work better. Our solutions deliver consumer relevance & cross-channel activation so you can create once and run everywhere.

Finally, OrkaTV’s CEO and Founder Mike Woods, emphasized the vital role of contextual targeting in CTV and explained how it can be integrated with geolocation data to craft more effective advertising campaigns.

We ran a poll asking people their CTV buying criteria, and 70% said that targeting by demographics was most important to them. However, we routinely see Streaming TV campaigns that would perform better without hyper-individualized targeting and, instead, use smart placement on channels to deliver the desired audience. It turns out that more traditional TV targeting methods, such as genre or FAST channel-level targeting, are really effective at reaching your desired audience on streaming. Buyers should then only use detailed demographic and segment targeting when they are 100% necessary. For example, when a local nail salon is trying to drive foot traffic to their store in a specific city

Our TVREV take is that despite the increased complexity, local broadcast will continue to thrive. It may not be “broadcast” as much as streamed, but the need for local content, news in particular, is still strong and will prove to be enduring.

Two other developments have us very excited about local TV too. The first is the expected flood of political ad dollars that will flow into local streaming in 2024. Down-ballot races (state legislatures, county commissioners and the like) will make extensive use of the hyperlocal geotargeting capabilities of streaming to deliver their YouTube and Facebook video ads to CTV audiences—something that was cost-prohibitive on a DMA-wide basis.

The other is that same hyperlocal targeting means that content can also be personalized on streaming. So that, say, viewers on Long Island will see a more Long Island-focused version of their local New York City station’s evening news (with Long Island-focused advertisers) and viewers in Connecticut will see a more Connecticut-focused version.

Look for these insights and many more in our upcoming report on Local TV and Streaming which is due out next month.

*© MRI-Simmons 2023. 2023 March Cord Evolution. The data herein derives from a confidential, proprietary syndicated product owned by GfK US MRI, LLC.