The following interview is an excerpt from our newest Special Report: Proving The Point: Case Studies That Prove The Power Of The New Smart TV Ecosystem.

“When a brand wants to work with Samsung Ads, the first thing we do is provide them insights about how their current TV buy is working, so that they have a holistic understanding about what they're doing in TV, who they are reaching and who they are missing,” explains Justin Evans, Global Head of Analytics & Insights at Samsung Ads.  “We’re able to do that by using data to understand who is seeing their linear ads and who remain unexposed or underexposed.”

Alan Wolk (AW): Why are brands finding so much success working with Samsung Ads?

Justin Evans (JE): We have the power to reach viewers within their target demo that they are not reaching on linear. These could be viewers who do not watch linear TV at all or they could be light linear viewers. But they are people who are likely to buy their product or service. 

We are able to identify those viewers and then target them on an addressable basis. We have the largest user base of any OEM too, which means that working with Samsung allows them to reach a much larger segment of that unreached audience.

AW: So once you have a holistic picture of what a brand’s TV buy looks like and how it is working, what’s next?

JE:   Once we’ve identified those linear viewers who have been underexposed to their advertising, the next step is to use our addressable targeting capabilities to find those underexposed and even unexposed consumers, and then we set up an ad buy to target them.

AW: How effective is that strategy?

JE: We have found that in terms of conversion rates, that strategy is highly effective. Those light linear viewers and the nonlinear viewers are so unexposed to the brand’s messaging, that their responsiveness to the addressable ad from Samsung is really powerful. It’s to the point where we sometimes see a triple digit lift in conversion. 

In the case study about Michigan tourism that’s featured in this report, we were able to make very effective use of that strategy, targeting TV viewers who had not been exposed to Pure Michigan’s ads but who lived in a specific geographic area and were likely to take a vacation in Michigan.

AW: It would seem that media and entertainment clients would be a great target for Samsung Ads. How are you working with them?

JE: When it comes to media and entertainment clients, the connection between insights and behaviors is, if anything, even slightly more powerful. That is because the desired behavior is why they are on the TV to begin with—to find a show to watch. Because we have such a large database of opted-in users, we have a lot of insights about who is interested in specific genres and who is already interested in a certain network or streaming service. We’ll also know who is more interested in a subscription app and who is more interested in a FAST— a free ad-supported app. 

We will then use that data to create target groups, and then create very granular measurement stats around the success of each tactic. So we’ll look to see if a roadblack approach is effective or is a takeover effective? Are “day of” ads—ads that run on the same day as the show—effective? How do they all work in combination?  And so we’re able to collect really granular metrics about how many viewers are tuning in based on each tactic. At which point we're able to advise the client to double down on specific tactics, because that is what is working best for them. And what works varies tremendously from client to client and show to show. There’s no one size fits all solution. Which is why we rely on our data.

AW: Many of the people I speak to will cite Samsung’s Rule of 40. Can you explain what that is and why it is so important?

JE: Given how viewing has shifted, we are advising brands to follow what we call the ‘Rule of 40’—allocating 40% of their TV ad spend to AVOD. The rationale for that is we looked at how much viewing has now shifted to streaming and how much streaming viewing is now done on ad-supported platforms. So we think that brands need to shift 40% of their spend to streaming in order to reach their target. If they just try and reach them on linear, they are going to miss a big share of their audience.

Our ACR data can help them track how well they are doing against their targets and our Samsung Onboarding Partner Program allows them to directly import their first- and third-party data into our system and match it against our data. That makes it even easier for them to reach their target.

AW: What sort of viewing trends are you seeing in terms of linear vs streaming and AVOD vs SVOD?

JE:  We have found that very few people only watch streaming or only watch linear. So advertisers are really looking at a hybrid ecosystem that can be divided into “Mostly Linear” viewers and “Mostly Streaming” viewers. Mostly Linears comprise 25% of the Samsung audience but watch 87% of the linear minutes. Mostly Streamers comprise 75% of the Samsung audience and consume 13% of the linear minutes.  Conversely, Mostly Streamers are watching 87% of the streaming minutes, and Mostly Linears watch only 13% of the streaming time. 

In terms of SVOD vs AVOD, we have found that AVOD is growing much faster than SVOD, and that SVOD and AVOD are now more or less at parity—72% of our users are watching SVOD and 72% are watching AVOD—obviously many are watching both. 

They’re also at parity in terms of time spent—viewers are spending about an hour and 20 minutes per day watching each format, some more on one, some more on the other, but on average they are at parity. So first we had the inflection point where streaming surpassed linear. And now we're having another inflection point where AVOD has caught up to SVOD. We expect those trends to continue and that AVOD will surpass SVOD.

Download the report here.