Recently, David Finkelstein, Co-Founder and CEO, BDEX, sat down with InfoSum's Marc Cestaro, VP Advanced TV, North America to discuss the ATV landscape and future of the industry. In David's guest blog below, watch their interesting discussion and read about how BDEX and InfoSum are empowering brands to leverage their first-party data within the DTC and ATV ecosystems.

In recent years, Direct-to-Consumer Marketing (DTC) and Advanced TV (ATV) have become two of the most discussed topics in the AdTech and MarTech world.

One of the reasons behind this trend is that more people are now streaming TV shows and movies on internet-connected devices than ever before. In fact, ad spending on streaming TV for 2021-2022 is expected to grow by 7.6 percent year-over-year to $19.90 billion, according to data from research firm eMarketer. This is a nearly 50 percent increase compared to 2018.

Another reason is that advertising giants such as Google and Facebook have steadily continued to increase their ad pricing over the years, prompting digital marketers to explore new DTC channels to grow their brands. In addition, going the DTC route with their products and services also allows brands to generate more first-party data than ever before.

This first-party data can then be activated across smart, internet-connected TVs (CTVs), which increasingly proves to be one of the most effective ways for retailers and other B2C businesses to reach their targeted audiences.

However, with the rising concerns around data privacy and stricter CCPA and GDPR regulations, having an abundance of first-party data alone is not enough to effectively scale businesses’ marketing channels. In such an environment, brands need new tools that will allow them to leverage their data while still prioritizing the privacy of their customers.

That is why BDEX and InfoSum recently joined forces to give InfoSum’s clients the ability to match their customer data in a flexible and privacy-focused way using BDEX’s comprehensive identity graph. This joint data infrastructure allows companies to collaborate across data sets, conduct marketing analysis, create new audiences, and target customer segments while retaining full control of their first-party data.

The data analytics made possible by the BDEX-InfoSum partnership offers brands unprecedented insights into consumer behaviors and intentions. But brands can take it even further by combining this information with data from ATV platforms.

For instance, as part of BDEX’s partnership with TiVo, brands can learn what their customers like to watch on TV. This, in turn, gives advertisers a much more comprehensive picture of their audiences’ lifestyles, allowing for precise and effective market segmentation of customers. 

For example, if a pet product retailer wants to find new customers, they can start by looking at ATV customers who watch relevant animal shows. Then, they can analyze that information with their own first-party data and BDEX data within InfoSum’s privacy-safe and secure data collaboration infrastructure. Using this analysis, they can see who in that audience is more likely to own a particular type of pet or buy certain brands of pet food. The resulting target audience can then be easily segmented and targeted using InfoSum. Moreover, brands can leverage this technology to market their products across devices and platforms. If a brand is already advertising to viewers of a specific channel or show on linear TV, they will also be able to reach that same audience across CTV, mobile, email, and web advertising.

Recently, BDEX and TiVo have also launched a number of audience segments to help brands connect with potential 2021 Olympics viewers online and via ATV nationwide. These segments include viewers who watched various stages of the Winter Olympics in 2018.

The average U.S. TV viewer now uses 5.7 TV sources, which is nearly double comparedto 2018. As viewership across devices continues to accelerate, brands will needto target consumers when and where they consume content. This means advertisersneed to familiarize themselves with the best practices for leveraging theirfirst-party data within the Direct-to-Consumer Marketing and Advanced TVEcosystem. Those who adopt these growing marketing channels first will putthemselves in a better position to scale their businesses and drivebrand-measuring ROI.

About the author

‍David Finkelstein is an internet pioneer, tech entrepreneur and founder of numerous internet companies dating back to the earliest days of the internet in 1994. He currently serves as the Co-Founder and CEO of BDEX, an Inc 5000 company, the first and the largest consumer data exchange platform in the U.S.