A grotty day in Times Square could not keep the TV of Tomorrow Show NYC 2024 from electrifying the CTV industry.
Three views of the ‘Monetizing Connected TV’ panel leading off the event.
The ‘Monetizing Connected TV’ panel, hanging in the Stones dressing room (signed Stones’ tour posters adorn the room) at the Hard Rock, with (left to right): Jennifer Monson, fubo; Chris Pfaff, Chris Pfaff Tech Media LLC; Mark Lee, LG Electronics; David Apostolico, QVC/HSN+; Fred Godfrey, Origin, and Dallas Lawrence, Telly.
Chris Pfaff moderated the ‘Monetizing Connected TV’ panel at the TV of Tomorrow Show NYC 2024 event on Thursday, November 21st, from 9:10-9:50 am at the Hard Rock Cafe Theater, at 1501 Broadway, in Times Square. This marked the first TVOT NYC event since 2019, which made for a rather exceptional edition of the always sold-out show. And, to top it all off, November 21st was World Television Day! What perfect synchronicity!
Joining Pfaff on the session were all-star panel of experts in the CTV space, including Dallas Lawrence, CSO, Telly; David Apostolico, chief distribution officer, QVC/HSN+; Fred Godfrey, CEO, Origin; Jennifer Monson, VP, Sales, Fubo, and Mark Lee, head of North American content business development, LG Electronics.
With Connected TV (CTV) advertising projected to be the fastest-growing segment of the media landscape over the coming year, this session will explore how CTV is giving rise to new monetization opportunities through interactive ad formats, shoppable TV/tcommerce, data generation, granular targeting, and more. Panelists drawn from companies at the forefront of the fast-evolving CTV economy will address such questions as: What innovations in advertising and other forms of CTV monetization are proving effective, and why? What kinds of programming are generating the most viewer engagement with CTV advertising and commerce? And, as CTV and FAST inventory grow, how will CTV advertising and commerce opportunities evolve and mature?
Panelists include:
• Chris Pfaff, CEO, Chris Pfaff Tech Media (Moderator)
• Dallas Lawrence, CSO, Telly
• David Apostolico, Chief Distribution Officer, QVC/HSN+
• Fred Godfrey, CEO, Origin
• Jennifer Monson, VP of Sales, Fubo
• Mark Lee, Head of North American Content Business Development, LG Electronics
Chris Pfaff moderated an expert session – ‘Removing the Friction of Content Discovery on CTV’ – at the (virtual) Streaming Media Connect conference, on November 14, 2024, with the following panelists:
Katrina Kowalski, SVP, International Content Programming and Acquisitions – Pluto TV
The premise of the session was that today’s streaming providers deliver endless amounts of content, which can overwhelm viewers who are simply looking for something to watch. The content discovery process often takes far longer than viewers are willing to wait. FAST channels have the power to redefine content discoverability by using data to serve customers the content they want to watch and help them find new content based on prior viewing habits. FAST platforms have a vast amount of data available to them, but only a small amount of it is being used to its full potential. Incorporating viewership data into the content discoverability process can remove the pain points that have bubbled up in the new streaming landscape, lead to more engagement with the content, and open up more opportunities for advertisers to reach their target audiences. This session looks at the success of genre channels and provides attendees with insight into how they help their viewers find their content faster.
Chris Pfaff moderated the ‘Now It’s Personal: AI and Streaming Personalization’ panel at the virtual Streaming Media Connect conference, on Tuesday, August 20, 2024. The expert panel featured Chris Regina, CCO, TCL; Shobana Radhakrishnan, sr. dir., engineering, GoogleTV, Arash Pendari, founder/creative director, Vionlabs AB. and Alex Gruber, chief product officer, Deltatre.
‘NOW IT’S PERSONAL: AI AND STREAMING PERSONALIZATION’
Many of the ways AI is poised to alter the streaming ecosystem happen behind the scenes, involving the streamlining of workflows or the automation of repetitive production or delivery tasks. But AI also has the potential to transform viewing experiences, making them more personal and immersive. The panel explores what’s possible and what’s probable and how we can expect to see AI’s real-world impact on streaming experiences take shape in the months and years to come.
Chris Pfaff moderated the ‘Disrupting Fast Fashion and Saving the World’ panel at the Digital Fashion Week New York conference, on Saturday, September 7th, at 2:00 pm in the Canvas 3.0 Gallery in the World Trade Center, in New York City.
Chris Pfaff with Tatiana Alexa and Clare Tattersall
Panelists included: Krishnan Sangameswaran, from The F*Word, Miguel Huidor, from NICESTUFF Clothing, Ben Erwin, from Power Simple, and Tatiana Alexa, from Sangrove.
Chris Pfaff with Krishnan Sangameswaran, Ben Erwin, Tatiana Alexa, and Miguel Huidor
Chris Pfaff (left) and the crowd at DFW NYC (right)
Topics included; What technologies can we leverage to disrupt fast fashion from the ground up? Disrupting Hype — Creating Meaningful Consumer Relationships).
The XR crowd at DFW NYC, including Alex Coulombe, Robin Moulder, Michael Ferraro
Panel descriptor:
From virtual runways to digital printing on fabrics to NFTs and beyond, the digital fashion world has exploded since the pandemic. In this session, we will discuss how digital fashion can disrupt the traditional fast fashion model and create a more sustainable (and potentially more profitable) fashion ecosystem.
Clare Tattersall, Miguel Huidor, Tatiana Alexa, Ben Erwin, Krishnan Sangameswaran, and Chris Pfaff
The first Streaming Media East event held in New York City in person since 2019, at the east-side Intercontinental Barclay Hotel, wrapped up on Wednesday, May 22, 2024 with a bang. Chris Pfaff moderated the after-lunch blockbuster session ‘Modern Measurement: Who Counts Now? Data, Identity & the Privacy Economy’ with an all-star group that featured Paul Kontonis from Revry; Brittany Slattery from OpenAP; Jenny Wall from VideoAmp; Jesse Redniss from Qonsent; Ian Ivins from The Trade Desk, and Dan Rosenfeld from DIRECTV.
The panel, held the week after the upfront and IAB Newfronts, spoke to the reliance on data targeting with ever-increasing focus on brand safety. As Jenny Wall said during the session, “the revolution is here, and we are ready to live in a multi currency world.”
Chris Pfaff moderated the SXSW 2024 panel – ‘How Immersive Sound Can Deliver Powerful Experiences’ – on Friday, March 15th at the Hilton Austin Downtown, with an expert panel consisting of Mirko Vogel, from Vaudeville Sound Group; Jani Houponen, from Google, and Sylvana Levy, from XRAgency.
Vogel discussed the use of ambisonics in designing immersive audio for a range of projects, including Vaudeville’s creation of the industry’s largest immersive sound library, for Shutterstock; immersive audio for VR, including a music video with artist Whipped Cream; the ‘AmazingWar Stories’ podcast, and more.
Huoponen discussed Google’s immersive audio work, including the Alliance for Open Media’s recent Immersive Audio Models and Formats (IAMF) specification, a major advance in immersive audio design.
Levy demonstrated her immersive audio work on hybrid virtual/live installations for venues.
The audience was also treated to Vaudeville’s IAMF-designed forest audio, which simulated multiple speakers for bird noises and environmental sounds.
Chris Pfaff moderated an all-star session – ‘Successful Strategies for Growing and Monetizing Your Streaming Service’ – on the virtual Streaming Media Connect conference, produced by Streaming Media Magazine, on February 22, 2024 that discussed strategies for curating content, maintaining audiences, and growing new channels.
Joining Chris were panelists Rene Santaella, Chief Digital & Streaming Officer, Estrella Media; Matt Farina, Senior Vice President, Content Distribution, NBCUniversal; Eric Sorensen, Director, Streaming Video Research, Parks Associates; Smriti Sharma, Head, Consumer Insights, Publishers Clearing House, and Julia Moonves, SVP, Advertising Sales & Brand Partnerships, pocket.watch.
Chris Pfaff moderated the virtual panel ‘Targeting, Measuring, and Scaling Connected TV Advertising’ on February 20, 2024 for Streaming Media Connect, the virtual conference series produced by Streaming Media Magazine.
Discussion of CTV’s rapid growth centered around the recent Walmart acquisition of Vizio. Joining Chris were panelists Aneessa Steilen, VP, Media & Distribution Marketing, Vevo; Jack Mollins, SVP, Advertising Sales, Atmosphere.TV; Jennifer Monson, VP, Ad Sales, Fubo; Tim Ware, Senior Vice President of Programmatic Sales and Revenue, Sales, Crackle Connex, and Mark Loughney, Senior Consultant, Hub Entertainment Research.
The leaders in sports tech – from biofeedback to AR/VR to data for rehab and load management – gathered on Wednesday, November 15th at Citi Field in New York City for the Upside Sports Tech Summit. Chris Pfaff moderated an all-star panel – ‘The Future of Digital in Sports’ – which included:
‘The Future of Digital in Sports’ panel (l to r): Orlando Lewis, Sorare; James Giglio, MVP Interactive; Bobby Basham, Chicago Cubs; Kristin Boggiano, TurnkeyTix; Stevland Wilson, Monumental Sports & Entertainment; Jed Corenthal, Phenix, and Chris Pfaff
The event convened 100 teams (including the New York Yankees, Toronto Raptors, Minnesota Vikings, New York Liberty, Boston Red Sox, Atletico de Madrid, Sacramento Kings, Chicago Cubs), sports associations (La Liga, English Premier League, NBA, NCAA), and innovators (NeuFit, MVP Interactive, Living Cities, Brainlit, DraftKings) over the course of the day.
Speakers included Tom Ryan, VP of strategy and head of NBA Launchpad; Meredith McPherron, CEO, Drive by DraftKings; Rahal Letterman, Lanigan Racing; Alex Rodrigo, SVP/GM, Sacramento Kings; Kyle Harris, CEO, Brainlit; Scott Riewald, manager, MiLB performance development, Boston Red Sox; Dr. Ola Eriksrud, co-founder, 1080 Motion; Carlos del Barrio, Atletico de Madrid; Dr. Marco Nunez, former head athletic trainer, Los Angeles Lakers; Konrad von Moltke, principal, investment arm of the Wilf family (owners of NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, and Orlando City MLS/NWSL), and Andrew Hippert, investment principal, NY Techstars sports accelerator.
Chris Pfaff moderated a virtual session – ‘Know Your Audience: How to Use Data to Raise ROI’ – during the Streaming Media Connect event, on November 15, 2023, featuring Daniel Trotta, from Warner Bros. Discovery; Paul Erickson, from Erickson Insights; Bethany Atchison, from Vevo, and Alan Wolk, from TVREV.
See two posts from StreamingMedia.com below, by Tyler Nesler – ‘Metadata and the Battle for Streaming ROI’ on December 18, 2023 and ‘How AI Helps Solve Streaming Content Monetization’ on December 11, 2023 – with video excerpts.
Pfaff notes that a major topic right now in the streaming industry is the importance of metadata for receiving the best possible ROI. “This is a big, big topic right now as streamers, large and small are trying to find revenue,” he says. “And how are they going to do that?” He asks Erickson about his thoughts on the situation.
“I think metadata is absolutely key, in my opinion, to multiple elements that either directly or indirectly tie to ROI,” Erickson says. “And so when we think about sustaining engagement, which is fundamental to retention and monetization, it’s directly connected to personalization and search and recommendation. If we think about how efficiently you can target and address specific audiences with your advertising, that specificity is aided tremendously by the metadata that helps advertisers understand the nuances of that audience they’re trying to hit. There’s a lot of value [that can be] reaped by those parties who can effectively enhance and enrich metadata, typically using AI…and particularly when it comes to equalizing the level of metadata quality and richness in diverse libraries that may be consistent or that may consist of new and legacy content perhaps from different sources such as what you might have in a FAST channel.”
Erickson also points out that metadata can help to better target the “specific nuances of portions of your content portfolio that are not performing well with your audience and give you some insight into why, depending on the richness and quality of that metadata. And thus, it can help you optimize your existing content portfolio and inform your future content acquisition strategy.”
Pfaff says, “Basically, you’re saying that metadata is really the linchpin. It’s the DNA of everything.”
Erickson says good metadata is table stakes, but “rich metadata is potentially a force multiplier for overall service ROI if you leverage it correctly.”
Pfaff says to Atchison, “I think last year you were really responsible for creating the FAST Channel strategy for Vevo. Talk a little bit about that and how you’re using data to amplify and pump up that ROI.”
“So for anyone who doesn’t know,” Atchinson says, “Vevo is the world’s leading music video network. We have over 800,000 music videos in our catalog across a variety of decades across genres. So organizing our data is really important to keep track of all of that content.” She emphasizes that clean metadata is essential in order to efficiently organize and optimize information. “We have a programming team that uses their expertise to program each of our individual fast channels, but they need to leverage AI and data to really comb through all of that and surface everything to them because there’s just so much content to go through. So for us, it’s really tantamount to the success of our channels.”
Pfaff says to Trotta, “Let’s talk about channels with Warner Brothers Discovery. Talk about how you’re sifting through the metadata sands to enhance all things revenue.”
Trotta focuses on the “pause ad” feature available on many platforms as a good use case of metadata for exceptional ROI. “Say you’re watching something like Breaking Bad and you pause on one of those moments in Breaking Bad where maybe you don’t want somebody walking into the room. You also don’t want an advertiser’s ad to pop up over that. I know streaming services are working towards this metadata that runs through the episode to show you when areas are safe and when they are not. It allows you to take this ad format and distribute it across more of your programming hours than you otherwise would have. So that’s ROI. That’s money in your pocket right there. And it’s a better viewing experience than dropping this ad where it shouldn’t be.”
Pfaff asks Wolk, “What recently stands out to you in terms of the state of metadata where streamers are battling for engagement and retention?”
Wolk says that a major current issue for utilizing good metadata is the fact that when older popular shows were first digitized, no one really thought about how to tag content consistently. “Like Seinfeld ‘comedy show,’ Seinfeld, ‘funny show.’ And sometimes it’d be in all caps, sometimes it’d be in lowercase,” he says. “It’s really hard to kind of match it up. And so there’s been a lot of work being done. There are companies like IRIS.TV, which have sort of created a content tag that tries to standardize it. But it’s a huge problem with advertising because a lot of times they don’t really know what’s going on. The good news is everybody’s aware of it and is moving to fix it, but it’s way behind what’s available on digital.”
How AI Helps Solve Streaming Content Monetization
By Tyler Nesler
December 11, 2023
Much discussion of AI and streaming relates to streamlining and automating workflows, but how content companies can leverage it to personalize their content and target ads more efficiently, among other monetization strategies, is another question the industry is examining closely.
“I’m just curious from all of your perspectives where you see AI working,” Pfaff says. He asks Atchison to give her thoughts on the situation.
“We generally use AI for combing through all of the mountains of data we have across our different channels and platforms,” Atchinson says. “We definitely believe in the importance of the human element in creating our programs on our channels. So we’re really not leveraging that to create the content, but we are using it to make sure that everything is being surfaced, and that also enables us to surface new artists that might not be top of mind for everyone watching, but because the data is organized so cleanly, we’re able to find rising artists who are new in hip hop and put them on our Vevo hip hop channel and give them a platform and an opportunity to be seen in a CTV environment.”
Pfaff says to Trotta, “I’m sure you’ve got some homegrown AI that you use in addition to other major vendors. Talk about some of your war stories in trying to implement AI to ‘know thy audience’ better.”
“A lot of what you see on a streaming homepage is personalized to you and your past viewing behavior and what similar viewers to you have viewed in the past,” Trotta says. “The human element there that is still really vital is pointing the algorithm in the correct direction. So that’s setting the key input and key output metrics and determining [if you] are going to optimize for the most active viewers you can get on your service in a given day? Are you going to optimize for the most viewing hours you can get on your service in a given day? Are you going to optimize for the frequency with which users come back in a month? These are all [elements] that get sped through the pipeline that ultimately becomes what the user sees. But that’s the fundamental question to kick everything off each time.”
Pfaff says, “I think that, certainly, this will get better and better, but you’ve got to do that for millions of viewers and devices as well.” He next asks Wolk how he and TVREV view AI and how it aids service providers.
“I think AI is going to be a huge game changer,” Wolk says. “We’re already seeing it now…the thing that we always talk about is how nobody wants to run their funny commercial during the funeral scene of a show, and it’s been very hard to identify that…and now they’re able to do that to understand the emotions and even other things, like if I’m Cadillac and Matthew McConaughey is in a scene, I want to run my ad there too, so it creates a nice synergy. And then even understanding what sorts of shows viewers like and being able to personalize their feeds. It’s just such an exciting time, and the ability to do this is just going to be incredible.”
Pfaff asks Erickson, “I’m just curious, in terms of things like ad frequency and ad fatigue…how that needs to be solved and what you’re seeing in terms of solutions.”
“Well, certainly I think AI will help in that, but my thoughts on ad overload and poor targeting…they’re always going to be a net negative for engaging or retention, which obviously impacts your ROI over time,” Erickson says. “My thought on this [is that] content is that the lifeblood of any video operation, whether that’s traditional broadcast, the streaming services, Free Ad-Supported Television (FAST) channels…it can make or break the economics of your service. The right content brings people in, keeps them there, and brings them back. But running out of content leads to them to churning. Spending too much on that content, no matter how good and relevant will put you upside down ROI-wise. So today, I think we’re finally seeing serious judicious review of content spending when it comes to acquisitions and commissions to ensure that overall content budgets are being used efficiently and profitably.”
He notes that ad frequency and poor demographic data are particular issues for FAST. “Hopefully, it’s going to be improved, and it is improving.” He says that ultimately, it remains very important “To make sure that you are spending your budget judiciously on the right kinds of content, whether that’s an original commission or licensing it…I think that will still be fundamental to your service’s success.”
A grotty day in Times Square could not keep the TV of Tomorrow Show NYC 2024 from electrifying the CTV industry.
Three views of the 'Monetizing Connected TV' panel leading off the event.
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