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This year’s Upfront/ Newfront season did not disappoint with numerous exciting new announcements about renewed and brand new TV shows that will keep Canadians glued to their TVs (or other viewing devices) for hours. Several broadcasters, social networks, and technology companies have launched new products and services to help you better connect with Canadians for your upcoming campaigns.
Once again Profectio had a front-row seat and provided coverage of several of the announcements, and this year we took some time to interview several senior media buyers, and this year we had a conversation or two with people on the brand and publishers.
In the first edition of our 2024 Upfront/ Newfront Interview Series, we sat down with Bruce Neve, President of True Media Canada for a recorded conversation about the changing advertising and media buying landscape. Some of the topics discussed include:
- The TV show Bruce wants to make a guest appearance on
- Big 3 challenges marketers face as they build a brand for tomorrow
- Challenges of Brand Safety
- What does the idea media buyer look like today and tomorrow
Below is a transcript of the interview:
Who are you and what problem do you solve?
I’m Bruce Neve, President of True Media Canada. The problem we solve or the opportunity really is to ignite positive business growth for our clients, we focus on underserved clients who might say challenger brands and startups. Canadian brands that can control their own destiny, and aren’t mandated to work with global hold cos. We provide senior-level experience and hands-on boutique media services. With the added value of having the tools, technology and data stack that you wouldn’t expect from a smaller media agency.
Looking back at the upfronts are there any shows that caught your eye this year? What about this year?
Brilliant Minds looks interesting, it looks like House reimagined, and then Saint Dennis, a medical drama looks a little bit like St. Elsewhere reimagined. So it’s interesting, I think there are four new kinds of medical doctor dramas. Dr. Odyssey, Brilliant Minds, Saint Dennis Medical.
I was surprised that there aren’t any Westerns coming back given the success of Yellowstone and the origin stories there. Westerns used to be a standard way back when on the TV dial. Maybe that’ll happen and some of the streaming services or Fast Channels.
Is there any part of you that has ambitions to be a celebrity? I’ve got my magical powers with all the broadcasters, I’m going to put you in a TV show. What show would you want to be on?
All right, put me in House of Dragons.
One reason, why is we just got back from Dubrovnik or split, which is where King’s Landing is. And a lot of the show was was filmed. I love history and that would be a hoot to be in a couple of episodes of that series.
Looking at this year’s upfront/ new fronts are there any products or solutions that stood out for you?
It was interesting to see Bell’s partnership with TikTok. TikTok Pulse is interesting to see it provides a brand-safe opportunity to be active on that platform that is so pervasive and growing. That’s an interesting opportunity through Bell itself. It was just announced after the Upfront that Rogers is going to provide Disney Plus, ad-supported Disney at no charge to most of their packages to subscribers.
As I predicted looking ahead to this year, the growth of Fast Channels exploded even beyond what I thought they would. We got 10 new ones, I think from Bell. AVOD opportunities. So I think it’s as a media buyer the fact that a lot of these “dark periods” where there was no advertising within really good quality content. They’re now opening up for us to participate and also tap into the data, they have to understand the audiences better and target more digital than linear TV to reach those audiences that matter within the environments that matter for our clients.
Dave: Is the data becoming better?
Yeah, it’s still patched together, you have a set top box with data from VAM data (Video Audience Measurement), LG and Samsung who all have their data. So it’s a bit of a patchwork, it’s not unified at this point but I think we’re heading in the right direction.
Dave: You work directly with a lot of senior marketers across the country. What are some of the challenges or concerns that they have now?
I think all marketers are looking at how we unlock growth. Where’s the incrementality? How do we understand and identify where audiences and possible consumers that we can tap into and drive trial and demand? Things are moving so fast, I don’t want to say confusion but I hear a lot about the growth of retail media. What’s the impact of AI going to be? With cookies, deprecating. Many of them don’t have a wealth of first-party data. So who can they partner with that brings other first-party data to the table in a safe, secure and private way? I think those are some of the things that are definitely on clients’ minds. How do I grow? Where’s the growth? Is it newcomers? How are media habits changing? How’s technology impacting how I connect with customers? Am I emphasizing the lower funnel too much at the expense of building a brand I need short-term growth but I need long-term growth or gains. So it’s finding that balance across the funnel across the consumer journey.
Brand safety, do you feel that the industry is there yet?
I think that the bar keeps moving as the industry adopts new tools and technology to ensure brand safety and viewability and tries to identify Made For Advertising sites and things. Can someone solve it and then someone hacks it a different way? So it constantly moves and every client has a different tolerance, you might say, I mean, some people clients don’t want to be on X anymore, some don’t want to be on TikTok because of the whole, you know, China data situation, others are fine with it.
I mean the benefit of I’ll call them “traditional Media Partner,” you know, you have brand safety, I believe when you’re dealing with CBC, Corus, Rogers, Bell, and their fast channels and their AVOD opportunities and its quality inventory. In most cases, you know, exactly where your commercial is going to air. Your message is going to air. It’s not on an open auction where You’re buying eyeballs, you don’t know what context or what environment is going to show up in and who’s going to view it or if anyone’s going to view it.
It’s something you can’t be complacent with. We’ve made great strides you know kudos to the industry and IAB Canada and lots of other folks, the ACA but you have to constantly evaluate and monitor, especially in the programmatic open auction – atmosphere.
Looking at traditional media channels, print, TV, do you think we’re at a point where they’ll become obsolete? Is there a future for them?
Everything’s becoming digital. A person at home tends to prefer to consume content on a large screen. They don’t go and say ”I’m gonna go watch the linear TV. I’m going to watch AVOD. I’m gonna watch a Fast Channel.” They want to consume the content that’s appealing to them on whatever platform. So I think the evolution of Bell, Corus and CBC is just making sure that the content they produce or have purchased can be viewed by somebody in their home on any platform that they want. So there can’t be 25 of your content available everywhere and 75 is only on linear TV. I think they’ve just got to have it available anywhere the viewer wants to consume it. And so I believe strongly in the power of linear TV. But the tide’s turning to Connected TV. But I think that our traditional partners are aggressively moving in that direction. And making sure that the content they have is available on any platform, Fast Channels, their apps Stack TV. Print, I’m not as confident about certainly not newsprint. I think credible journalism from our national publishers is very important, I truly hope that they continue to play a role in providing fact-checked authoritative news, information and entertainment, digitally publishing it and I hope that people are rediscovering that as something that they can rely on to provide them with, local and national news that that they can trust.
And do you think AI is going to help to any degree?
I’m hopeful that AI will allow creative agencies to do and work closely with media agencies. As we identify audiences and their passion points to their interests their affinities – that was AI can assemble creative assets to personalize the message depending on the audiences that we’ve identified in, in near real-term., I still believe in mass media and branding where you want to talk to many, many people who, you know, with the 30 or whatever when you get into short-term video, social media. You need to have thousands of different messages that AI can assemble in real time based on the information from the audiences that we identify, which is where we’re headed.
Before we jumped on the call, you mentioned that True Media Canada has hired a few people over the last few months. What are the skills or qualities that you find are most in demand to be a successful media buyer these days?
On the one hand, you want and need strategists who are holistic planners and strategic thinkers, understand audiences and can collaborate with creative agencies and creative strategists. To look at a holistic plan in the consumer journey you need to match them with discipline experts because everybody can’t be an expert in everything. So it’s a mix of that type of person with someone who has got the expertise and data and analytics, or in search, or social, e-commerce or retail media. So, it’s becoming specialized but you need that experience, holistic thinker And then there are certain skills that I believe have always been important. One of them is curiosity, the other one is skepticism which I think sometimes is less than it used to be, everyone’s jumping on new things without asking the key questions. They just want to be there because it’s new, media people always used to have the reputation of being kind of hard-nosed skeptical individuals. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.
As we have more automation and AI and whatever that will evolve into, how does that change the role of the media buyer? Or does it?
It certainly does planners and buyers. We have AI initiatives going on, AI has been used and is being used a lot with all the platforms whether it’s Google PMAX or Pinterest or whatever. We’re starting to use AI to help surface insights about different audiences and create personas very quickly across numerous different research databases. On the buying side yeah, there’s a lot more automation. You need people matched with the technology and with the AI. But we’re just able to do things that much faster. Gotta analyze more platforms, more audiences, in more media environments quickly. And it’s getting harder and harder to do that without technology, self-serve platforms, AI.
So it’s going be interesting to see how what develops over the years, as I said earlier the collaboration between media and creative especially digital creative needs to be strong. A lot of times they are siloed, the role of the buyer needs to be working closely with the planners to understand the audiences and the passions and the interests. They’re going to need to be working closely with the creatives to make sure that we have the right messages and the right assets to connect with those audiences in a relevant way in a contextually relevant environment.
Media & Publishers mentioned:
Learn more about each vendor in our Media Marketplace.
This interview was transposed from an audio interview.
Other 2024 Upfront/ Newfront Announcements & Interviews:
2024 Upfront Interview Series with M&K Media’s Jill MacDonald And Jennifer Young
2024 Upfront Interview Series with True Media Canada’s Bruce Neve (Updated)
Microsoft Advertising Accelerate Roadshow Arrives In Cities Across Canada
TikTok #ForYou Summit 2024
The Connected Worlds Canada, Amazon Ads 2024 Upfront
Rogers Sports & Media Reveals 2024/2025 Citytv Programming Lineup
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