dark night of the soul diaries: intuition’s call

[MUSIC] Welcome to the big story, a roundtable featuring members of the Add Exchange Editorial team. Every week we bring you an in-depth discussion of key developments in digital marketing and media. [MUSIC] This episode is brought to you by ZEDA. ZEDA's AI platform unifies paid-owned and earned media into one powerful growth engine, optimizing performance in real-time and driving measurable outcomes with confidence. Don't hope for higher ROI? Expect it, ZEDA. Learn more at zedavlabel.com/adexchangeur. [MUSIC] 2026 is the year CTV fill in the blank. On today's podcast, we're going to leave with that blank filled in and others. Our reporters, Elissa Boyle and Victoria McNally, were on the ground last week at our convergent TV world event, where they got to talk to buyers, programmers, tech companies, investment analysts, and they've come away with a strong read on where the market is headed. So on today's podcast, we're going to talk through where the TV market is going when it comes to live sports, what all the programmer changes, including Paramount buying Warner Brothers' discovery, meaning for advertisers buying ads on the streaming market, the rise of performance TV, the technology that's driving the shift, a lot more. I'm Sarah Sluse, Editorial Director for AddExchangeur, and you can mark your calendars for May 18th to 20th in Las Vegas at the park MGM, where you can get a boost on how to make smarter decisions, be more effective and improve performance using AI and marketing. And you can use the code, pod10, as a thank you to our listeners, and you can get 10% off. Sign up through the link on our website. So let's talk about performance TV, which I think has been a topic I think that we at AddExchangeur have been really interested to hear talked about more. I think it's this idea of using TV less as a reach and frequency vehicle and more to actually drive sales immediately instead of kind of doing that brand building as the first step. So how did you hear people talking about performance TV at the conference? So I would say it's kind of a theme throughout, and there was also one panel dedicated to that. We had Netflix and Roku and the VAB on the stage talking about this, but I think my main takeaway, if anything, would be that streaming companies don't want to be pigeonholed into being a branding vehicle, quote unquote. They'd rather end also with it's more about just not even just the outcome. It's more about we cover the full funnel from impressions all the way to sales because attribution has always been so historically tricky in CTV, and that's kind of why marketers and streamers are trying to find more ways to connect the dots to prove that streaming actually leads to results. So all that to say, that's kind of my definition of performance TV, I suppose. But that's kind of my takeaway from what the industry is making of that right now. Yeah, there is a lot of back and forth across different panels about whether or not performance TV is actually worth using as terminology in the first place. Somebody during David Nureberg's panel, he had a really interesting panel just to set the scene where he talked about how much the CTV industry still relies on pixels for measurement as a holdover from open web days and how that doesn't really work, especially given to your point, also the issues and challenges that come with CTV measurement. And so somebody asked him during the Q&A, you know, his performance TV BS, and he was like, well, yeah, kind of because his argument, especially, was like that behavior hasn't actually changed where TV is concerned. Like, people still are in this mindset where they're watching TV, they see an ad, they act on the ad later. And I think a lot of trying to make performance TV happen is sort of trying to adapt not just stuff from open web, but stuff from social in terms of how people like click on ads or like engage with ads in the moment in a way that makes sense when it's on your device, but not when it's like back there and you're watching it on TV. So the behavior hasn't quite changed. Interactive ads aren't really solving the problem. It's useful, but it's not the same as like a true conversion that happens somewhere other than the TV. And yeah, so that's, you know, you sort of open Sarah with like, this is the or CTV's blank. I would say this is the or CTV kind of takes over the full funnel. That's a term we heard a lot as a way to sort of bridge the gap between performance TV and like the more traditional brand awareness stuff. It's the full funnel which isn't new, but like, we heard it a lot. I'll even chime in here to say my response to, you know, this is the or CTV, I guess, yeah, embodies a middle ground in a way. So rather than being a full reach vehicle or, you know, some sort of performance channel exactly like searching social, it's going to exist somewhere in the middle where, you know, it does drive results, but those results take time and it's a little ambiguous to track just because of, you know, the nature of attribution and everything that we just talked about. So what I think is examples of this would be, you know, maybe you scan a QR code or take some other sort of action and then later on after your show, maybe the next day, you maybe get a push notification on your phone later that gives you more details or reminds you maybe we're interested in something. Some streamers like Disney included have done some really cool things around sort of creating products that take advantage of the opportunity that exists in that gray area or middle ground. I like that there are some sense of disagreement or maybe a little bit of conflict around this term performance TV. I feel similarly where I'm interested that the TV industry is trying it out as kind of this strategy and approach to focus on performance. I wonder if it will end up serving their best interest because I think TV has always been a performance medium for brands that are big enough in order to kind of have the MMM models that show that, you know, it's kind of like the old joke or something that like the Taco Bell franchisees or whatever fast food franchisees would ask, you know, ask on the call, like, how many GRPs did you buy? Like because they knew that like if the remore ads running, like more people were going to walk into their fast food restaurant because they were like, ooh, like I'm in the mood for a Taco or a burger or whatever, like, so there's always been a very clear connection. And I think that as we've moved to more, you know, digital conversions, maybe there's been other platforms like Meta that, you know, Google that are better at taking credit for the sales that happen. We've had people at previous conferences talk about how like when you run TV ads, like you see performance improved for Meta and Google and other places. So like, is TV going to be trying to say like, oh, we can go head to head on like a CPA with Meta, which they will never be able to do that? Or is it possible to kind of show like not only to be, you know, get this many people to, you know, buy something based on seeing this ad. We also, you know, 40 people saw Facebook ad after that and then they bought like after being reminded or whatever. So I think that they could potentially benefit smaller brands that want to enter TV and like a more de-risked way, like they feel super comfortable seeing Facebook, you know, drove this amount of sales. Therefore, they'll increase their budget and maybe they don't feel as confident in the measurement framework for TV. So I think it's interesting. I think it's good they're trying it, but like if they ever are trying to compete head to head with a social platform or a search platform, it's going to be higher. Hopefully they know that. I think they would know that. David Nuremberg also brought up something interesting when I asked him about, you know, like QR codes and interactive elements and stuff like that. He kind of said, like on a personal level that he didn't really like all of that because it just felt like a lot. And like I've been thinking about that a lot lately, sort of in relation to the way that social now feels very overwhelming a lot of the time, you know, like because there's a lot of ads, there's a lot of inputs, there's a lot of sensory overload and it's like the adult equivalent of Coco Mellon, right? Or it's like it's mentally draining and it's like it's a lot all at once in a way that you don't really, you can't act on anything, let alone anything that's happening in the moment. Whereas I feel like, and he also brought up like he would say something like, oh, I prefer URLs and like phone numbers and stuff like that. And I had the thought in the moment and like nobody laughed when I made the reference, but I was like, oh, yeah, because you can't, you can't sing a QR code like you could sing a jingle into a phone number. You know, you can't be like, God, what is it? Empire. Bring the jingles back. Yeah. Yeah. As 850, 8200, 300 empire. I've never ever made that like called that number ever in my life. I still know it by heart. Like still like that. Like you can't do that with a QR code. And yet like, yeah, technically it is trackable, but it's not sticky and it doesn't actually, like it, it encourages an action, but it encourages an action in the same way that like scrolling encourages an action where like you're not really, it's not really sticking. Like you can't make art out of it. like York, right? So it's not as meaningful. - Exactly. And I think that's what you hear marketers say that for years whenever you talk about like programmatic and they kind of hedge a little bit. And I think that a lot of that soft fuzzy brand building, jingle making stuff is the part that's a little bit higher, sometimes harder, excuse me, to sell people on the performance of. - Yeah, actually not to get off track, but this came up a lot in a, there was a college course I took about like linguistics and advertising and it's so interesting because like in Japan, like years and years ago, like memorabilia and jingles was such an integral part of advertising, whereas like Korea or here, it was more of like factual and trust-based to build like consumer, what's the word, trust? I already said it. But yeah, so you can kind of see interesting differences in what's a priority, you know, like do I want it if I wouldn't remember my brand or do I want them to trust me? Not that they're immediately exclusive, but sometimes you have to pick, you know, your priorities and strategy, so. - Fun fact. - I trust our jingles, they both sound like very, very positive ways of getting people on board with your brand. (laughs) Okay, so let's talk, oh, I mean, so okay, anything more on performance TV before we start talking about sports. We should talk about capy. - Oh, capy, Netflix and capy. So, which, so conversion APIs for people that know they kind of like took off like wildfire among all the social platforms as a way to get better measurement, post-cookie. And now it seems like there's another cookie list environment TV that's good enough on the capy train. - Yeah, so capy is not a nickname for capy bars, but rather conversion APIs. So backing up a bit, I mean, of course this is, you know, already a staple in, you know, digital online platforms like Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Snap, you get the point. So this is more new for streaming environments because as we've, you know, discussed, you know, up until this point, attribution is tricky. So, you know, Roku has a conversion API now. They put, they had a blog post about this recently. And then Netflix is the most recent streaming platform to unveil a capy. And it made an announcement last week in addition to, I guess, more targeting options as well. So the point really being that Netflix really wants to advertise this to know, you know, you've asked for targeting in measurement. We are listening. And now, voila, this is designed to, you know, prove that Netflix impressions leave to outcomes. Now up until then, up until now, they're still not really detailed on how exactly Netflix plans to do this through its capy, but, you know, it's still a very, you know, obvious testament to overall trends in streaming platforms trying to be more measurable. - Well, trying to be more like, - Are there any other gardens? - Right, I mean, yes. - I think there's going to be childhood. - Are there any other streamers that are using capy as besides Netflix or as Netflix the first one? - Roku has a self-serve API that I guess resembles a capy and then so does Comcast in Universal ads. But to your point, earlier about like bringing in smaller local businesses that are used to social, like that's so far feels like it's very much the push of what a lot of these things are when they market them out to businesses of like, hey, like it's, you know, similar to capys that all the social platforms have. So like, hey, isn't it easy to do that? You should do it with us too. - So I think what's coming full circle here is, you know, this concept of performance TVV, not only do I want to measure it, but I also want to be able to buy it and target it as if they were search and social. So that's kind of, I think those are two sides of the same coin as far as like streaming services trying to resemble, you know, other digital platforms that are, you know, easy to track and easy to buy. - Okay, and Capybearas are the, we're deeming at AdExchange with the official mascot for capys, we have a fun Comcast strip from the one featuring a Capybearer. So that will just be our new, our new Capy meme and mascot. - I don't know much about Capy's the conversion API. Yet is there something in how the Capybearer, like the baby looks exactly the same as the adult, but just smaller? Like is there some kind of metaphor in there? I don't know, it's really just an excuse to bring up that I think it's cute. - We're gonna work on it. We're gonna create the Capybearer metaphor. I'm gonna watch some nature documentaries about Capybear and be like, oh, it's just like a Capy and how they mate or search for prey or whatever. I don't even know, are they carnivore and omnipotent? - Definitely not. Their eyes are like on either side of the head. - We'll work on it, we'll work on it. - Yeah. So we'll take a quick break and then we're gonna talk about live sports, which is in some ways maybe the opposite of performance TV, the big splashy tent full, the high costs and the unskippable viewing. So stay with us. (upbeat music) - I'm Sarah Sluz, editorial director of Addix Shanger and I have with me here the Chief Growth Officer of Zeta, Ed C., who leads the charge in helping businesses and CMOs achieve measurable, high impact marketing outcomes. Thanks for joining us, Ed. - Sarah, great to see you. Thanks for taking the time with me today. - Yeah, so what's different in the year, the year 2026 about how brands and agencies are approaching Addtech? - So Sarah, I think it's a really, really interesting time. For years, we've all been talking about Addtech and Martek and all these different things, but at the end of the day as a marketer, what am I responsible for doing? Helping people make marketing decisions, helping them make buying decisions through a series of touch points. Addtech and Martek are actually artifacts of our history of how we bought media and how we managed our own touch points. What's finally happened with today's technology is we can release some of those artifacts and bring Addtech and Martek together. I think that's going to be a huge thing. We're seeing more and more people doing that. And it's releasing marketers to have the freedom to really say, how do I reach Sarah? How do I recognize Sarah? How do I reach Sarah? How do I offer something relevant? And how can I see the results of the communications I'm having with Sarah? So yeah, let's talk more about that freedom that comes from blurring the lines between Addtech and Martek. What else happens when you kind of unify things and blur them, bring them together? Well, a couple of things happen. Sarah, instead of saying, how much did this channel produce, we actually start saying how profitable is Sarah to us? It changes from measuring the channel to doing what marketers are really responsible for, creating a profitable customer. And saying, what did each touch point? What did each offer? What did each thing actually contribute to the profitability of that particular customer? And allows the marketer to actually say, I'm managing a supply chain. And I'm managing the most important supply chain to a company, the customer supply chain. So how does that unified customer view then empower marketing teams and agencies once they know about this profitable customer? - Well, one of the big things here is it lets them do the really unsexy side of marketing, waste management. And that is incredibly important. Making sure that you're able to stop the wasted impression, the extra touch point, we have all probably in the last two weeks bought something and then got another impression trying to sell you the thing that you just bought. It helps take those things out, things that you would never buy. It allows us as marketers to say, I am being able to recognize a pocket of opportunity with precision. I can reach that pocket of opportunity again with precision. I can be more informed of what relevant items I can bring to that person. And I can leave enough data to actually say, what's working and what's not and see the results. It's incredibly empowering, it's incredibly freeing and as a marketer it helps you have a better conversation with your CFO, which some of those conversations haven't always been so positive. - Okay, so less waste, more profit, better meetings with your CFO. Thank you, Ed, for weighing it all down for us. - And it's sliced as bread along the way too. - Wonderful, thank you to Ed and thanks to Zenit for supporting our podcast. - Thank you, Sarah. - And we are back. So maybe just like TV itself, the live sports related content was some of the best attended in the conference. We had the NHL there. Lots of people talking about the live sports opportunity. What's kind of behind the headlines about where live sports is going? - Yeah, so I think it's about getting more younger viewers watching live sports streaming mostly because advertisers wanna reach more younger viewers. And Gen Z, Gen Alpha, often watching sports through highlights, smaller shorter clips, if snackable things, snackable videos on social media. So what I'm noticing and this came up during the event too 'cause we had someone from the NHL kind of talking about what? what the league is doing to adapt its programming to try to get some of those younger viewers watching through streaming more. And then therefore, get more at dollars. So actually, I'm surprised that AI hasn't come up yet in the podcast, but the NHL is using some AI to try to integrate some highlights and shorter snackable clips onto its actual live stream programming. Because like I said, to adapt to the way that Gen Z or Gen Alpha younger viewers tend to be watching sports. And it's also using AI in the user experience in the sense that it's trying to make it easier for maybe sports fans that live in remote areas to watch the Rangers live. And so just kind of, for example, clicking around to be able to move, to pan the view, see the full studio as the game's going on. So that was pretty interesting too, which is all to say. The more that a league can cater to these younger viewers, the more they think that they'll get marketers and add dollars as a result. So that was interesting that came up at the event. - So I don't think I was in the room for this sports one. I think I was backstage either prepping for something or I don't remember it's a blur. When you say that they're using AI to develop highlight reels, are they using AI technology to decide what to cut and turn into a highlight rather than having like human editors do that? - I think the point was more about, I guess like making the integration on the screen sort of clean. I'm really sure how they pick and choose which tapes probably, if we had a fireside chat with the image, maybe we should do that next time. We could find out more information. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I mean, I'm starting to like hockey a bit more because my family likes it. So I'll let you know if I see anything interesting in the wild. - Is your family a bunch of women who like watching boys' kids? - No, actually quite the opposite. They're just a bunch of Rangers fans and dudes. - Has nothing to do with you to travel, are you at all? - Not at all. - What a foreign concept. - I know, I know, aren't I boring? I think someone's gonna have to do something. It's like kind of like the maybe another equivalent to like the Taylor Swift, like Travis Kelsey, football effect, like bringing new people into sports. Could it, who would have thought? I think the whole idea of this snackable clip is interesting too. I'm not a huge sports viewer. I do love the Olympics though. And I would say over the Olympics, I watched there are a few things I'd specifically search for on YouTube, but like something I missed. Also, there were a lot of clips just available in the peacock platform, which was nice. But there's also like something kind of, there's a little bit of like storytelling that's missed when like you just kind of watch like the gold, the gold medal thing, you don't have that like lead up of watching all the other people like go on their ski run and like, well, will that person beat the best time? Or like, will that jump be the one? Like when you just watch the winning one, it's like actually not satisfying. So I definitely see room for both. And I think it also can be kind of a little bit of an on-ramp onto certain sports. Or watch the Netflix ice dancing documentary and then I was like watching the ice dancing routines on YouTube and then I ended up watching it live. I feel like that was a big winning part of the Olympics for me. I didn't know I liked ice dancing, but I do. When I know the story behind the couples. So really interesting to see the Angele doing that. I wonder if they have like clips of like the fight highlight real or like, you know, gold highlight real. So I feel like I need it in slow mo 'cause hockey is so fast that I'm like, where did that puck go? Like, oh, there's a goal. Like I was looking, I was looking where it was a few seconds ago. So that might be helpful for me. I need like the augmented reality version of hockey for sure. Okay, so live sports. And also I think Alyssa, one thing that I'm certainly paying a lot of attention to. And I think the industry is paying a lot of attention to is this whole move around what will happen with sports rights. You kind of reference like, oh, can social be a way where someone can watch part of a game that they can't because the game's not playing in their market. There's even been some, you know, some, I believe it's an antitrust case around like where sports rights are going like not wanting it to go into some of the streamers or like how things are packaged. So I think that's going to be a really interesting area to watch because we've seen many sports, you know, rights go over to streamers. I feel like the Thursday and I football was like the first, you know, one that really everyone paid attention to. But then what happens if the regulators step in, it'll be just really interesting to watch. And it's going to be like a multi year unfolding. Well, and it's interesting, something you hear really consistently from both publishers and advertisers, basically everybody in the advertising industry about life sports is that they don't treat it like it's different based on where it's available. Both in terms of like the advertisers themselves and then the people who are watching like technically speaking, Thursday night football on Amazon or whatever is like CTV in a way that it's not linear TV, but like that doesn't matter to the people who are watching it. It's just the game. It's just TV to them. And I think it comes up a lot in conversations about converging linear and streaming because like, you know, it happens or changing and the way that people are tuning in kind of isn't deep down as far as the behavior goes. Yeah. And I want to close by like bringing up one more thing, which is we know that Netflix backed away from the Warner Brothers discovery deal Paramount has stepped in. It's like the six or seven's time that Warner Brothers has been sold. It's like, it's like like the Liz Taylor of I don't know what we're like really listen, I like what's the right joke is that like the Liz Taylor of companies like it's been with so many different types of the whole diamond of companies. Because it brings doom to whoever is applying it. That's true. Yeah, they're they're how you know, AOL time Warner, anyone or when AT&T Warner Brothers, man, yeah, there's a few, a few diamonds in there. Yeah, they buy the tower, they get the animatics, they don't know what to do with it. So I think a lot of the approval of that deal too kind of stems from the consumer choice similar to the what's going on with live sports, right? Like is it an issue for consumers and how they can access sports and how much they have to pay to watch sports? But if I'm an advertiser, I think on one hand, the added scale feels like a great thing and maybe more simple to me to buy. And if you look at actually for those that will listen to a few weeks ago on the David Foster WP media case, like the hundreds of millions that are spent on each streaming platform, it still is very much dwarfed by what's spent on, you know, the trade desk or Amazon or these other like very large platforms, obviously meta and Google, like they actually are small potatoes next to those companies, which is always their argument for getting mergers approved. But if I'm an advertiser, scale's great, but maybe there might be some pricing, you know, issues that, you know, often happen when companies consolidate. Yeah, it's, it's especially interesting now. And I wrote about this a little bit for the CTV roundup newsletter that we put out last week during conversion TV world. So if you were at the event and you didn't see it in your inbox, go back and look, it's probably in there. But it's, it's especially interesting to me that David Ellison is the CEO of Paramount Skydance is already talking about consolidating Paramount Plus and HBO Max A, because Warner Brothers Discovery tried to do that with discovery global and then changed their minds when they realized it was a bad idea actually to put all of this stuff on one thing just in terms of branding and trying to move consumers from one service to another. The B, it, yeah, it's to your point, it increases scale, but then at the same time, it will likely, I imagine, lead to less diversity and opportunity for the adverse that are trying to achieve that scale, because if you're only talking to one platform as opposed to two platforms, they're just inherently going to have less bandwidth to talk to as many companies. Like, yeah, they might have a big sales team, but just inherently like it's easier to diversify across a wider number of platforms that are owned by different companies than it is with one company that owns one platform, regardless of how big that platform is. And then on the on the measurement side too, if there's consolidation, I mean, especially if we're talking about Warner Brothers Discovery, you know, being bought by Paramount's guidance, then I mean, that's one less walled garden that buyers have to, you know, sit or deal with to in order to get some sort of holistic picture of what's happening, because that is sort of the biggest complain as it pertains to the lack of transparency and CTP environments. Which on the one hand, I could see being a benefit if it symbolized things, but on the other hand, is a problem if you have to rely on that one company to be correct. Like I, you know, worked at a website in 2015, 16 during the Facebook Pivotive Video Cray is, and so I still, still keeps me up a night. You know, like, it's hard to trust a walled garden that has no competitors when they tell you things that they say are true. Like there's nothing to sort of like corroborate. or back them up on the outside. And then also as a consumer, I feel like I kind of wanted some of the streaming platforms to consolidate, but then there is something that's a bit jarring, like just from like having to switch between different apps. But like one, actually if you have a good smart TV, they actually can help with the search functionality across a whole bunch of the apps, you know, with varying levels of success. But also it is quite jarring when you have like the HBO premium content next to like some of the strange TLC discovery reality shows. And it's like, oh, like this, there's different content here that I wasn't aware of. Or you know, similarly like Disney+ like I used that for my kids. And then you've got the Hulu stuff and there as well. And like, like no, don't continue watching that one. I probably need to just get better with my profiles. But you know, there's something that's kind of funny when you, it starts to just more like regular TV channels where you've got like one thing on one extreme, one on the other rather than kind of have this like unifying thing like when you, when you used to open the HBO app, like you really knew what you were getting and all the content kind of had a certain HBO enist to that. And HBO is probably the best example of that. So I want to finish up by going back to the question which you guys did answer. But 2026 is the year CTV is going to or it's the year of something your mobile to your TV did what? I mean, I already said takes over the funnel. I guess I could also follow it up with the year CTV becomes holistic. Okay, your CTV takes over the final becomes holistic, not just the your performance TV, but the year it takes over the funnel. I love that Victoria, Alyssa. Yeah, I think it's the year CTV get and I kind of touched on this earlier, but really starts to thrive in a gray area of not quite being like strictly reach vehicle, but not also not, you know, social media, but existing somewhere in the middle and also advertisers and publishers being able to actually, you know, capitalize on that middle ground existence. Okay, cool. I love this. It's a year of change, continued change, continued maturity reorganization, restacking. We've got a lot of new players in the fields. The other consolidating. It's just very fascinating. Continue continues to be one of my favorite beats to follow. So thank you Victoria, Alyssa for sharing these insights. And we'll see you next week. This episode was brought to you by say that say does AI platform unifies paid owned and earned media into one powerful growth engine optimizing performance in real time and driving measurable outcomes with confidence. Don't hope for a higher ROI expected with say that learn more at say to global.com slash at a feature. [Music]