In this edition of the Buy-Side View, we speak with Harry Packshaw, Head of AV at Havas Media Network. Packshaw discusses the challenges of navigating a convoluted CTV market, the threat of ad fraud in the video ecosystem, and how Havas is working to curate trusted supply across smaller CTV publishers.
What is your biggest bugbear when it comes to video and CTV advertising?
I have quite a few bugbears when it comes to CTV, and when it comes to advertising in general, to be honest. But I think there’s probably two that really stand out as being the biggest. One has come about more recently with the explosion of CTV, and it’s that convolution of the marketplace, that sort of long tail that we now have within the CTV advertising world.
There are so many new platforms offering a lot of content which is the same or similar to other platforms. Some are selling their own inventory, some are selling their inventory plus inventory across other platforms, and then you’ve got aggregators selling inventory across the whole market. So there’s a lot of different ways to buy, it makes it a challenge for both advertisers and agencies. And I think it’s somewhat reminiscent of the early days of programmatic. So I think something needs to change there. I think as the market matures, we will see a lot of those players condense within that space, which should help alleviate the convolution and complexity.
I think the other bit is around cross-channel measurement. The industry has been crying out for more cross-channel measurement within video for a long time. And I think we’ve made some great strides recently; Origin is about to launch, Barb taking on C-Flight, and those have really helped in terms of cross-channel measurement. But I think to really get to the place where we want to be, we need greater collaboration from those stakeholders to work together to come up with a solution.
Which do you think video advertising is the most effective for – generating awareness and brand-building, or driving short-term sales?
Everyone likes to put each media channel in a certain bucket, but I think we forget that everything does everything. So video is great for brand building, it’s also great for short-term sales. I think the thing that video does better than any other channel is creating an emotional connection. And for that reason, it is better than any other channel at building a brand. And I think in terms of awareness as well, in order to really effectively deliver awareness, you need attention. And we’ve seen in studies through our partnership with Lumen that video advertising gets higher levels of attention than any other form of advertising. So it’s another reason why it’s probably best at driving both brand building and awareness. Although it is still very, very capable from a short-term sales perspective.
Are you investing in CTV advertising? How will the shift towards CTV change your TV buying strategy?
I’m pretty sure when I say all of our brands are invested in CTV. I don’t think that it’s changed our buying or our planning approach per se. I think what we’re still interested in is the most efficient way of delivering our reach and frequency goals for our clients across all AV. What CTV also allows us to do is to layer in more data-driven targeting, especially using first-party data. So data clean rooms are becoming more and more ubiquitous, and being able to match clients’ first-party data with that of media partners enables us to combine the mass reach of CTV with more precision targeting.
A lot of CTV buying is limited to broadcasters and YouTube – are you spending with any of the smaller CTV publishers?
Yes, we are certainly spending with a huge number of those smaller CTV partners. I mentioned earlier how convolution has created a challenge within that marketplace, and at Havas we have specifically addressed that challenge by creating our own Havas CTV marketplace, which is essentially a curated marketplace across all of those smaller CTV suppliers, which allows us to simplify the complexity across all of those suppliers, and also ensure that we’re able to deliver scale as well. So it addresses multiple challenges whilst enabling us to access that inventory.
Which ad tech solution has delivered the most impact for your business?
I think the one that I’m most excited about is is C-Flight. I think since Barb took on the governance of C-Flight, we’ve already seen quite a significant shift in the way that’s developed. So they’ve rolled out new audiences for most users, and that will significantly impact not just the way that we report how successful our campaigns have been, but also really inform the way that we plan campaigns – especially given all of those recent bigger CTV players that have now signed up to Barb, such as Amazon.
Also, at Havas we’ve recently launch our own engagement platform, Converged, that enables advertisers to reach audiences without the use of third-party cookies. It means we can build audiences, based on multiple data sets, that we can actually activate against and we are seeing really positive results for KPIs like view through rate and cost per completed view, so it’s making a meaningful difference for our clients already.
Which metrics do you value the most when it comes to video and CTV advertising?
Traditionally, CTV and video is all about both reach and views. And I think when you’re looking at views, it’s about completed views, 100 percent in view with the sound on. Those are the most traditional metrics, and I think still the most important.
What we are seeing as well is that attention is quite an important part of video advertising, or potentially all advertising. We have a partnership with Lumen and that has allowed us to quantify attention in a way that means that we can plan across both reach and attention for our clients. And that enables us to deliver the most effective outcomes for their businesses.
What could agencies do better to help clean up the industry?
I think that one of the biggest concerns within the industry is ad fraud. At Havas we certainly push our media partners to deliver third-party verification, and that’s something that we would love to see across all CTV. At Havas we also work closely with the Conscious Ad Network (CAN), and they’re doing a lot of work to combat ad fraud as well.
But I think more significantly, they’re doing great work to combat those more harmful issues around things like hate speech and child welfare and misinformation, which are far more damaging to the world than ad fraud. I think that organisations like CAN are helping to shine a light on those less desirable parts of our industry. And if we want to enact change, then these kinds of organisations are vital to help us do that.
Which person in the industry inspires you the most today?
There are so many people that have inspired me across my career. I would say my team inspire me on a pretty much daily basis. They’re a really great group of people that I’m very proud to work with. I’ve also worked very closely with Simon Bevan [Chief Operating Officer at Havas] for the last six or seven years since he started Havas, and he’s been a real source of inspiration across my career.
Outside of those people that I work closely with, Pearl & Dean CEO Kathryn Jacob is also, apart from anything else, just a really wonderful human being, and someone who I’ve always looked up to. And also, I would probably be remiss if I didn’t say my wife Laura, who also works in the industry at OMD UK, is probably my greatest inspiration.
Out of all the video and TV advertising campaigns you’ve been involved with, which are you most proud of?
The one that really sticks in my mind was probably one of the earliest campaigns I worked on. When I started out, I was working on Boots and it was around the time of ‘Here Come the Girls’. We had a Christmas campaign and I remember being at home and watching TV with my family and seeing the ad and excitedly going, “That’s my ad!”
In a way I kind of miss the pure excitement of being able to point at the physical manifestation of all your hard work there on a TV screen in front of you. But that certainly got me really passionate about working in this industry.
More latterly I’ve been heavily involved in Domino’s football partnership around, ‘Order now for half time.’ It’s been going since about 2017, and it resonates really well with their audience. But as much as anything else, it’s just really clever messaging, and the simplicity of it in terms of a call to action makes it one that really stands out.
