Thursday, October 8, 2015

Ancestry.com Eyes Programmatic TV

My google alert for "Ancestry.com" found an interesting article today - see "Ancestry Finds Winning Combination in TV Plus Digital, Eyes Programming TV" by Sarah Sluis on the AdExchanger web site.


The article starts off with:

"TV has long proven to be an effective channel for Ancestry.com, a provider of genealogical software and services with more than 2 million subscribers.


"And 1 million have purchased its DNA testing product, AncestryDNA. Commercials advertising Ancestry are meant to be emotional and explain the value of using the family history search site and DNA product. TV is also an effective way to reach Ancestry’s target audience, which tends to be in the 45- to 65-year-old range.

"Ancestry and other digital, direct-response-focused advertisers like Match.com and Dollar Shave Club are investing heavily in TV.

"But Ancestry also sees an opportunity in programmatic TV, which it will test in coming months. Jay Eyunni, director of global digital media for Ancestry and a panelist at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O event on Oct. 29, talked about his company’s media strategies."

Hmmm, what is "Programmatic TV?"  I googled it and found this explanation in "WTF is Programmatic TV Advertising" on the DigiDay website:

"Rather than relying on ratings for specific shows or channels, marketers can use programmatic tech to reach a more specific subset of consumers, like men with a $50,000 income who own an Android device. They don’t care if that ad shows up on X Factor or the X Games, as long as the target audience is watching. Most TV audience targeting today is not quite that advanced, however, which is one reason why programmatic TV is still in its infancy."

Well, that's interesting.  It appears that, eventually, I will be seeing targeted advertising for persons in my demographic, my daughter will see targeted advertising for persons in her demographic, and my grandson will see targeted advertising for his demographic.  How will they know if a male or female, aged 75, 40 or 15, married or single, white or black, liberal or conservative, is watching?  One answer may be that we will each have our own personal video device with our demographics embedded in them.

We may even have filled out a survey of some sort to identify our demographics, our preferences, our interests, etc. and our personal video device will just play a 15 second, or a 30 second, or a 60 second advertisement that whets our interest.

The future is coming, and it may be a lot different than what we have now in terms of technology.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/10/ancestrycom-eyes-programmatic-tv.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.



2 comments:

T said...

Just kill me now and get it over with.

Mary Foxworthy said...

What T said above. It's just too too too ....