How To Connect Measurement and Local Connected TV Advertising with Albert Alvarez, CEO at The Mediam Group

Tim Rowe, Host:
Welcome back to the State of Streaming podcast. Today, we are diving deep into why consumer attention is so far ahead of the advertiser. And we'll be talking about the critical shifts and the bridges that need to be built to bridge that gap. We're gonna be talking about how to measure what matters by the concept of live, especially live sports, has really become the most premium real estate in not just streaming, but all of media, how to become a consultant, to your clients in advising those media strategies. My name is Tim Rowe and I am thrilled to be joined by Alberto Alvarez, CEO of The Mediam Group. Alberto and his team's expertise centers on helping digital publishers expand internationally and helping those brands navigate, not just participate in the changing media landscape, but really leverage it to accelerate their business. So if you want to hear a little bit of the perspective of what's going on around the world of streaming and really put some tools in the toolbox of consultative selling, understanding the measurement conversation and how to navigate it, then this is a great conversation for you. So without further ado, enjoy. Alberto, can you help us at a high level understand who the medium group is? What's the problem that you solve and who's the customer that you solve it for?

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: Sure, sure. First of all, Tim, thanks for the invitation. It's great to be here. As you know, we think that education, evangelization, talking about CTV is something important to continue developing our ecosystem. Mediam is a company that is focused on developing the CTV, connected TV, streaming, whatever you want to call it, ecosystem on the globe. The way we see it is we are in a very interesting moment in time and in a very interesting market where you can clearly see the consumer is way ahead of brands and agencies. When you are in that moment in the market, you understand there is a big opportunity there. Why? It's easy. Everyone is streaming now. Oh, I don't think you can find now somebody to say, hey, I have never screamed in my life. Whatever. Sports, video. If you are, you know, Hispanic or Latin American, soap opera or maybe drama, reality shows, whatever. is going or is in the stream right now. But when you talk to agencies, when you talk to brands, you know, they say, hey, I get it. I understand it. As a consumer, I'm there. But as a brand, I'm struggling. I know I need to be there. I don't know how. Or maybe I don't even know if I need to be there. So that's where Mediam enters. We enter and we help brands, advertisers, agencies to The way we see these evolve, you know, make an evolution on their marketing strategies, a marketing mix on models to go to CTV. But not only, not only get here, take advantage of it, get results on really, really, you know, tackle and enable you as a brand, as an advertiser to really embrace it and really take advantage of the opportunity and get results for your business. That's what we do. Alberto, you make it really important.

Tim Rowe, Host: point of distinction there of not just doing advertising, but doing it in a way that drives outcomes. How do you start thinking about that piece of the conversation, knowing how fragmented the ecosystem really is?

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: Sure. So, at the end, there are a couple of basic things. What do you want to achieve? That's the conversation to start. What is funny about these conversations is, you know, people say, hey, no, I really want performance. And maybe I don't do CTV because, you know, I have a performance. OK, what do you measure? Hmm. Wow. What do you measure? So, yeah, what do you measure? And even maybe more, how do you measure it? And then you start to see the opportunities there. So at the end, you not only become a consultant on CTV, but at the end, a consultant in the whole marketing strategy that at the end, in our case, goes towards CTV, but at the end, the conversation about what to measure and how to measure are key to understanding how to take advantage not only of CTV or any media, right? So once you sort that out, sometimes you need to help also the client to get to the right tools to make it happen. Then it's easier. And then you can say, hey, with CTV, we can do this. On the marketing mix model, the role of CTV within your media should be this. Let's focus here. And the other important thing is this is like a myth, you know, in this online and offline conversation that on digital, you know, everything works and on offline things don't work. That's why you move the money to digital. But that's not true, right? What is true is you can measure more and better on digital. Once you do that, you can optimize continuously. So this applies to any medium, to Google, to Meta, to TikTok, or whatever. When you start understanding what to measure, how to measure, and how to optimize, everything gets to a better result. Because you start inefficient, and then you know you work it out, you fine-tune it, fine-tune it, and then you get a better result. So the way we say to consumers or to clients is what we look for is to continuous improvement on your business result, right? I'm not going to oversell it. I'm not going to say I want to be the best, you know, KPI you're going to measure all time is we're going to get it better every time towards your goal. And that works, because at the end of what you need, you start, you know, with a KPI on, I don't know, 10, and you want to take it to five. Okay, let's work together on how we can take it to five, or whatever decision you make. So that's part of the approach. Approaching in a way of what to measure, how to measure, and then an optimization plan towards your business result.

Tim Rowe, Host: Well, we got the hard part out of the way, measurements done. So let's talk about the opportunity. Thank you for that great framework. I think that is a conversation we all need to lead a little bit more confidently in understanding how do you measure these outcomes in your business and what's really the goal. And Hey, it's not going to be instantaneous. This is going to be an ongoing commitment that we've made to each other to continually get better at this. And here's how we're going to do that. So, so thank you for that. Globally sports. are the hottest opportunity, right? Consistently 80 to 90% of the top 100 pieces of television programming are some sort of sporting event. What is the opportunity that you see on the global stage for sports streaming as an advertising opportunity?

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: Sure. So sports is important regardless of the media and even regardless of marketing. People love to see, to watch, to experience sports. This goes, you know, way back before digital, before television, before radio. It's all this time. Yeah. I think it's in our DNA, you know, to see sports, someone winning, you know, matches, rivalry. I mean, it goes with us, right? So we always need to think of what is the consumer reality? Because once you understand the consumer reality, it's easier to understand how to approach it on market, right? So period. For people, sport is a premium moment. Live sport, because there is a very interesting differentiation, live sport is even more important. It's a premium experience, and it's an urgent experience. The game is at 7 p.m. You are there or you miss it. Yes, you can see the reruns and the highlight, and of course, that makes sense. But at the end, you need to, you want to be there for the 90 minutes, you know, to get all the information, what's happening, to see it in real time. So if you think it on a consumer point of way first is you plan to be in front of your screen for 90 minutes, let's say for a football game, not like 90 or two hours, depending on what happens, right? So you're planning to be there. You're planning to be focused. Right. It's not that I'm going to do many things. I want to see the game. And you see, you know, the, the, the, the funny thing that they say about when, when guys, you know, all get together to see a sports event, you know, when women get to there to see something, it's all about talking. When guys say get together is we're watching the game. You know, we will have a pause. We can talk. Oh, I'm watching the game right now. Right. So you have that premium moment of attention. And when a brand appears, it's a premium brand, because in your mind, that's a premium moment. So if you see a brand there for you, that's a premium experience for a brand. Okay, so you got consumer high gain gauge, 90 minutes or 120 or whatever, focus. You are solely focused on the screen. The brands that appear there in your mind as a consumer are premium brands that can afford to pay to be at that level, all right? So you're on a different level than just a regular TV commercial. So now let's go back to the brands. For the brandsies, you have this consumer there, 90 million, mostly on your TV. Your TV, by the way, is the biggest screen you get. You know, it's not the same to see something on a mobile or on a tele, to see it on a 20, 30, 50 inches, 60 inches TV that we have now. You have a premium space there. You have the consumer, open to see information. So you want to be there. But also for a brand, and even for agencies, you go through this selection process where you say, hey, I want to be there. I can tell you. I can afford it. So you don't even do the effort. Because at the end of the day, that's only for the big brands with big dogs. I cannot be there. Connected TV comes and changes that, changes the whole dynamic of the advertiser on CTV. So now that CTV enters, there are a couple of things that are interesting to understand, right? First of all, and I have been saying this year in every interview I get, believe me when I say this, live sports will move to CTV. The FIFA World Cup next year will move to CTV, right? And this has even nothing to do with consumer. It has to do with a very simple map. CTV companies, especially global companies or those that are backed by a technology company, have significant bigger budgets than local broadcasters, period. So at the end, the live sports will go to the highest bidder. As simple as that. So CTV is going to take most of the live sports rights because it makes sense. And it's the way to enter a field as a winner. Now I have these rights. Are you with me or not? Of course I'm with you. That's happened, all right? And by the way, all this A-bot and free model about how to do CTV makes sense. You do it for free or premium or whatever, and you get the reach you need because people will want to see the game, right? So with all this in place, now you have a CTV company that understands scale, right? you want to get as much advertisers, as much, let's call it spots, you know, like the old jargon, as you can, because you are for the scale. So you go and you put prices that make sense, prices on a digital space. So now, most of the brands can afford to be in that premium model, right? So the way we see it, CTV in many places, and especially in sports, comes to democratize access. for advertisers to those important moments for the consumer.

Tim Rowe, Host: What are the challenges that come with that? We've talked a little bit about the fragmentation. You're really approaching this from a global scale. So I'm sure that we could do probably a series of challenges market by market, but what are the biggest challenges you see for buyers in being able to either aggregate it, activate against it? What are the, what are the kind of bottlenecks from buying it?

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: Right. So first, most important challenge, believe it or not, is awareness. Awareness that this can be done. As easy as that, you know, and it's ironic that we are on the market in a world where awareness is, you know, is the way, you know, we approach things and it's our biggest barrier right now, right? But it is. People don't know you can, advertisers don't know you can advertise in these spaces because it's a deselection. I don't think that I'm not going to even start a conversation because I know I don't have whatever money they ask for me. So awareness that this is possible is number one. So coming to this podcast or interviews or talking to the media is critical because we need to spread the message. All right. So awareness number one. Number two, education, education, education, all right? Not only is that I can do it, it's, okay, how, how, why, how it makes sense for my specific brand, all right? So education, education, education, spread the message, help people understand the why and the how is the most important thing, all right? And then that you have all of those, yes, but then you have, let's call it more, more technical or issue. So fragmentation is one, right. But fragmentation is an issue. If you think on isolated on platform, right. If you think on a, I can aggregate and I can go to several platforms and spread my message as an advertiser. Advertising is not an issue, right? So that's how we approach it in medium. So what we do is we go to all the companies that have the rights or some rights, because in some cases, even and specifically is divided between CTV, CTV companies. So if you want to see all the matches, you need to go to two, three, even five different companies. And I'm not starting a negotiation. The way we approach it is as we have a global scale and we have a global approach, we go with a big opportunity for each one of these individuals to aggregate them in a platform that we call Power TV Sports. where you as an advertiser can advertise in any game you want in most of the leagues. And we are aggregating weekly more and more opportunity. So for you, it's a digital approach. You buy one thing and it spreads all across. And if you think, you know, I always like to do analogies because when you understand how things work, you understand that it's easier than you think. So imagine, you know, 20 years ago, right? What you wanted to do, display advertising. At the beginning, I don't know if you remember, I have more than 20 years in this industry.

Tim Rowe, Host: Take us back, take us in the way back machine, all the way back.

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: You needed to go place by place. You know, so I want to advertise here, sign here, exactly, exactly. And even, you know, email, hey, I want to advertise and let's do this. It was a mess. So, so you think it was like right now, it's impossible. This, this will never escape. It doesn't make sense at all. All right. And you have that, though, those excels, you know, with every, you know, item where you, where you did your, your advertising, it was a mess. aggregators, programmatic, yeah, I don't know, technologies, agencies that then did the work. And you as an advertiser, you say, I want to be in all these places. And by the way, that evolving, I don't even think about the places. I want to be with my target, which is a man from 18 to 35 that likes sports. That's it. You know, and by the way, you go and your advertising is spread across hundreds maybe of places. But for you, you don't even think about that. You just think that you get to the target that you want to get. Whatever happens in the middle, for you, it's just a start point. So it's the same approach here. One of the things I always like to say is our world, and even more the marketing world, is cyclical. Things go in cycles. And the cycles just evolve, but at the end, the cycles are kind of the same. So we're in that space. You know what, this is an emerging sub-segment in marketing where sports or CTV overall is fragmented. You need to aggregate it in a smart way and you need to make it easier for the advertiser or the agency to buy it, to report it and to make sense. If you do that, you will succeed and the advertiser will succeed because it will be easier for them too. So, recapping. Awareness, issue number one. this approach, this conversation with you, help us on our work. Education, education, education. Go talk about strategy, talk about how things work, talk about what to do, how to measure, what to measure, make sense. And then tackle the inefficiencies in the system. So fragmentation, getting the right, make it simple for the advertiser to start. That would be the key three things that make sense.

Tim Rowe, Host: Great, great place to start. Outside of sports, are there opportunities that you think are maybe undervalued in the marketplace? Are there fast channels or any sort of kind of misunderstood or undervalued opportunities that you think advertisers should be taking advantage of outside of sports?

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: CTV overall is underappreciated. Not only underappreciated, underinvested. So you have more demand on the consumer side than on the advertiser side. So just matching, let's call it the share of time spent of the consumer in screens with the share of ad spent That is one of the key things to approach. Because one of the things that people also don't understand is forget about CTV. Let us talk about the big media, Google, Meta. There is what is called a curve of diminishing returns. Yes, you can continue to invest, invest, invest, invest, and you go get better, better, better results up to a point. where if you say I invest one and I get two, there is a point when you invest one, you get one and a half. But then there is a point when you invest one and you get half, all right? And people don't measure it that way because they don't know when that curve, you know, they get to a peak. But it happens to all of the advertisers because they over invest in those means. Right. So if you take that inefficient part of the budget, let's say you have one million budget, you peak at, I don't know, $750,000 and you take the rest and you put it in underinvested media as CTV, you get better overall results. Because you don't see it, but you're wasting money on the last part of your budget. And you don't see it because at the end you measure it on an aggregated level. So, and this is another interesting thing. And I'm getting, you know, a lot of topics out here, but I think it's interesting. This is great.

Tim Rowe, Host: This is a media investment masterclass. Keep going.

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: People don't see where they waste the money in any medium, because at the end, they get an aggregated result. What does this mean? You get a $10 CPA, all right? So as long as you're in a $10 CPA, you're okay, because that is what you want to get. What people don't understand is that $10 CPA, what happens is, let's say you have 10 campaigns, you know, to get to that result. And within those campaigns, you have many variables, targeting, geos, ads, or different creative, or many variables, right? Usually what happens when you do a double click on your $10 CPA campaign, you have, let's call it sub-campaigns or ad groups that delivers a $3 CPM. But there are others that delivers a $15 CPM, right? But as you don't go to this double click for you, Meta is getting you $10 CPM. But no, you could get even lower CPM if you just stop all the $15 CPM that doesn't make any sense. Right. So people don't know that and they don't go to the level of it. And so if you stop all of that money that you're wasting and reinvest it in other medium, you get way better result than what you're doing right now. So at the moment you will get, if you do that, maybe you will get a CPA of seven instead of 10. And then you on CTV get your $10 that you want to get. But overall, it's better than wasting on the $15 that you don't even know is happening.

Tim Rowe, Host: It would start to seem like allocation is really the new optimization. I don't have to spend more. I just need to spend it differently.

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: It's especially better. I need to understand better what I'm doing for number one. And then I don't need to go. So that's a good point. So what do I do to get money to see TV? My boss is never going to approve a new body. You don't need, you know, a new budget, you don't need an incremental budget. Just remove inefficiencies and you will get enough money to invest properly on a, on CPB.

Tim Rowe, Host: Alberto, I feel like there are listeners right now who are just chomping at the bit. They want to get in touch. Let's give them the, uh, let's give them the Latin long, the, the household address as it were. How do folks get in touch with you? Where do they learn more about the medium group? Let's point them to, to the best places to get in touch.

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: So the two easiest thing to do is you can look for me on LinkedIn, Alberto Alvarez, send me a DM, say, hey, you know, I saw you or I heard you on Tim's podcast on the state of streaming. I really want to get in touch. That will be the fastest way to start the conversation. The second best way as any company, go to our website, themediangroup.com or look for a medium group, medium group CTV. Hopefully we have a very good position on sale in your country and we can get a conversation started.

Tim Rowe, Host: We will link to both of those to make it really easy. It'll be close by to this conversation. And your team is always doing a lot of educational marketing, just like this. You recently hosted a webinar. Can you tell us about that webinar?

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: Sure. So again, education is key. And if we want to make a difference on CTV, and by the way, when we talk as an internal team, what I say is the thing that how we breathe about CTV is in five years, people, especially people in emerging market will look back and say medium was, you know, a catalyzer, was an accelerator of the CTV ecosystem overall. So when you approach your business that way, education is not a chore. It's not a thing you need to do. It's the thing to do to get your business result. So that's why we invest a lot on education. So we try to do regular, not only virtual events, but also physical events. So by the way, if you have people that that are listening, that have CTV events and they want to invite us, please also send us a message. We will be more than happy to be with you on your event. So regarding the event that we did, we just did an event about sports CTV. where we share, we usually, what we do is we share a lot of interesting point of data that opens people's mind. We always talk about the why, and we always talk about the how. So we try to be very visual about what can you do, how to do it, to get people on the proper state of mind for them to understand how to approach the opportunities. And by the way, every time we do an education event, it's truly an education. If you know more about CTV after the event, that's the objective. If, by the way, you think you want to do something with medium, well, amazing. Even better. Even better. Yeah, yeah. But again, it's not a commercial event. It's truly an education and a strategy talk. So, Tim, also, we will invite you to the next one that we have so you can share with your listeners, you know, we can get this ball rolling.

Tim Rowe, Host: Looking forward to that. It's going to be a lot of fun. This is just the first part of what I'm sure will be many conversations that bring you the perspective, especially the global perspective of the opportunity and the challenges facing streaming TV. Alberto, I can't thank you enough for being here and being a part of this inaugural kickoff class of the State of Streaming Podcast. Thank you.

Albert Alvarez, CEO @ The Mediam Group: Tim, it has been a pleasure, always a pleasure to talk with you, to talk about CTV overall, and I agree, this will be the start of a long-term conversation of many things to talk about. Thank you, and thank you to your listeners.

Tim Rowe, Host: Definitely. If you found this conversation to be helpful, please share it with a colleague, with a client. Start a conversation today, and make sure to smash that subscribe button, like, follow, share, leave a comment. That's how you help the podcast grow, and we'll see y'all next time.