An Interview With Mirriad's Stephan Beringer
Published in partnership with Mirriad.
Q: You moved from Publicis to Mirriad a few years ago. First of all, why would anyone ever leave agency-land? And second, what is Mirriad?
I left Publicis after an incredibly exciting time which included some very rewarding leaps forward such as the re-setting of programmatic media buying for the Groupe, architecting and launching the Publicis PeopleCloud data platform, building a range of strategic alliances with the major technology players, and generally creating better solutions for clients with more “platformification” of capabilities. However, seeing how marketing’s effectiveness was getting increasingly constrained by the interruptive model in advertising, oversaturation, format restrictions and more, I started looking for ideas and solutions that would tackle the question of relevance on a fundamental level. This is when I came across Mirriad and became the CEO of the company. Mirriad is now the leading platform for virtual in-content advertising and product placement across TV, SVOD/AVOD, and music videos. We seamlessly integrate brands into popular entertainment content of our supply-side partners, creating new video inventory without increasing ad loads.
Q: But wait, isn’t TV dying? Some guy named Brian Wieser keeps saying that
Marketers are going to do what marketers are going to do, and content experiences will always find their way to the viewers. We help maximize the value for everyone. For the TV networks with 6 to 12 additional ad opportunities per hour of content, we can boost ad revenue up to 50% in TV, CTV, and AVOD, and generate a 100% increase in ad revenue for SVOD. For advertisers who really want to make TV work hard and get into VOD at scale, we create all of these new opportunities. Ad-supported TV may decline as you describe it, or it might find new ways to grow, but either way we think there’s a huge runway for these new ad units.
Most issues have to do with peoples’ changed behaviours and attitudes: In the end, cord-cutting and the rise of streaming, ad-avoidance but also subscription-fatigue, the ad-attention deficits, the need to bundle streaming and sports packages, they all stem from peoples’ relative denial of anything they aren’t willing to invest time and resources in, and their freedom to go for better and more convenient experiences.
The implications are significant, and we’re living through a real tectonic shift;
Samba TV reported in their most recent study that 9 out of 10 ads in the US reach only half of households. These households, who also consume the most linear TV, are bombarded by an average of 150 ads per day. Meanwhile, the other half of households see only 1 out of 10 ad impressions at an average of approximately 10 per day. This can’t be right. We urgently must find new ways to reach households both for the unexposed audiences as well as for preventing even more ad-fatigue among the over-exposed.
AVOD cannot shoulder the entire problem, so the inventory imbalance resulting from the constrained supply in TV will propel the use of formats like ours and of other video platforms that will be reclassified as TV.
However, the issue related to the performance of the ad break still remains from an ROA perspective.
Q: Fair enough. I remember in the early 2000s while I was at IPG’s Magna and my colleagues developed one of the first agency-based branded entertainment units. There was a lot of talk then about the potential for virtual product placement. What’s your take on why it didn’t take off then, and why do you think it will take off now?
Scale is everything, and technology had to catch up to the concept to push branded entertainment into the realm of media buying with in-content ad units that are generated in the X thousands rather than in the teens. That started to happen over the last decade.
Next, measurement was an issue. Historically, the industry had no need for ratings specific to content and although we’ve been getting access to the data on a case-by-case basis, it hasn’t been a standard component of the networks’ platforms and the agencies’ planning arsenal. Given that in-content ads drive up to 50% more reach compared to a break, this is obviously very critical in terms of planning and reporting. The question should now be resolved with Nielsen One, which is due to release a content rating component as part of the new planning tool.
The linear challenges I describe obviously don’t exist in programmatic CTV, AVOD and SVOD, which is where the true scale will be coming from. Programmatic for streaming and CTV has only been maturing in the last two years, so we’re on this track now in terms of integrations with our partners. Addressable virtual in-content advertising, transacted programmatically, really is what everybody sees as the north star.
Lastly, the media industry has been under unprecedented pressure, and innovating in times of ultra-priorities such as building DTC platform businesses is hard, especially as you’re so short on resources. It’s counterintuitive, given the huge revenue opportunity on the table, but it’s the business reality we’ve run into. Signing new partners has taken longer than expected, and extracting more content for more inventory as well.
But we know they are looking for new ways to generate revenue, and establishing new partnerships to do so. In fact, we are very happy to say that as of last November we’re partnering with some of the biggest TV/Streaming companies in the US which will now allow us to grow the market in partnership with an important group of advertisers which include many of the biggest spenders in the world, and all the agency holding groups. We’re also extremely excited to share that we’ve just signed an agreement with another global media and entertainment player, which is a huge leap forward in terms of scaling our format across the entire marketplace.
Q: OK, I think we’re in agreement on the bigger picture opportunity. So, what’s Mirriad’s pitch?
Most recent data show that 86% of viewers avoid traditional ads by leaving the room, switching channels, or using smartphones, mainly due to negative perceptions caused by repetitiveness and oversaturation. This group doesn’t like what they’re experiencing, so 60% fewer people will add products to their online shopping carts following exposure, compared to those who do so based on positive ad experiences. Put the other way around, an ad that doesn’t interrupt viewing but is virtually placed in content will increase sales by up to 35%.
Whoever gets this equation right will win, and we feel this is a key part to Mirriad’s unique advantages where over 9 out of 10 viewers like the format, and it’s preferred over seven times more than TV Spots. This results in strong ad performances such as 75% of viewers finding the brands more appealing, and an average increase of 9 percentage points in consideration and a 6-percentage point increase in affinity compared to unexposed. To top it off, more than 1 out of 3 viewers purchase products following exposure to a virtual brand integration. If you add this to the fact that we have an unskippable format that reaches more people and even works in SVOD, the proposition is very compelling.
It is obvious that new ad formats that are integrated in the content experience rather than interrupting it, will make their way through the entire ecosystem and across all platforms. This doesn’t mean that traditional ads are dead, but we must realize that the decades-old paradigm of interruption must transition to more effective models and formats that re-gain attention, are more relevant even to the big group of ad-avoiders, and drive better results across TV, CTV and streaming.
Q: Needless to say, you think advertising has a role in supporting TV, then? Do you disagree with the premise that with every passing year it will be more and more supported by subscriptions?
I don’t disagree necessarily, but I also believe that advertising can re-bounce massively if we fix the fundamental flaws of a model that hasn’t really changed since many decades. People love brands, they enjoy buying, consuming and using products and services, they just don’t like being interrupted by them. So, the growth drivers that were formerly acting in separation need to come together and blend into the primary experiences. Again, this is all about living up to peoples’ appetite for better experiences.
Meanwhile, on the advertiser side we work with many companies who are building towards one key question: What does marketing look like in a world after advertising, how will we stay relevant by being part of peoples’ experiences? Other advertisers are more keen to understand what advertising will look like in a world after the cookie. Both questions relate to relevance and building value, just in very different ways. On the agency side we work with holding companies who are heavily invested in anticipating the future, and they’re providing centralised structures and resources to explore, test and accommodate new models and solutions. Other groups take a more distributed approach to tackling future opportunities and requirements. Activities are less concerted, they happen more on an agency-by-agency basis, which makes it a bit harder for us to navigate. There is a clear correlation between the focus we experience and the 5-year development of the enterprise value of these companies, so it seems that a degree of unification around central visions and strategies is required in these times of profound change.
Q: So it’s safe to say you are optimistic about opportunities for advertisers to make use of television in the years ahead?
What makes me feel very positive is the convergence of programmatic and AI to create more relevant experiences for viewers, content owners, and advertisers in real-time. Let me expand on that.
As we know, over-saturation is the root cause for ad-avoidance and the dramatic erosion of relevance. We’re seeing this phenomenon starting to bite us again in AVOD, where limited ad space is limiting the number of advertisers that get in. Given the relatively lower impression levels, these advertisers need to keep frequency high, and we’re back to square one.
AI will be a game changer. With hyper-versioning and customisation of next-generation ad formats that will take a much stronger experiential angle, we can envision higher frequency of more relevant ad experiences in CTV and VOD, with less repetitiveness of the ad’s content.
Mirriad goes a huge step further by creating virtual ads in the content itself without ad-load limitations thus exponentially growing the potential of every campaign. Living in the content, these virtual ads and product placements benefit from full attention and contextual relevance, and 0% repetitiveness given the uniqueness of every scene that is being used. Brands can run significant frequency without risking any diminishing effects. If we then add the second screen for instant transactions or assume that the content is consumed on mobile devices anyway, it’s easy to envision a future where entertainment content, brands and commerce have fully converged in an incredibly performing way.
This future is underway, in TV, CTV, AVOD, SVOD, in gaming, in music, in influencer content, and it will ultimately happen in any form of media including audio. Mass-marketing is being redefined today, and media owners, retailers, marketers, and agencies that can navigate this shift effectively and strategically, will likely emerge as the leaders of tomorrow's media and commerce ecosystem.
Technology players like us play a crucial role in all this offering the platforms, tools, and solutions that make this convergence possible. From sophisticated content generation engines and real-time optimisation across channels to virtual experiences and beyond, technology is the backbone of this new era of integrated commerce, content and brand experiences.
Q: Thanks, Stephan!