Advanced Advertising Is Big Step Toward Media Convergence: WBD’s Noah Levine

LAS VEGAS – Media companies for years have embraced technology to help advertisers improve reach and frequency among key audiences. Warner Bros. Discovery, whose network brands include CNN, TBS, TNT, Food Network, HGTV and TLC, has developed data-driven linear and linear addressable capabilities. It also has streaming platforms Max and Discovery+, along with free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) apps, to engage audiences on connected devices. “When you think about how those audiences are being activated, it’s all about Big Data.” Noah Levine, vice president of data strategy and advanced advertising at Warner Bros. Discovery, said in this interview at CES 2024. “The beauty of that is we’re able to work towards the Holy Grail of convergence.” The idea is for brands to be able to activate an audience once and to be able to plan, deliver and measure across data-driven linear, linear addressable and streaming. Through industry initiatives such as Go Addressable, On Addressable and partnerships with programmers, the multichannel video programming distributors have helped to broaden reach while offering better targeting. “Those partnerships have opened up the ability for us to reach tens of millions of households addressably, one-to-one dynamic ad insertion in the linear feed,” Levine said. “It is an extremely compelling offering for being able to drive incrementality in an environment that is still reaching 60-plus, 70-plus million households in the United States.” Canoe’s National Addressable Expansion Is A Game-Changer: WarnerMedia’s Levine