As privacy regulations tighten, technology continues to rapidly evolve, and consumer behaviour shifts, advertisers are struggling to keep up. Fragmented audiences, shrinking attention spans, and the pressure to maintain data-driven strategies have made it harder than ever to deliver the right consumer value exchange. Nowhere is this more relevant than in video and streaming, where addressable solutions are the key to unlocking cross platform storytelling and engagement.

Marketing’s job is clear: influence consumer decisions. But to do that effectively, brands need a crystal-clear vision for their desired customer and consumer relationship, which will inform the most relevant value exchange. How you connect with your audience, through the right channels and with the right message, is what defines success in this addressable future.

Addressable media: Fail fast, learn quickly

Addressable media isn’t a new concept, but transformation in the media landscape and AI are revolutionising its application. As AI becomes embedded in the media toolkit and transforms the advertising craft, advertisers need to adopt a “fail fast, learn quickly” approach to addressable strategies. Extracting and applying the pertinent creative, media and format insight by media partner is crucial to deliver the most relevant and impactful consumer experiences and drive the desired marketing results.

The addressable advantage: Relevance at scale

Addressable advertising isn’t about narrowing your focus, it’s about providing the most relevant audience value exchange in the most relevant context without sacrificing scale. The true addressable opportunity is the ability to identify and engage specific audiences based on declared attributes such as demographics, behaviour or location, to inform variations in messaging that resonate with different consumers or customer cohorts. Addressable strategies leveraging declared attributes future-proofs scalable data driven advertising.

We’re all in agreement, reach matters. But not all reach is created equal. Addressable targeting allows advertisers to deduce which audiences they can best influence by testing and measuring audience engagement and conversion likelihood, back to meaningful business measures i.e. to both reduce media wastage and maximise marketing effectiveness.

A robust understanding of consumer behaviour will continue to be a key differentiator in the success of addressable strategies, given consumer receptiveness to advertising will differ by category. Let’s take an example, a personal care consumer may be less inclined to try alternatives once they have brand and product preference versus an insurance consumer. This is where media channel choice becomes pivotal to maximise the chance of influence, given the role and effectiveness of media channels differs.

Addressable targeting is precision without limiting scale

The term “addressable targeting” is often incorrectly interchanged with precision targeting. But there is an important distinction. Addressable targeting can scale to larger audiences whilst simultaneously delivering tailored messaging to different audience cohorts. This allows advertisers to deliver relevant communications at scale. This is especially valuable for categories like quick service restaurants (QSR), where the target audience is expansive (“everyone with a mouth”). Precision targeting, on the other hand, refers to using highly detailed data and targeting parameters to reach a specific or narrowly defined audience segment which presents challenges in terms of scalability when used in isolation.

The elevated addressable TV streaming opportunity

Traditionally streaming has been planned in to reach targeted audiences, often positioned as an audience extension play to linear TV. However, this overlooks the full potential of streaming to unlock scale of attention and high audience engagement with effective targeting.

The addressable TV opportunity is further elevated when publishers operate a truly unified ecosystem, underpinned by a single customer view which allows for connection of audiences across both platforms and devices. This fuels a cohesive approach to audience activation and measurement across a connected ecosystem which has been an industry-wide challenge for advertisers.

This opportunity within a unified digital ecosystem can’t be overlooked, especially when deployed with a video and streaming partner who can provide access to a vast premium content library and varied viewing behaviours, from “appointment viewing” to “lean back” viewership.  It not only allows advertisers to effectively scale brand storytelling across platforms, but also allows delivery of relevant communications across diverse contexts whilst understanding the marketing and business impact of their efforts. 

As competing streaming platforms join forces to lure viewers in with compelling content libraries and race to develop unified addressable solutions, this market dynamic could be a win-win for both viewers and advertisers. Viewers can access their favourite content at a lower cost and advertisers can engage unified planning, trading and measurement.

Not all addressability is created equal

As the privacy and technology landscape evolves, explicit consumer consent and the quality of identifiers becomes increasingly critical. Advertisers will prioritise media partners with strong data governance practices and declared data points that have been explicitly consented to by consumers.

Accuracy, underpinned by the refresh and validation of declared identifiers, will be a critical differentiator in the quality and effectiveness of the addressable solutions, and provide a competitive advantage in market.

Some partners are ahead in this race especially within video and streaming, given viewership on connected TVs has required adoption of deterministic identifiers based on declared data sets which has necessitated the development of strict data governance policies and processes, to protect user privacy and facilitate advertiser use cases.

Seize the addressable TV advantage

In our industry, we can be guilty of an extreme case of buzzword bingo and acronym overload which can sometimes detract from a robust understanding of nuances in vastly different, yet similarly positioned solutions. Addressable solutions are widely adopted but the quality and unlocked value vastly differs.

Firstly, remember the building blocks for addressable solutions vary considerably and the details matter when considering the value unlock e.g. high quality declared data sets vs inferred data sets.

Secondly, addressable targeting becomes more compelling when it’s deployed across a unified digital ecosystem given the scale unlocked but equally, due to the diverse insights you can extract. 

Thirdly, advertisers must consider the content environments they’re accessing.  All content competes for consumer attention, but not all content is equal in terms of driving advertising and business impact.  Access to a vast content library of premium content as well as on air and programming talent will help advertisers win the battle of consumer attention.  

From January 2025, Paramount Connect will give advertisers access to a unified gateway to high quality, scalable addressable audiences, viewing a vast library of unrivalled global and local premium content, across platforms.  With Paramount Connect, you’re not just reaching audiences, you’re engaging them with the compelling content that drives real impact. In its first phase, this unification of technology, platforms and audiences will deliver an addressable audience across 10 Play, FAST channels and the Paramount+ advertising tier, with the addition of linear TV in the second half of 2025. 

In today’s fragmented media landscape, it’s not just about using addressable, but unlocking all aspects of its potential and above all, choosing the right video and streaming partner with the technology, insights, platforms and content to deliver addressable advertising success.