AT&T Advances Cross-Device Tracking and Targeting, Including Our Mobile Use, As It Prepares to Acquire Time Warner

Being able to cap the frequency of ad delivery across multiple screens is a big desire among advertisers. It’s also why AT&T’s DIRECTV-U-verse-AT&T Wireless cross-screen addressable offering is “very intriguing,” according to Jonathan Bokor, SVP, Director of Advanced Media at Mediavest Spark.

“AT&T has taken the lead and I think they’re probably the best positioned” in the cross-screen addressable race, Bokor says in an interview with Beet.TV. “The thing that I think makes it challenging for cross screen is generally, the providers are not the same and the identifiers are not the same,” he adds.

For addressable TV, media agencies can avail themselves of a pay-TV company’s subscriber rolls, match those names and addresses to their target lists and do a match. By comparison, mobile devices are targeted based on ID’s, not names and addresses. “So you don’t have the same identifier that’s used to build the target list,” which makes it difficult to determine reach and frequency—particularly the latter, according to Bokor.

AT&T’s edge: it has access to consumer identifiers consisting of names and addresses, plus unique device ID’s. “What we really don’t want is, on some platforms that are emerging, you see the same person just getting hit many, many, many times,” Bokor says. “And you reach a point where the person is not happy about seeing the same ad over and over again.

“We need to be able to control frequency across screens and AT&T is now starting to offer that. It’s a very intriguing offering.”

While Mediavest Spark hasn’t run many campaigns yet, “I think that’s going to become something that’s going to be of great interest over the next six months to a year,” says Bokor. He also hopes to be able to reach beyond just the AT&T user base. “But how you do that where two platforms that are not controlled by the same entity is a little bit more challenging,” he says.

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