Addressable TV's Roll-Out Will Be Uneven: Nielsen's Seth

SAN FRANCISCO -- Programmatically-driven addressable TV advertising in the digital age is "not a pipe dream" - but it will be realized in some countries sooner than others, says media measurer Nielsen's EVP of global media products, Amit Seth.

Seth tells Beet.TV the opportunity is being approached by both cable operators at their back-end and tech vendors over IP.

"Each country has their own backend systems," Seth says. "Some European countries already have this concept of the Red Button in the remote - that hasn't come about in some other countries, including some progressive ones like ours."

In the UK, one country where the Red Button allows viewers interaction with even basic TV systems, satellite platform BSkyB will this summer turn on its AdSmart technology, allowing advertisers to individually target 500,000 of its viewers using customer account data and an internet connection to its set-top box.

We interviewed Seth at at the Beet.TV programmatic TV summit presented by Adap.tv, where he was a speaker. Please find our coverage of the summit here.

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