Powering the Digital Television Revolution with Andre Swanston

I had the pleasure of interviewing Andre Swanston, co-founder and CEO of Tru Optik, a 5-year-old startup that is powering the digital television revolution with proprietary technology that enables precision people-based targeting at maximum scale across the entire “over the top” streaming television ecosystem, including pc’s, mobile devices and at-home connected TV’s. Andre is widely regarded as a visionary leader in the advanced TV space. At age 36, Andre is the youngest CEO of a leading data-management platform and one of only a handful of African-American CEO’s of venture-backed tech startups.

Chris: What is your “backstory” of how you become involved in the adtech or digital media space?

“Back in 2013, I was brainstorming business ideas with Alex Geis, a friend of mine from boarding school. Neither of us had any experience in “big media,” but we were both interested in the entertainment business. I founded a chain of night clubs aimed at college students and Alex started a video production company while still in school. We both believed that the future of television was at-home digital streaming, and saw that existing media measurement and targeting systems were incompatible with connected TV. So we co-founded Tru Optik with me as CEO and Alex as CTO, and put a laser focus on building a targeting and measurement system that would ultimately help brands and publishers monetize connected TV.”

Chris: What do you think is the most interesting thing that has happened to the industry thus far?

“The speed at which over-the-top (OTT) is transforming television from both a consumer and business perspective. Connected TVs — smart TVs and traditional TVs augmented with a digital media player like Roku or Apple TV — now outnumber cable boxes in the U.S., with over half of Millennial television viewing occurring “over the top.”

On the business side, every ad agency, TV network, and brand advertiser knows the future of television is OTT. So you see dramatic change across the entire spectrum of TV, from the disruption of the traditional producer-network-distributor relationships to the shift from TV as a contextual ad medium (in which advertisers buys shows) to an audience-based medium in which advertisers target specific audiences across content, which is how Internet advertising is delivered. Broadcast and cable networks are aggressively launching digital channels to establish an OTT presence, even if it speeds up the erosion of linear TV audiences.”

Chris: What are your “5 things you think will change or should change over the next 5 years in adtech and digital publishing” and why? Please share a story or example for each.

· Consolidation of ‘advanced TV’ around OTT. Today, some linear/traditional TV networks sell ads using advanced profiles of program audiences, an improvement over demographic-based program buys, but still far less efficient than audience-based buying. Some pay-TV providers make a portion of their inventory available for “household addressable” ads, but this comes with geographic limitations and the complexities of working across many ad sellers. OTT allows precision people-based targeting on a national level in real time, similar to how advertisers purchase digital media. There’s a lot of confusion in the market today around these different offerings. In 5 years, I think we’ll just talk about TV advertising, and everyone will know it’s OTT.

· We’ll see a more unified approach to media planning and measurement centered around consumers. Media planning has always been a top-down endeavor that would benefit from coordinated buying and measurement. The technology to enable this already exists — the hard part is getting everyone on board. The advertisers hold the money, and they are making more noise for this, so I expect movement here.

· Ads themselves will become more flexible and personalized. Targeting of ads has benefitted more from data and technology than the creative side. Look for the creative to start catching up.. This will be really powerful … it will move advertising closer to the holy grail of right message to right person at the right time. There is a beer ad running on OTT in the UK today that with a ‘pour shot’ that dynamically shifts between featuring a bottled beer or draft beer based on time of day and location. That may seem like a small thing, but it shows the capability is there.

· One hyped advancement I don’t think we’ll see is virtual reality television. TV viewing for the most part is about relaxing and there’s often a social component to it. Strapping on a bulky headset that isolates you from your environment just doesn’t seem to fit the occasion.

Voice-assisted TV viewing is coming. As voice recognition technology improves and costs come down, voice-enabled TV’s and TV’s linked to voice-recognition devices will become commonplace. In addition to being cool, voice interfaces will make it easier for viewers to navigate the proliferation of TV channels/apps and discover new content.

Chris: Tell us something you or your company is doing to stay up to date in adtech (maybe making changes to comply with Better Ads Standards or GDPR, working on your header bidding stack or testing new types of ads)

“We’ve taken a proactive, leadership position on protecting the privacy of OTT audiences by launching OptOut.TV, a consumer-facing one-stop privacy solution that works across all OTT devices and apps. With the click of a button, consumers can opt out of interest-based and behaviorally-targeted OTT ads across all screens and devices in their household. By making the service available for free to data providers and publishers throughout the OTT industry — most of whom work with Tru Optik in some capacity — we’ve been successful at building an OTT-wide solution. OptOut.TV increases consumer privacy control and makes it easier for OTT publishers and data providers to offer privacy protection.”

Chris: Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?

“Jeff Bezos. I really admire his aggressiveness, creativity, and sticking to his “growth at all costs” strategy when the markets were clamoring for Amazon to show profit. He made the right call back then, and has done a masterful job evolving Amazon from an online book store to one of the largest, most successful, and most innovative technology companies on the planet.

Of course, I’d also like to talk to him about how Tru Optik can uniquely supercharge Amazon’s video ad revenues!”