POV by James Rothwell, ThinkMedium Sr. Client Advisor

I was fortunate to attend the TV of Tomorrow conference in San Francisco last week: an intimate and dynamic couple of days of meaningful discussion on the state of the industry today and where it is heading.

While there were many learnings from the sessions, here are my 5 key takeaways from the panels and my conversations:

• Collaboration in the TV space is now real and actually paying dividends: from the push to a multi-currency world and the creation of the JIC to a robust alignment on addressable advertising.
• Data can build trust: the right datasets can help advertisers understand their investments, and transparency can rebuild consumer confidence in how the industry treats identity.
• Fixing measurement in advertising is as much about alignment (or misalignment) of incentives across the value chain as anything else.
• Fragmentation of media consumption not only challenges measurement, it hampers innovation, as most product roadmaps are primarily focused on integrations and interoperability.
• AI will enhance everything: from content discovery to targeting segments to creative executions.

Privacy and consent, data clean rooms, and a general consensus that the industry continues to lag consumer expectations and preferences were consistent topics throughout.  There is still a lot of work to do as the data landscape evolves, technologies mature to meet the needs of marketers and their progressive audiences, and more consensus is created between those that have been “TV” for decades and those that have entered the fray more recently.

Incentive alignment across stakeholders remains the biggest hurdle the industry faces to make major strides in targeting and measurement and currently prevents the full spectrum of TV, both traditional and digital, to collaborate more. But we are on that journey and the prevailing feeling that the TV of the past is more unified today than ever before brings hope that the TV of tomorrow is heading in the right direction.