Bruce Neve, President of True Media Canada shares his take on the 2022 Canadian upfronts and how brands can leverage broadcasters to grow to the next level.

He's been around the game for a while. Seen a lot, just made a lot of change. And you've seen the industry grow and grow again. And change again. He's here today to share more insight about what happened over the 2020, 2022 upfront new front presentations, Bruce, how you doing man?

Dave, how about yourself?

[00:00:44] Bruce Neve: Sure. Well, as you said, Bruce Neve, the president of true media in Canada. We are a independent, full service media agency. You know, we, we believe we provide, you know, entrepreneurial spirit and agility and of, a small, [00:01:00] smaller agency, but we've got all that.

The tools and the technology and the data of a larger, hold co. So we've, we've provide, I believe a unique solution in the marketplace for advertisers, especially Canadian advertisers and, uh, challenger brands.

[00:01:22] Bruce Neve: Well, I'd have to say, although they're not ad supported necessarily. I love Ozark totally hooked on Ozark. I was glad to see that, come, wrap up and I thought the ending was great and okay. Most spoilers not everybody's seen it yet. Okay. All right. And, Squid Games. I mean, that, that was a fun ride.

Unexpected. Um, although I kind of was hoping it would, would've wrapped after one season. I'm not sure how they're gonna follow up with the season. Okay.

[00:01:55] Bruce Neve: Well, I'm a big fan of Hillary Swank. So I hear new show Alaska. I [00:02:00] think's gonna be really good and, uh different.

Okay. And, um East New York looked looked really like a really good ensemble cast. I think from the original producers of NYPD Blue. So going, going way back old school. Yeah. Old school, but looked like a, a great cast and kind of gritty realistic. So looking forward to checking that out as well.

[00:02:39] Bruce Neve: Well, first of all, I I'd have to give kudos to, to Bell for having a live event.

So I think that was amazing. Okay. I mean the trends, I, I think trends that continued were. All of the networks talking a lot about the data they have, so that they have a deeper understanding beyond demographics of the audiences that their shows delivers. So then I, you know, I think that that's been a welcome trend.

Um, and the other one is the move to having more inventory available for platform based buying, whether it's Sam or Cynch and again, using the data. Which I think is again, is bringing kind of digital, like buying and metrics to the, what, you know, what was, I hate the word linear TV, but to, to the TV medium.

I think that's great. Um, what I was pleased to see a bit more of is the last couple years, there's been less talk about the shows and the content. Like I still think it all comes back to the content. The quality of the content has to. The audiences and maintain the audiences, engage the audiences. So I was happy to see a little bit more discussion about the stars and the shows and the producers and the schedule and not just about data and technology.

[00:05:02] Bruce Neve: Well, it's not the same. I mean, every client's different obviously, and, you know, retail clients, you know, had us more of a challenge during the COVID years, especially if they had, you know, bricks and mortar.

Know, if they were closed for certain periods of time or doing curb site pickup. I mean, there was an acceleration by a lot of clients in terms of their own ability to deliver on, you know, eCommerce, curbside pickup, and delivering things. And along with that, there was a reallocation of, of some dollars to digital platforms.

Away from offline. I mean, outdoor and transit obviously suffered the most during COVID. People were streaming more content. So, you know, connected TV, started to accelerate in terms of, of audience delivery, but also the ability to connect with those audiences. So those are some of the, the bigger trends.

[00:06:18] Dave Forde: Again, you've been around the industry for, for a while. So you've seen lots of change and probably one of the biggest changes that's coming is this idea of a cookie-less world. How is your agency preparing clients for that?

I hope it will be. I hope it leads to more engaging creative, creative formats. I think it, it definitely re will reduce the focus on things like last click and click through rates and shift to more business metrics and brand metrics. So yeah, we've been looking at different strategies. [00:07:00] First party data, obviously more and more important.

Not every client has it, wealth, the first party data, which obviously has to be, um, anonymized and encrypted to use. Probably more spending with walled gardens like Facebook and Instagram. And we've seen the growth recently of the vertical players, retail players, such as Walmart Connects and Loblaws and Instacart.

And several more Amazon because they can track the customer, you know, obviously within their own wall garden. So a lot of testing and learning and I, I think even though CPMs maybe higher, it it's, we should focus on business metrics and, yeah, I think there's gonna be an impact on. Maybe a better user experience, maybe less clutter, the perception at least of increased privacy, less ad frequency.

[00:08:06] Dave Forde: So you're ahead of the game. So what impact has the pandemic had on consumer shopping habits?

But I do think a lot of people. Miss the retail experience and the mall experience. I mean, I think it really depends on the category. I mean, certain things, low interest things that you can just order it or online and get delivered to your door. It's great. But I think, some people miss the experience of shopping in person, especially if you know the retailers and, provide a, you know, a good experience when you're at the store or at the mall.

were behind really dependent on the category as well. And a lot of that will continue. But I do think that a lot of people miss that experience of shopping in store. And so it's, it's gonna be continued to be a mix of both, right?

[00:09:48] Bruce Neve: That's a great question. I mean, yeah. I mean, the, the, what, what we visualize as a family, you know, 20 years ago and, and who made the decisions was, was a lot simpler than the complexity that we deal [00:10:00] with today. So I think it comes back to using research and, and data and planning tools that we have.

To identify the audiences specific audiences and priority audiences for your specific brand and your client, you know, where's the volume gonna come from, you know understand their behaviors, their lifestyle, their relationships, to technology, their media habits, and pay to a much richer pitcher. And the beauty of, you know, of, of a lot of the digital platforms is, is you, you can, engage your different personas and audience segments with different creative, which I think, you know, media working very closely with creative so that, you know, the creative message reflects the audiences that you wanna reach and reflects their lifestyle and their interests and their affinities.

With an understanding of who they are and what they believe in and what motivates them. And what's different about them.

Some brands are not necessarily collecting first party data. Why not? It seems like it's an important thing for them to be doing, but they're not

And then you have to, you know, you know, match. You know, find them mm-hmm on other platforms, you know, using live ramp or other, other, other partners. But yeah I think, a lot, a lot of a lot of clients, you know, we're behind in that in terms of building a scalable large first party audience pool, and it's gonna be critically important moving forward.

In the cookie-less world the, you know, increasingly private world. Yeah, I mean, and you have to, you have to give people a reason to, to wanna be part of your first part of your data.

[00:12:54] Bruce Neve: Well first of all, the traditional broadcasters are, you know, streaming all their content now, too. So, I mean, [00:13:00] that's the good thing is that, you know, you can, and we talk about buying total TV. So if we're buying TV from whether it's Rogers or Bell or Corus or CBC besides buying, you know, their linear feed, you know, we're, we're gonna buy Gem.

We're gonna buy Sportsnet now, or we're gonna buy on the, you know, TV apps and City TV apps. So, you know, they are reaching people that prefer to stream or Corus with their Stack TV are now Pluto, which they're, they're bringing to Canada. So I think it's been good. It's accelerated innovation by the call, them traditional broadcasters.

Not all the time. A lot of the traditional broadcasters, it's all about a proven format. So you get, you know, Law and Order times five and NCIS times five and right. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, rather than trying something brand new. And I mean, and clients want, you know, reliability and, and that's part of that.

But I think the, the innovation that you're seeing from, from Netflix, from a user experience and from navigating their platform, I think that's having an effect on the traditional broadcasters in a positive way. Okay.

What impact do you ha do you feel that that will have number one on Netflix and then number two on the overall streaming industry? [00:15:00]

So that's, that's extremely exciting for me.

I was talking earlier about Netflix is some of the content will it's Squid Games or, you know, Ozark and, and some of the right, frankly, the language, the violence of sexuality. What I hope doesn't happen is some advertisers maybe somewhat reluctant to be near that type of content. So will Netflix then start to water down their content somewhat to make it more accessible to the masses?

I mean, why not sell sponsorships of different genres or, you know, when a new program comes out and all the episodes are, are released at once. I dunno what the number is, but maybe 70% of the people watch the whole season in like two weeks, you know, why not have an advertiser bring that whole season to you for that two week period and, you know, reaching, you know, millions of people and then drop off.

Again, I hope not. So so I'm excited. They got great content. They got great targeting. Keep the data it's reach extension. It's an engaged audience. Let's see what the costs are and the CPMs I'm sure will be very premium. Yeah. Look looking forward to it as an advertiser effect on Netflix. I mean, as we've seen their, their subscriptions have been leveling out, if not declining people share their, their logins.

They're spending billions in content which they can't, it's not sustainable, so they have to have another revenue source. So I'm, I'm sure. Some smart. Person's able to do the numbers to say, okay, if we, if we offer Netflix at $9.99 and, and X percent of people take on that $9.99 add supportive model with this inventory at this price, this is the, the amount of incremental revenue that we'll be able to generate.

There's just, there's just too many, too many of them. Consolidation in ownership or maybe it's consolidation in, in packaging. So maybe they, maybe you can get three different streaming services ad supported at X price versus buying them individually with no ads at triple interesting.

Canadian marketers don't have as big budgets being the position that you've been in for, for these years. You probably see things at a different point. So what is it that Canadian marketers can do to reach global audiences? Any [00:19:00] tips, advice?

So you, you minimize the initial investments, so you get more learning on, on what works or what doesn't work. Obviously digital, you know, search social has opened up opportunities to expand, out out of Canada in a more cost affordable way, you know, versus, you know, 20 years ago, trying to buy a big TV campaign in the us or, or, you know, go to Europe.

[00:20:03] Dave Forde: Okay. My final question for you today. Gonna a tough one. Now I want you to put on your future your prediction hat on, if you will, what do you see as the future of upfronts and new fronts?

You know, perhaps they are, as I said, clients are looking for more flexibility. They want, they wanna have solid business plans before they're making commitments too early in the upfront co COVID kind of turned things a little bit on their, on the head. So I still think the, the upfronts are important, but I, I think they're important in, in that they, they should be celebrating.

So I think it's more important in, in perception that we are in a, the entertainment business, we are in the creativity business, and that we should be, like I said, excited, celebrated, energized, informed, So that our, our clients and audiences feel that way. And, our creative agency partners as well.

thank you time, sir. All right, we'll see it. The next cocktail reception.