Katie Finney.
Seven has used its annual Upfronts event to announce a pair of key developments in the data and trading space, responding to the industry-wide focus on measurement and ROI.
One of these is the launch of REDiQ4U, a feature providing direct access to consumer insights data platform, 7REDiQ, for agencies and marketers.
The expansion of 7REDiQ moves Seven beyond traditional audience analysis into actionable foresight, arming advertisers with data-rich insights not only into consumer demographics but also behaviour, life stage, and purchase intent.
Seven national television sales director, Katie Finney, said that the more clients and agencies understand the value of REDIQ – which predicts audience behaviour up to 28 days in advance with 95% accuracy, fuelled by insights from nearly 14 million verified and consented Australians - then uptake will inevitably follow.
“It was definitely an ask that we were seeing from agencies and marketers, but it also tied into our philosophy of not keeping our data in a walled garden,” she said.
“It gives it more meaning if people understand it; we've been using REDIQ internally to plan, buy and measure for a long time, and now our agency and client partners can do the same.”
Another key announcement from the event was the reveal that Phoenix, Seven's advanced total TV trading system, will go live on March 2.
Phoenix will offer a streamlined media buying experience that aims to deliver better value through new trading models, optimised campaign delivery, and data-driven audience insights.
Finney said that with on-air campaigns only a few months away, all the rates are getting loaded into the system currently and teams will start using the system for all their proposals as of next week, with bookings processed from early December.
“We were previously offering dynamic trading, but it was much more labour intensive and we didn't have the technology enabling us to perform the same way as our competitors did,” she told AdNews.
“The fact that advertisers will be able to trade dynamically on our regional audiences is getting a lot of interest, because we will be the first of the television broadcasters to be able to transact in that way.”
Finney said that although Seven’s ambition was to have the platform live from January 1, the company is still “really pleased” with the delivery time of March 2, along with the fact that advertisers will be able to tap into metro, regional and digital audiences, all at the same time.
“We've been using VOZ to do converged buys and look at that total incremental reach and that's been quite a manual process, but we'll have our audience team transacting in that way from March,” she said.
“That will mean that we can scale that up significantly, and with VOZ Streaming going live, it just sets us up for huge success, so the timing's perfect.”
Finney said that what she’s hearing from the industry more broadly is marketers looking to connect with both cultural moments and live sport – something that bodes well for Seven with the AFL and cricket ramping up their offerings on the network.
“We're continuing to see brands really lean in as there's no other place that you can get mass reach at scale than in live sport,” she said.
“The way that brands can be integrated into the fabric of it is really attractive to our advertisers.”
With economic headwinds swirling, Finney said she is seeing brands take a cautious approach to investment, waiting to see how Black Friday and Cyber Monday perform for them to then decide how much money they allocate over the Christmas period.
“With an election next year though, that usually gets brands thinking ‘let's lay our groundwork and plan out a first half’ to ensure that they can get on-air in that time where there the big players are coming in,” she told AdNews.
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