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- [00:00]
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Foreign.
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Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of the Disday Podcast, a show for anyone wondering if gas station TV, the airport TVs and the TVs that are in your taxi or your uber count as TV. I'm Kamika McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.
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A
And I'm Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio at Digiday Media, and someone who has been asking this question and also like feeling like there's a very clear answer to this question for a long time. But Kamiko, we finally have an industry level answer to this question. So the Interactive Advertising Bureau in I think mid July released what's called the Redefining Media Types standard, or I hate the name RMT Standard. I do not like the name, but I really appreciate what they're trying to do here, which is define and categorize the different forms of digital video and the different kind of signals. Basically they're trying to create more of a. Coherent menu for digital video for advertising purposes. But one of the things that they're doing in there is they're specifically declaring that those connected TVs you see in public ambient spaces like an airport terminal, a restaurant, a bar that is not connected tv, which is now gives me something I can point to to all the companies that pitch me on those public ambient displays, these digital out of home companies trying to claim themselves as connected TV ad sellers. And so to talk about all of this, we had Jamie Feinstein, who is the VP of the Media center at the Interactive Advertising Bureau on to talk about rmt, what they're doing with this standard as well as the feedback that they're getting because they're in a public comment period currently, that's just about wrapping up. So anyone who wants to get in some thoughts on the standard, including hopefully what maybe the name of it could be instead of RMT Standard, you can be providing that feedback now. But Kameka, what did you think of this conversation?
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B
I think we had one VP at the IAB talking about RMT Standard. If you really, really, really want to get heavy into the acronyms, I think it's helpful. You know, one of the things that I've been talking to media buyers about is a frustration about categorizing the booming business that is CTV and Digital Video. They're spending more money there, but of course they're in this period where every dollar has to account and be working. So having a push toward an industry standard category summary I think is helpful for some of these media buyers as to how they place their dollars how they define what type of media this is and also speaks a lot more, which I found the most surpr. Consumers actually watch tv. It's hard for them to get out of their navel gazing as marketers. So I think it's interesting to bring in the consumer perspective, whether YouTube TV be TV because I'm watching it on
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my big screen, or if it's a
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small screen activity, does them count as something else? So I thought it was really interesting.
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A
Yeah, I like when she says something along the lines of no normal person sits down and says, hey, you want to watch some AVOD right now?
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B
Yeah. So they definitely need parameters and I'm glad that the IAB sat down to talk with us about what those parameters look like.
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A
Yeah. So for as technical a subject matter it is, I thought it was really entertaining and insightful conversation. It was also great. You asked her a number of times about the feedback that they've been getting since putting the standard out for public comment and I thought it was really enlightening to hear what that feedback has been.
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B
Yeah, same, same. They've got like you mentioned, until August 8th. So this is only the humble beginnings of what that feedback looks like. So in addition to the name, there may be several other things that come up as media buyers work through what the future of CTV looks like for them.
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A
Yep. And then the long slog towards adoption, which is never a quick process, but we won't get into that. Now let's get into the interview. Jamie, thanks so much for joining us.
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C
Yeah, thank you for having me.
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A
We're very glad to have you. I appreciate. And I think I'll speak on behalf of Kimiko for this too. The work you all are doing at IAB with this redefining media types standard. One reason, because you finally clearly distinguish out of home from ctv. And I can't tell you the number of pitches I've gotten over the years from companies pitching digital out of home as CTV and me having to explain to them, no, that is not Connected tv. The name of this standard, though there's room for more appreciation redefined in media type standard. Why that name before we get into what exactly this is? Because it's an accurate name for what it is, but it doesn't come easily off the tongue.
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C
No, it doesn't necessarily roll off the tongue. But you know what? Before I joined IAB, I was media agency for over 15 years. Never as part of my career was I a copywriter or, you know, on the creative side. So I'd be happy for anyone to Rename it. I will say it was actually someone on my team that started using the language media type. And I kind of like sunk my teeth into that because I was like, what, what is a channel? You know, we use the term channel very loosely as well and this standard does not go into that. But I thought media types was just such a descriptive way to start to define the different types of video media types that we're trying to provide clarity to instead of saying channel this, channel that. So that's really just. It was in casual conversation he just said it and I was like, we're calling it that. Yeah.
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B
So are we already. Are we adding rmt, the acronym for it, to our, to our list of marketing acronyms or no?
- [06:47]
C
Yeah. Who, who here doesn't love an acronym? Right. We all, we're always craving more as an industry. So listen, it was again, it doesn't roll off the tongue easily. It's not fast to type. So I've been saying RMT just for ease. But again, the public comment period is open until August 8th. Happy for someone to raise their hand and say, you know what, you could use a new name. And this is what I suggest.
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A
Yeah, I'll make an even stronger solicitation to the listeners, please God, come up with a different name for this. As someone who's probably going to be referring to this standard in articles for years to come. So. Redefining media types standard. Redefining media types. We're really talking about video currently. I know the standard's designed to be able to scale to wearables and whatever the hell devices OpenAI and Apple and others are going to bring to our bodies at some point in the future. But starting with video. But video broadly defined, because video is one of those terms like TV now where it kind of everything is video, everything is tv. Here you all are starting it with like different buckets based on the environment in which someone is viewing. Like, can you walk us through this standard? Like what the approach is with the standard in creating like a taxonomy or maybe it's a dictionary for when we're talking about video. What are we talking about?
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C
Yeah, so. So actually before we even get into the buckets, I'll even talk about how we broke it down between like the top down attributes and bottoms up. Because I think us as an industry and this happened within the working group, this happens within the walls at iab, this happened in my agency life. Like we tend to talk to one another, but we forget that we ourselves are consumers. And that is really important. So as A consumer as a normal human being, you don't sit down with your family on the couch at 7pm or whatever and turn to your spouse or kids or whoever you're with and say, hey, do you want to watch linear tonight? Do you want to watch streaming? Do you want to like, do you want to watch a fast channel? That's not how consumers talk and that's not how consumers experience their own content that they enjoy viewing. So we started with that first. Like, what is the consumer experience? What is important to them? Because that's what brands need to think about too, right? Like, what is the mindset that the consumer is in when my ad is getting delivered?
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Where.
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Where are they? Things like that. So that's what we started with in terms of the top down and then the bottoms up is more those kind of app operational, I guess you could say attributes, not necessarily technical, although I guess some could be considered technical. And there's a way that this one
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of them's called addressability. That's absolutely technical.
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I was like, okay, some of them can be like. When we're talking about like data signals, sure, that's technical, but. But we didn't want to get too bogged down in some of those and wanted to keep that consumer lens really top of mind.
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B
Why do this now? What h. What's happening, you know, from a market and business perspective that it felt important to do this at this time because digital video, as I'm using the umbrella term, it's been fragmented for a while. I reported on this back in like 2024, and God knows how long Tim's been reporting on this same thing. So why now?
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C
So a couple of reasons. One, I think within our own walls here, we just got fed up asking the same questions. This honestly started, I think, before I even joined IAB about a year ago, where we, as you probably know, we release an annual digital video ad spend report. And within that ad spend report, it's obviously important to clarify what is included in each bucket. So if you're looking at a pie chart, for example, like what is included within social video, what is included within ctv, how are these things defined? And there was always debate over how everything was bucketed in terms of spend. And that was the same debate I had in my agency days as well. Or when you would get a brief from a client whose budget is what. Sometimes depending on how a brand is set up, someone might own a social budget, someone might own a brand budget, whatever it is. So we felt that that kind of debate is a waste of Time and it's now is the time to move things forward. Increasingly important as AI is, obviously we can't have a podcast talking about AI. Can't believe it took us this long to even bring up that acronym. But as AI is clearly impacting the industry and we're talking about agents transacting on buyers and sellers behalf, like if we as humans can't agree on the same language, how are we going to expect these agents that are transacting on our behalfs to be able to speak the same language and know what is what? Right. So I think that that has become an increasingly when we initially put the standard together that was kind of like in the back of our heads. But I mean every day it becomes more and more important.
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A
And one of the like big decisions with this standard and from the like top part of that approach, the top level is there are these three buckets for viewing environment. There's lean back large screen, there's personal screen and then there's digital out of home. Again, God love you for digital out of home. Getting its own bucket separate from ctv.
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C
I would say it's the bucket is public ambient display. Right.
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Public ambient display. Digital out of. Digital out of home.
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C
Digital out of home would fall under basically like a non personal private experience.
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Yes.
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Yeah. And so one of my like things that I have fun doing when taxonomies like this come out is try to like throw the edge cases at them to see how things like really fit together. How does something like a NFL game being aired in a restaurant or a bar. Sometimes that's sound off, sometimes it's not sound off. Is that lean back large screen or is that public ambient display?
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C
That exact example was debated quite a bit within the working group and I think we even write this in the paper, not necessarily in the charts. There's always going to be edge cases. To your point, we cannot solve for every single edge case within this standard. But hopefully what the standard does do is provide the industry with a way to navigate different attributes so you can identify for yourself, for your brand, for your inventory that you're trying to sell, how you want to elevate those different attributes and what's the most important. So that one is one that was specifically an edge case and similarly just like a 2.0 of that, like hotel rooms. Right. Like a hotel room is not your own personal space. It's not like if you're talking about linear, like it's not going to be targeted to your own set top box data or anything like that. So that's like another edge case that, you know, we can't necessarily solve for. If within the public comment period we get a lot of feedback around what these items should be, by all means, we're happy to bring that back to the working group and potentially include that. But that was something that we had decided was an edge case as well.
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A
So how should people be thinking about that? Like that football or any live sport, live event, really, where some people are watching it on the couch at home, some people are watching it on a public ambient display. But those public ambient displays, sometimes they're sent off, sometimes they're not. What's the recommendation for dealing with that edge case?
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C
As a buyer, you mean, or as a seller?
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Kind of both. Yeah. Because like, that gets to the thing of the seller's gonna need to set the taxonomy on their end, and then the buyer's gonna need to set it on their end. And if NBC decides I'm gonna tag this as large screen, lean back, but then a buyer is tagging it as public ambient display, we have a mismatch now.
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B
Well,
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I think it really goes. And again, I'm going to start with the buyer, since that's my experience and what I would have loved to have to sell for. I think from a buyer perspective, you still have to go back to what the brand is and what the objective is. So if you're running within
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a bar,
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restaurant, whatever, sporting environment, and that is important to you to target those types of communal viewing environments specifically, then that is something you need to think about. Like, is sound important for your brand at that moment in time, or is the purpose of you getting your message across during that time because you want to be in this environment if you're a beer brand and you want to sell beers during the game, you know, so I think it goes back to kind of that concept. And same from. I could, you know, one could argue same from a seller perspective. Like, who are your clients? What are you trying to help them achieve with your inventory, and then package it that way.
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A
Okay, so it's really putting onus on buyer and seller to be thinking about not just reaching people or helping a brand reach people, but how those people are being reached. Going back to your point of, like, how do we talk about this as just normal people, not necessarily advertisers or ad sellers or people in the industry?
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C
Yeah, exactly. Like a consumer is making a conscious choice to watch something at home or with other individuals at a public venue.
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B
I think you guys are touching on something that I want to dig a little bit Deeper into which is the idea of like who benefits the most from aligning here. Right. You've got buyers and sellers who need to obviously be able to have a conversation with one another. But as far as like adoption of an industry standard, you know, talk to me a little about who has the most to gain from this alignment. Is it CMOs, is it publishers, DSPs, that type of deal.
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C
Honestly, who, who, who doesn't have the most to gain? If I, if I could save time by not thinking about how something should be defined or classified, then I think that everybody kind of wins. Something that actually did get brought up in the working groups and it actually got brought up at. We had the IAB Video Leadership Summit last week as well, which I kind of forget. I guess I like block that part of my memory out from agency days. But this can also feed into the planning tools that agencies use to help allocate their budgets or help better understand audiences. Right. Because I think when we initially wrote the standard it was very focused on how we need to evolve the definitions and what these different top down bottoms of attributes are. But then the practical application of it, someone had brought up within the working group and again it got brought up last week totally unprompted that it does have practical use within these planning tools that agencies can use for their brands and then they can have those conversations with their partners as well.
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B
This is fair. When I've been talking to media buyers, they have historically labeled this as like the issues within digital video as a measurement inconsistency problem. How did you guys come to the conclusion that it was a taxonomy thing?
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C
So there's actually, I don't know if you're familiar with Project idos, which is another work stream that I be within the Measurement center is working on. So it initially came. So this was done as part of like the Video center and the video working Group as the need for redefining these media types. But there's almost, I wouldn't even call it a part two. It's kind of like a double down of what that will look like from a measurement perspective as well. And within the RMT standard we start your favorite acronym. We do start to think about like what those measurement signals are. Like you had brought up addressability before and what those data signals are and how that feeds into the media types. But it's not something that would be a sole factor in defining a specific media type.
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B
So these things are working together as opposed to correct individual. Okay.
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A
And I mean the standard seems very much designed around just giving all members of the industry a lingua franca. When they're talking about, okay, when we're talking about video and all the component parts and attributes of video, what is it that we're talking about? It's not explicitly designed to give a language for media quality, but I couldn't help but read through the standard and think about the conversation I've been having with folks on the buy side and the sell side for years, especially the traditional TV networks where streaming is becoming more and more a part of their business. Also, buyers who are trying to define for themselves and for their clients, is YouTube Premium? Is YouTube TV? What is TV anymore? The coalition for Innovative Media Measurement had a research paper they put out in May of this year talking about media quality. I couldn't help but thinking of that when reading through the draft for rmt, because RMT seems to give the levers for buyers and sellers to define their version of media quality and then execute on that. So again, it doesn't seem like media quality was necessarily the explicit aim with rmt, but do you see it laddering into that media quality conversation?
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C
So I think you actually just described it perfectly. So we, like at iab, we're a neutral party, right? Like we're not here to say what's quality, what's not, what's premium, what's not. I worked very hard to make sure we didn't use any of that language within that standard because it's kind of like premium is in the eye of the beholder, right? But you're right, this does kind of give the tools needed for buyers to be able to evaluate or compare inventory based on what matters most to them. So if, and this is something that we've actually already gotten feedback on quite a bit. So if duration of time spent within a single viewing period or within that content is important to a specific brand or buyer, then they can identify that with that attribute versus saying like, oh, sitting down for a 60 minute premiere of a show is the only way that I'm going to define premium. Maybe for me, premium means 60 minutes spent on a feed scrolling through, and it doesn't matter if it's a single episodic piece of content or not. So it just gives them, to your point, the levers needed to help them identify what quality means to them and what premium means to them versus us saying, this is premium, this is quality.
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B
When you guys came up with the second part of the digital video ad spend report, I talked to a couple of media buyers and interestingly enough, when I asked them about the inventory quality questions and things like that. The first thing that they came back to was the idea of we need a solid definition for what constitutes as premium, what constitutes as ctv, olv, yada yada yada. Kind of to you and Tim's point.
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C
Yeah, and again it's, it's more that like, if we can all at least reference something to help us identify what we're talking about, then I think we're moving in the right direction versus like using different terms loosely. And I mean, you talk to five different people, you're going to get five different answers of what? Like watching Netflix on your phone. Sorry, I was going to pick up my phone. Watching Netflix on your phone is, is that streaming? Is it mobile? What is it? So as long as now we can have these different inputs to help us better identify what that could be considered, then you can all start speaking the same language, you can compare, invent fairly and accurately and you can hopefully move in a place that instead of debating definitions, you're like putting time and energy worth putting an actual plan together and having media perform.
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A
Yeah, it's like when you look at any legal document or court case and there's like 20 pages of definitions before you get into what the actual case is.
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C
Yeah, it's like everything has a number. Like every word has a number on it. You have to reference it on page, you know, 795.
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B
From your vantage point. Right. Because one of the things that, that, that I, in the conversations that I've had is that there is something to be gained from ambiguity for some. Right. In your opinion, from your vantage point, what is kind of at stake if there is not industry adoption here?
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C
So I think this goes back to what I was saying about the AI agents. I think now we're not at a point where agents are necessarily transacting on our behalf. I think. I was at a conference in Denver in June and someone on a panel said I think only 3 to 5% of their total inventory is being transacted on. So we're nowhere near scale. But at the speed at which AI moves, that doesn't mean that that's not going to happen within, let's say a year, two years, like we don't know. And again, if these agents aren't speaking the same language, like that could cost like consequential amounts of money if those errors are made. And yes, there's always going to be human oversight, but there's a lot at stake if we are really moving into this agentic buying and selling world. Where we need to get our ducks in a row as humans so that we can train the models appropriately. Otherwise I think the cost of the consequences are going to be quite costly.
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A
Yeah. Because then you tell an agent, okay, I want CTV inventory for this campaign and they end up running in an airport terminal display because technically it's a connected tv. It's just not what the buyer thought. Because the buyer didn't think, oh, I need to define all of this. Whereas it seems like what buyer or seller, but what they could do with rmt. Again, God save whoever comes up with a new acronym for that. But like basically just uses that to create their recipe, their definitions, and then could hand that to the agent of like, okay, when I'm talking about I want high quality ctv, these are the boxes that I'm checking for that. And like, then the agent has to check for those boxes so they're given the swim lanes.
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C
Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly. And actually it's funny that you say boxes because I've seen, since putting this out, I've seen a couple posts show up on my LinkedIn where people have generated their own kind of like chart of checkboxes. So I'm like, okay, I guess we'll have to do that once it's final so that it can be an easy checkbox to identify and perhaps even load into whatever proprietary system that the industry is using for their own purposes.
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A
Yeah. When I was trying to make sense of it, I thought of it as a Chipotle menu or a CAVA menu of, okay, there's the preset options, then there's the bases, like those viewing environments. But then you have all these different categories of add ons, just like you have the different categories of add ons when you're building your burrito bowl or what have you.
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C
Yeah, yes, sure. It's a menu of options. I do love Chipotle, so I'm not going to argue. And
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B
you flicked out of the little bit. I know the public commentary period is still open, but what's been some of the feedback so far?
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C
Yeah, so yeah, the duration, slash, length. We've gotten some questions about. We've actually surprisingly. But I guess I shouldn't be that surprised about it. Gotten questions about the linear piece. I have a call with someone next week to discuss, to discuss that. And what exactly is the feedback there? But it's funny because when we initially started this, like I said, I'm. I grew up in digital, I was never a linear buyer. This is the interactive advertising bureau, so we don't necessarily Think of linear first. But because video is so largely historically linear, we did identify that there was a need to use that as a baseline regardless of how much inventory is, you know, moving into programmatic or bit of old methods, we did realize that there is still value in thinking about like how is linear even defined as a baseline? Before we get into the other different
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A
video media types, what is that definition?
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C
So linear is basically. I'm going to. One moment please. So I'll tell you. Linear TV is a passive lean back experience with content consumed in real time on a fixed schedule aligned to broadcast timing across cable, satellite and VMVPD environments. VOD extends this experience through time shifted viewing. Basically the biggest difference between what is being defined as linear versus streaming now is that streaming is video delivered over the Internet to connected devices, enabling on demand and live viewing. So I think another, we haven't gotten feedback, too much feedback about it yet. But what I've noticed still even within the working group is being used interchangeably is streaming versus ctv. And the way the group had defined those two separately is that CTV truly is the connected TV device. So that's another one that I'm wondering if I'm going to get feedback on that meaning CTV being something that people want to continue to use, meaning CTV regardless of device.
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A
Right? Yeah, because I watch a good amount of Netflix and others on my iPad. That's not a connected TV device. But generally Netflix and Amazon prime get bucketed as ctv. And then with linear. Yeah, usually that's a traditional TV feed, but then you have the fast channels which would get bucketed under linear. Right?
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C
Well, that was another one that we outlined within the paper of. I mean technically fast channels are Internet. The content is delivered via an Internet enabled method. Right. It's not delivered the same way that linear TV is.
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A
Well, but YouTube TV is delivered via
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C
the Internet, via the Internet, but is also linear. So again it's more so like using these different attributes to help you identify how you want to compare inventory, how you want to sell your inventory, how you want to price your inventory. Obviously we're not in the business of pricing, but it's more like giving the industry a way to better talk to your partners about it and the rationale that you want to use for your decisions.
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A
And I guess that's where it's important for buyers and sellers to be adopting. Not just like the top level viewing environments, but then those bottom level attributes and probably like, I don't know if there's going to need to be an ads txt kind of thing for this, but like something where maybe buy sellers specifically kind of like define their media types based on these categories so that they're easy reference. But obviously all of that still needs to get sorted out in this feedback period, which I'm very interested to hear all the feedback that you end up getting during the public comment and seeing what the final standard is and hopefully the final name of that standard.
- [33:22]
C
Yeah, I wonder if we will. Besides, you get any feedback on the name, but if you want to rename it the Tim Peterson Standard, I'll put that out for public comment too.
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A
We've been publishing a Future of TV glossary usually every August or September for about five, six years now, so if you want to borrow that name, let us know. But Jamie, thanks so much for coming on the show, talking with Kimiko and I about this.
- [33:46]
C
Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for having me. And my one last comment I guess will be Please everybody comment. You can reach out to me directly jamieab.com or, you know, visit the IAB site and please let us know your feedback so that we can make this more useful and practical for the industry.
- [34:06]
A
Awesome, Jamie. Thanks again.
- [34:08]
C
Thank you.
- [34:16]
A
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Digiday podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening. Get more from Digiday with our daily newsletter sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.comnewsletters to sign up.
- [34:30]
C
Sam.