Greg McLelland, EVP and chief revenue officer at Corus, describes the company’s overall proposition for advertisers in a way that is both simple and ambitious.
“We’re trying to get advertisers wherever the viewers are,” he says. “We don’t have sports, but if you’re looking for lifestyle, or you’re looking for the person that controls a household, we have the content that gets advertisers there. P&G, for example, has figured that out, and we’re the biggest partner by far. So what we’re trying is a simple, elegant solution to allow clients or their agencies be able to buy across the whole spectrum we have, from linear television, all the way to streaming to free digital in one simple buy.”
A big priority for Corus is pushing media agencies and their clients to combine their digital and linear TV buys, which the company has been allowing for through its advanced advertising solutions and buying platform Cynch. McLelland says Corus continues to invest heavily in Cynch, which can access most of the company’s digital inventory, with FAST channel Pluto being added next month.
To make that happen, Corus has had to make sure it has the digital inventory that meets advertiser expectations.
“The Canadian landscape, for the last few years, has asked for more and more premium digital video,” McLelland says. “In the last two or three years, I believe we have seven times the amount of inventory available to sell. I think we’re pretty close to being the biggest digital player in Canada.”
With that level of inventory – which it continues to make investments in – Corus is working to make unified buying the norm for buyers and a main driver of its own business, but that means breaking the industry from some habits
“We have to get out of the sort of two data points of selling television: age and gender,” McLelland says. “Adults 25 to 54 is a big demo that people buy on, but it represents less than 30% of our inventory. So no business can really do well if you’re only selling 30% or less of your inventory.”
He adds: “And if people use all of our inventory, it will actually increase supply, which should take pricing down.”
Other than pricing, the efficiency and effectiveness of buying this way is the big selling point, with Corus having invested over $70 million into its portfolio over the last five years to make these the kinds of tools buyers would want to use.
“In talking to our American partners, we are ahead of most other sort of broadcasters around the world,” McLelleand says. “CBS told us this, Pluto told us this, AMC told us this, Discovery told us this. It’s just that Canadians tend to look to Americans and think they’re always ahead of us, and assume they’ll have what’s going to be the best. And it’s just simply not the case.”
So if a unified buy across digital and linear is more efficient, effective and affordable, what are the sticking points to getting advertisers on board?
“I’m happy for if you want to print this, but I think they know exactly what they’re doing,” McLelland says. “They’re getting that other 70% of audiences for free. If they’re buying on adults 25 to 54, they absolutely know that they’re getting that whole spectrum along with it. And now we are asking them to buy as they do digitally.”
Another sticking point is simply breaking the industry of old habits and perceptions about the differences between digital and traditional TV.
“When digital was a small piece of the pie, it wasn’t such a bad thing,” McLelland says. “Now digital represents over double what we do in linear television. And as an industry, we spend $15 million measuring linear television. We have to give them affidavits. We get audited. None of that happens in the digital space. And they used to say, ‘Well, it’s because it’s a small piece of a pie.’ Now it’s double our pie, and we’re still getting this unbelievable scrutiny on the television side when it represents less than 30%. A lot of this is based into the historic way we’ve done things, and we need to change it out.”
