PREMION’s Daniel Spinosa On How Streaming Is Letting Local TV Be Local Again
“Local capability sets are now freed from the old distribution paths,” says Daniel Spinosa, President of PREMION. “That lets creators make more content — and lets SMBs use CTV with real simplicity, choice, convenience and control.”
ALAN WOLK (AW): Local TV has always struggled with measurement, especially in smaller markets. From your perspective, what’s the most urgent thing the industry needs to do to modernize how local TV is measured?
DANIEL SPINOSA (DS): There are a lot of things we need to work on. First, we need to do a better job with our clients — get more attribution elements embedded, from pixels on their websites to easier point-of-sale conversion relationships. It’s still hard to do that with small clients at scale, and that’s one of the big issues for local businesses.
The other challenge is how to get to that smaller granularity level without needing as much signal in the marketplace. Is it more ACR data? Is it other sources that give better measurement at lower density? It depends on the outcomes you’re trying to measure. We look at websites and ecommerce, as well as automotive and travel, and we have some specialized things that help improve SMB-type measurement structures beyond just simple impressions.
AW: The collapse of the RSNs created both disruption and opportunity. How do you see local broadcasters and streaming platforms stepping in to fill that gap for advertisers?
DS: Sports is still very localized content. It’s not that the NFL isn’t national, but when you really look at viewing behavior, it’s still local. With all the changes going on, I think you’re going to see a lot of experimentation — and that’s a good thing. The old cable business model, where restricted distribution created fees, is opening up.
You’re going to see smaller teams getting more regional and local distribution than they’ve ever had. People want to watch sports, but they don’t want to be restricted to one game at one time. Streaming gives them more flexibility, and it lets advertisers reach those audiences at the local DMA level. Advertising becomes more valuable because it unlocks more targeting capabilities, allows for more audience shifting, and gives local advertisers access they didn’t have before. That creates more demand density, which should help drive monetization.
AW: A lot of smaller advertisers are used to the kind of digital-style attribution they get from search and social. How can we make that a reality at scale for local TV?
DS: CTV and OTT still have a lot of complexity compared to search and social, which made it really simple for small businesses to log in, launch a campaign, and see results. We need to simplify that process — make creative easier, make campaign flighting easier, and make results easier to understand.
That ties back to measurement — how do we measure performance better and make it easier? Is it websites? Is it visits? Is it ecommerce? All of that requires technology that can link in at scale and do it quickly and effectively.
AW: National streamers can target down to ZIP code, even sub-ZIP in some cases. How do local broadcasters compete in that world?
DS: One of the big differences between national and local used to be geography — the only way to reach a concentrated local area was to go to a broadcaster. Streaming has changed that. A national advertiser can now heavy up in a local market if they want to.
But it also opens things up for SMBs to do more work that isn’t just geographically restricted. They can flight different types of creative and target specific ZIP codes. Nationals heavy up at the DMA level; our SMBs might be targeting eight ZIP codes. That’s hyper-local, and to do that you need curated supply.
Local sellers know their communities better, and as creative tools get easier, they can tailor messages within cities and reach people in a more relevant way. It also lets them better reflect local culture and community — you can target different audiences within the same city based on what matters to them.
AW: What is your take on the push to move SMBs away from Meta and YouTube and onto TV, using self-serve platforms that rely on AI-created ads? Will this work out well for local broadcasters?
DS: The SMB market is huge. You can look at census data and see it’s a very big area that hasn’t really been tapped by CTV. It’s been well tapped by social and search, for sure.
Creative is one of the sticking points. Making a meaningful 30-second video isn’t easy — it has to get simplified and more professional. There are a lot of companies working in that space, and that opens up the funnel for CTV to get onto television. Then it drops you very quickly to the bottom of the funnel, so you can see that your TV ad is performing as well as, or in concert with, search, social, display, and OLV.
If you think about it as creative production to omnichannel media, simplifying that process starts to really unlock the SMB market more effectively for CTV to take a much more prominent role.
AW: Looking ahead, what gives you the most optimism about where local TV sits in this new streaming world?
DS: I think local capability sets are now freed from the old distribution paths, and that allows local creators to generate more content. From our side, it’s about giving more simplicity, choice, convenience, and control to SMBs to unlock that for their user base.
That’s what gets me excited — making CTV simple, helping SMBs reach more locally aggregated audiences, and giving them measurement through an omnichannel approach so they can see the results. As that becomes easier, more SMB dollars will flow into the space because they’re getting the return they’re looking for. And the more content creators make, the more it activates those advertisers.
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