Tag: Programmatic

Google Names Programmatic Video Marketplace Partners: HGTV, Food Network and Travel Channel On Board

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Last summer Google introduced Google Partner Select, a service allowing marketers to buy ads in “premium” online video content.

Now some big-name partners are signing on. Google on Tuesday said 30 media companies and 20 brand advertisers had agreed to transact via the exchange, including CBS Interactive, Fox News, Discovery Communications and Scripps Networks.

Google’s pitch to marketers is that with Google Partner Select they can buy inventory from a host of top video sites, using data for targeting purposes. Implicit in that pitch is that these marketers will avoid the low-quality and fraudulent inventory on other exchanges.

Marketers are rapidly embracing buying Web video advertising using more automated, data-driven tactics, according to Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president of video and display advertising,

“What we are seeing is the power of premium with programmatic buying,” Mr. Mohan said. “That’s something that [brands have] been very excited about.”

Of course, Google is also going after the TV advertising marketplace by directly selling Web video ad packages on YouTube via a more traditional TV-like approach (that isn’t entirely automated)–a program called Google Preferred. Mr. Mohan doesn’t see any conflict between those two trends.

“I don’t think they are mutually exclusive,” he said. “We’ve seen incredibly strong demand for Google Preferred, with brands buying in an upfront mode, and incredibly strong demand on the programmatic side. Brands are going to be looking to do both.”

As for the ad space available on the exchange, Google doesn’t offer many specifics but claims the inventory comes from a variety of content types, including everything from Web video news clips to live sports to full episodes of shows. (YouTube is not part of Partner Select.)

“We’ve gone after brand name, household name media partners on an exclusive basis,” Mr. Mohan said. “You have to remember the reason why this is attractive for publishers. They are trying to create incremental, high quality demand. Our publisher partners have not viewed this as a way to sell stuff they couldn’t sell upfront. In some cases, you are seeing this as a way for publishers to create pseudo private exchanges. We are not giving away keys to the kingdom.”

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Three Trends Digital Marketers Need to Watch.

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emarketer
If you’re looking for digital marketing trends for the upcoming year, go to a company that follows the industry trends.
eMarketer just released their report on the key digital trends for 2015. Here are three important trends to keep your eye on:

1) Programmatic will move Beyond Display Advertising

Another tipping point in 2015: programmatic advertising.
We expect programmatic will cross the line to make up
more than 50% of all digital display advertising.
But the story of programmatic will go much further than
display next year.
The same momentum and technologies that have
reshaped how we buy display ads could eventually
transform how we buy all forms of advertising, not
just digital but traditional as well. Programmatic TV, for
example, accounts for less than 1% of all TV ad spending,
but some predict it could be a multibillion dollar industry
within 12 to 24 months as both buyers and sellers use it
to better understand their audiences.
Some forecasts have that number jumping to as much as
20% of all TV spending by 2018. That’s a huge increase,
and even if it’s half or a quarter of that, we’re still talking
about very big money here. Expect the tide to begin to
turn in 2015

2) Cord-Shaving

Yes, some consumers are cutting the cord, but they’re
in the low single digits percentage-wise. A more real
behavior is cord-shaving, where consumers reduce what
they spend, rather than eliminating it altogether.
Individuals in all age groups are still watching a ton of TV
the traditional way, even millennials.
Of course, now that HBO has announced plans to
offer HBO GO as a standalone service, all of that could
change, especially as other networks rush to follow suit.
So, as they say, don’t touch that dial: Unbundling could
accelerate consumers’ latent thirst for cord-cutting.
What that means is you need to pay close attention to
consumers’ shifting video consumption habits.

TV is holding steady. It’s still the media big dog … for now. But
mobile is the channel that’s growing. With all the time,
money and attention flowing to digital video, marketers
that lack deals with content owners and dynamic
advertising are going to miss the boat.

3) Social TV

Consumers regularly use mobile devices while watching TV, but only a small percentage
talk about what they are watching via social media.
TV-related conversations are also fragmented across
platforms, and industry executives are still unsure of the
effect of social media on people’s viewing behaviors or
on ratings.

Consumers aren’t really engaging in social TV marketing
efforts, and marketers are holding back as a result. That’s
not going to change in 2015.

Interpublic takes big step towards Programmatic TV buying

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Interpublic Group, one of the largest media agency conglomerates, is taking a big leap toward automated buying in a development that could have a huge impact on the current media ecosystem.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Interpublic has begun building a new system that will allow it to automatically buy TV and radio ads and has partnered with Clear Channel, A&E Networks, Tribune Co. and Cablevision to test the new system.

The idea is to use existing technology to better target ad buys, and to get rid of some of the more cumbersome parts of making a TV ad buy, which can take weeks or months to iron out under the current system.

TV networks are cautious as there’s speculation that an automatic system could have an impact on media rates, as it has for online search display ads.

Im a firm believer that anything that can be sold programmatic, will eventually move to programmatic and Interpublic has just taken the first step.

Programmatic Buying makes a play for TV

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Programmatic buying is a hot topic in the digital media world, but recently a new “audience-buying” platform called AudienceXpress has been making the headlines on Madison Avenue as it rolls out an automated system enabling agencies and their trading desks to serve ads into the most premium network television inventory.

Because of its implications for the overall media marketplace, the rapid rise of programmatic trading in online display advertising has been one of the most closely watched developments of the past couple of years, splitting Madison Avenue and its media supply chain into two philosophical camps: Those that want to preserve the world of old-school media-buying based on relationships and person-to-person negotiations; and those who want to shift to a new world of “audience-buying” based on scientific, real-time, transparent programmatic technology enabling brands to reach the audiences they are seeking with their precision at that exact moment they need to reach them.

The fear of losing control over the value of advertising inventory has been the major impediment to programmatic exchanges in the online business, but that hasn’t stopped the online display market from developing a marketplace based on sell-side machines trading with buy-side ones.

While supply was a big factor in the success of programmatic trading online, other big factors including the needs for agencies to improve their margins by utilizing technology to automate the way they buy in an increasingly fragmented media marketplace, as well as their philosophical shift from old school “media-buying” based on the seller’s inventory to the new world of “audience-buying” based on reaching the consumers that their clients’ brands want to reach with their ad messages.

According to the most recent estimates from Interpublic’s Magna unit, programmatic buying of media currently represents about 25% of online display buys, and is growing fast.

Since it went live in January with a beta being used by the trading desks of at least two of the biggest agency holding companies, AudienceXpress has already served nearly 2 billion ad impressions to network TV viewers nationwide — all below the radar of most of the TV advertising industry

One of the first adopters of AudienceXpress are cable operators because the platform gives them an incredibly efficient means of selling their TV advertising inventory to national advertisers in a way that does not cannibalize on the local and regional buys sold by their direct, in-house sales organizations.

The system essentially enables local cable operators to efficiently and automatically pool the local TV advertising avails they split with their cable network partners into an audience trading platform that taps the budgets of national advertisers. In other words, it enables local cable TV operators to compete directly for ad budgets with the national advertising sales organizations of their network affiliates. Generally, national cable TV networks give two minutes per hour to cable systems to sell as part of their distribution agreements.

Programmatic trading has quickly matured on Madison Avenue, and every major agency now has its own trading desk, or works with an array of independents. Almost all of them claim to be either currently buying or close to developing a solution for buying TV advertising inventory through their systems. At least two are doing so already.

In the minds of most TV folks, real-time bidding means devaluing your inventory, The AudienceXpress value proposition is to provide liquidity — largely for the sell-side — by applying
technology on the back-end and the front end, and then layering on audience data that increases the value of that inventory to advertisers.