Page 18 - AdNews Magazine Jul-Aug 2020

Agenda
Val Morgan Outdoor (VMO) managing director Paul Butler told AdNews earlier in the year that his business, which primarily utilises smaller screens located in areas such as service stations, is already making strides in achiev- ing an effective programmatic offering. The business is using a facial recognition tool, Dart, measuring audiences and deliver- ing 10 million impressions a week.
Butler says it is increasingly becoming a vital tool in developing its programmatic offering as clients continue to look for easier ways of adjusting campaigns by time, loca- tion and other audience metrics.
The rise of gaming is opening options for programmatic as well but the real driver of growth comes from video and connected TV (CTV).
The explosion of video
Le Roy says programmatic is quickly becoming the dominant way to buy media. In particular, she notes the “explosion” of video inventory entering the market.
“Over the last two years, there’s been a lot more video inventory, par- ticularly on the CTV side of things, brought into the market,” she says.
“In terms of overall adoption in market, it’s an incredibly effec- tive format.”
It also presents a greater yield for publishers, as the inventory is more expensive per unit.
Video management platform Telaria, recently merged with online advertising technology com- pany Rubicon Project, believes all television will eventually be watched through an internet con- nection and therefore become clas- sified as over-the-top (OTT). As a result, the company’s senior vice president APAC, Juliette Stead, says all TV advertising will be traded programmatically in the future.
“There’s already massive growth in that area and we’re just going to see that continue to grow,” Stead says.
“I would say that a lot of that has happened because there’s effi- ciency from both sides. Buyers are able to make really informed deci- sions about what supply they do and don’t buy, at impression level.
“From a publisher perspective as well, they’re better able to
manage all of this supply that they’ve got and that they are making avail- able, and they are able to apply that to addressable segments. Those addressable segments can then be traded through programmatic pipes.
“It allows for really strong creative buying and really targeted buying, whilst also being able to achieve reach and scale.”
While much of display advertising is bought through open auction environments which involve lots of bidding and data, Stead says she sees more private marketplace deals taking place with broadcast video on demand (BVOD) and other OTT formats.
In 2019, 93% of sales that ran through the Telaria platform in Australia were through private marketplace buys.
“A lot of supply is traded through upfront agreement between broad- casters and the agents of brands, and then it’s executed through pro- grammatic pipes,” she says.
“It just shows really that it’s an efficient buying method, as opposed to what has been going on with the open auction environment.”
In line with its growing popularity, a number of adtech players are focusing their efforts in the TV space. However, just like with online advertising, programmatic TV buying has to resolve its own set of issues before it can be classified as a mature format.
The Trade Desk, a buy-side platform, recently announced it would extend its partnership with consumer cross-screen television and ana- lytics provider Samba TV outside of the US to international markets beginning in Australia.
The expansion of the partnership globally will provide advertisers with insights on content consumption and advertising effectiveness across addressable TV screens.
“Integrating that into our TV planning tools is going to help brands to execute their digital investment strategies based upon prior linear TV viewing behaviour,” Bayes says.