Programmatic TV's Moment; Building Agency Programmatic Consulting

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Programmatic TV, Actually

Programmatic TV is having a moment, with TubeMogul’s recent reveal of a television buying product and ESPN’s auction model for some TV ads, but to some it’s “lots of talk.” AdAge rounds up some skeptical POVs, including GroupM’s top TV buyer, Rino Scanzoni, who says, “What is considered programmatic in digital is not taking place in the TV world.” ESPN’s Eric Johnson allows that “You’re not going to replicate the exact mechanism and data targeting on TV that exists online.” But! “ We are moving in that direction as we build out these systems.” More.

Programmatic Consult

Omnicom media agency Manning Gottlieb OMD is building a programmatic consulting team. The small group of UK-based consultants, led by director Katie Eyton, aims to transcend the suspicion that has surrounded trading desks. “We’re taking a step back from the trading desk environment and looking ahead to the future,” Eyton told Digiday. “Like any agency group, we have preferred partners, but [the consulting team] is not tied down to any one supplier. Our advice will be technology agnostic.” Eyton added the group has already helped one client vet a DSP. More.

Nonlinear Dreams

The Trade Desk pulled in $45 million in debt financing on Friday as it looks to steer into nonlinear video channels like apps and VOD. The DSP was founded by Jeff Green, founder of AdECN (which Microsoft bought some seven years ago). “We think 2015 will be a massive year for [programmatic] television, and things are beginning to change,” Green told the WSJ. “You’re already seeing some of the linear shops making moves in programmatic TV. Those [networks] won’t be the only deals. It’s going to take a long time for some but you don’t have to get a massive shift in television for the dollars to get significant.”

Search Party

Search is once more a battlefield, with Yahoo and Facebook renewing their focus on it in recent months. Facebook quietly dropped general search results from Bing, Reuters reported Friday. Read it. The move comes shortly after Yahoo won a bid to become the default search provider on Mozilla’s Firefox browser, a contract long held by Google. There’s no intent like search intent.

More Vendors, More Problems

Speaking with TechCrunch, The Mobile Majority CEO Rob Emrich says his company is trying to solve the “trust issues” that riddle the mobile ad ecosystem. Viewability, Emrich tells TechCrunch, is “almost like playing a game of telephone, and it gets worse the more vendors you need to use. In order to really diagnose what’s going on, you really need to be able to look at the entire system.” He says the company has 50 employees and is on a $50 million run rate. More.