AOL rolled out a programmatic self-serve platform for TV buyers on Monday, and Omnicom Group is the first agency partner to test-drive it. While some competing solutions only enable planning, AOL said its platform also handles execution and reporting. AOL thinks its developing device graph under Verizon gives it a competitive advantage in omnichannel media […]
Sky Media, the advertising sales arm for British telecom and broadcaster Sky, sits at the crossroads of technology and strategic investment. A new partnership with multiscreen ad-delivery tool Yospace, unveiled last Wednesday, will support dynamic ad insertions in linear streams like sports, news and entertainment on both IP and OTT devices alongside Sky’s ad server, […]
AT&T has officially entered the programmatic TV fray. The carrier on Thursday revealed the launch of a private marketplace called the Video Inventory Platform (“VIP” for short), which Jason Brown, AT&T AdWorks’ VP of national advertising sales, told AdExchanger was a “data-optimized TV and video planning tool.” The product will be generally available in Q3 […]
When Apple baked tvOS into its fourth-generation set-top box, the next-gen operating system also opened the floodgates to third-party apps. It was a pivotal moment for app and game developers, who could for the first time tap into Apple’s emerging TV ecosystem via a new software development kit (SDK). And for large and mid-tier publishers, the new […]
If you hail from the northeastern United States, you’re probably accustomed to the slightly bitter bite of broccoli rabe common in many Italian dishes. It’s the population beyond New York and other big cities – as well as health-conscious millennials – to whom Salinas, Calif., grower Andy Boy wanted to appeal. But Andy Boy had […]
That day when data rewrites all TV business rules is not far off, said Joan Gillman, EVP and COO for Time Warner Cable’s media services. A cultural shift is already underway at sales houses as cable companies pitch TV 2.0 products to advertiser clients. Traditionally, buyers only got historic measurements and reporting for campaigns that […]
How about this for a premiere? Beginning this fall, all NBCUniversal inventory will be available for sale programmatically via the network’s private exchange NBCUx. Ahead of the upfronts, NBCUniversal has rolled out an offering called NBCUx for Linear TV, which will put additional data and automation in the hands of media planners to apply to […]
The extreme fragmentation of digital media is tougher on national political campaigns than on brand advertisers. Because political campaigns must fight for every vote (at least once the primaries are done), discrete audiences that a brand marketer might dismiss as too difficult or small are essential to the political advertiser. The 3% of American adults that still connect […]
Twentieth Century Fox’s new flick “Deadpool” shattered box office records over Valentine’s and President’s Day weekend, banking $135 million in the three days since its premiere. Although a popular Marvel comic (and actor Ryan Reynolds) certainly inspired that turnout, a week-long multiplatform activation from Viacom preceding the film’s launch helped generate awareness. Throughout the campaign’s […]
It may not be master over how its software is used, but that isn’t stopping Google from ruling its Play store with an iron first. It appears that some ad-blocking apps are not welcome. Taking a page out of Apple’s playbook, Samsung on Sunday rolled out support for content blocking within the default browser that […]
Comcast is losing fewer cable TV customers than it has in the past eight years. That’s no small feat, considering signs of rampant cord cutting inundating the broadcast industry. Comcast added 89,000 customers for video service Xfinity in the fourth quarter, the most of any quarter since 2006, according to its earnings release. Video revenue […]
Unlike earned digital media, which is reinventing political campaigns, presidential candidates tend to view digital video as support for their flashy TV advertising. “The hope for digital, in my opinion,” said John Randall, VP of digital at the right-leaning agency CRAFT, “is that by 2020 we don’t even see a difference between TV and online or mobile video ads. But […]
Automated guaranteed will color direct deals in TV in a big way, not just in digital, predicts Scott Braley, GM of programmatic at Telstra-owned video platform Ooyala. While traditional TV teams are accustomed to buying on a reserved basis, automated guaranteed deals could diversify the direct orders process. Broadcasters could subsequently gain more flexibility around […]
Watch out YouTube. Facebook is coming for your video ad honeypot. In his first week back in the saddle after the birth of his daughter Maxima, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on the company’s Q4 earnings call that Facebook will explore the launch of a video-specific property, possibly an app that would compete with Google […]
The British broadcaster Sky Media on Monday announced a $10 million investment in the DSP and DMP provider DataXu. Sky hopes the relationship will help it better understand programmatic advertising, said Jamie West, Sky Media’s deputy managing director, in a release. “The money substantiates the belief in each other’s companies,” said DataXu CRO Ed Montes […]
Advertisers are embracing Instagram, with its video and direct-response potential gaining particular interest, according to a new report from social advertising and content marketing firm Brand Networks. CPG, fashion and retail advertisers in particular have been quick to embrace Instagram, which proved to be a significant player over the 2015 holiday season. The study examined more […]
AudienceXpress, a TV planning and buying platform Comcast acquired last summer via its purchase of parent Visible World, is opening up new programmatic TV tools to several agencies, including Horizon and US International. These tools include a self-serve platform and direct APIs, AudienceXpress’ first major product launch since the Comcast acquisition. The beta will last through the […]
Acxiom has released an addressable TV product, built from a segmentation platform it acquired in early December from the Allant Group. The tool, announced this week at CES, leverages Acxiom’s workflow automation software and its relationships with multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs). It’s not meant to execute on media buys. “We’re on a mission to […]
Video buyers see a future where they can bundle new-wave TV ad inventory – including VOD and connected TV – with linear television buys. But the “CTV” impression pool is still too shallow for many agencies and brands to bother. “We’re not going to scrape for impressions on some new 5 million-subscriber video startup,” said […]
True[X], the video ad platform Fox acquired last December, partnered Tuesday with Comcast’s TV ad-serving platform FreeWheel to bring more “engagement-based” video ads to broadcasters. The deal will give True[X] greater sell-in among FreeWheel’s base of media and entertainment brands, which include NBCUniversal, Turner Broadcasting, Viacom, Sky, DirecTV and ABC. True[X] creates interactive video ad […]
Glenfiddich, a family-owned maker of single-malt Scotch whisky, is among the first advertisers to place an addressable TV buy through DISH Network’s new programmatic marketplace, which launched in October. Glenfiddich’s media planning and buying agency, Resolute Digital, is using Rocket Fuel’s demand-side platform to serve an addressable, 30-second TV spot to the brand’s target audience […]
Shoppable video is still a novel concept, despite the industry’s efforts to move it into the mainstream (with Google launching shoppable video on YouTube being the most recent example). But NBCUniversal’s Bravo TV still sees the value of shoppable video. The network wanted to expand its digital business and encourage fans to return to its properties on […]
If you’re a large brand and you want 10 million guaranteed impressions, you’re not going to find it in episodic TV – yet. Adobe and Videology, through new over-the-top video ad sales and the yield management system Adobe Primetime TV Media Management, hope to solve this problem. The solution was released Tuesday during Videonuze’s programmatic […]
The emergence of data-enabled TV targeting is altering the agency buying structure. In 2014, WPP’s GroupM launched Modi Media, a unit that would become the poster child for so-called “advanced” TV ad buying. But it’s not the only agency group to build an offering geared to the fragmenting milieu of TV advertising. Others, such as […]
In 2014, American Express boldly declared in an RFP to ad tech vendors that it wanted to programmatically transact 100% of its then $128.5 million display budget. Though the statement was later clarified to be more of an aspiration than a brand-wide target, the financial services giant was one of several large brands exerting greater control over exchange-based buys at […]
YouTube’s TrueView has trained viewers to count backward from five – and then click “skip.” It’s a now-ingrained behavior that traditional and even nontraditional publishers like Norway’s VGTV are trying to grapple with. That’s because pre-roll engagement rates are the pits – and they often have an unfortunate effect on the engagement rate for whatever content […]
Interactive video ad server Innovid has rolled out a programmatic creative tool designed to let agencies and advertisers personalize video messages across devices. This capability is driven, in part, by Innovid’s experience tackling different ad-serving requirements through a series of connected TV partnerships. Innovid entered an audience solutions agreement with Roku in the summer, which […]
While the rise of subscription video services won’t lure all consumers away from ad-supported offerings, it represents a disruption to current business models – partially driven by ad blocking and consumer demand for better experiences. “If you think about all of the content we consume that is supported by an advertising model, if a consumer […]
“Brand Aware” explores the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer’s point of view. Today’s column is by Tony Ralph, director of advertising technology at Netflix. Every time I open a mobile web browser I’m reminded of Wirth’s law. Wirth’s law postulates that software becomes slower more quickly than hardware grows faster. Mobile hardware advances […]
Clypd and SpotX, two sell-side systems for TV and digital publishers, have jointly launched a cross-screen monetization platform for media owners. TiVo will be the pair’s first data partner, enabling platform users to anonymously match digital ad exposures to national households across TiVo’s 2.5 million set-top boxes. The goal is to allow an advertiser or […]
Google won’t have to break up its ads business after being declared an online monopolist. Meanwhile, Amazon faces a lawsuit from the FTC alleging that it charged advertisers more than necessary for ecommerce ads.
Buy-side experts said it’s another example of a Big Tech platform taking advantage of the lack of transparency built into programmatic ad auctions. And they’re not optimistic change is coming.
This week, the Commerce Media Newsletter catches up with a startup from outside the world of data-driven advertising, but with an interesting position when it comes to ecommerce advertising. That’s Clearco, a Canadian fin tech company founded in 2015.
Halo Collar, a dog collar brand with direct-to-consumer origins, is preparing for its retail expansion by honing its first-party data strategy and incrementality measurement.
The company is launching an accelerator program to help tech vendors pitch their solutions in a way that makes sense to advertisers.
TWC is building a monetization model that treats weather as both a contextual and an emotional signal, and it’s using AI sales agents to bring it to market.
