You’ve heard of bring-your-own-beer (BYOB). But are you down with bringing your own media (BYOM)?
Less hoppy, but hopefully more useful.
On Tuesday, Samsung Ads announced a new product, Total Media Solution, to help more marketers manage their connected TV buys holistically. It’s dubbing its strategy BYOM to help emphasize the tool’s managed-service component.
The product allows marketers to load in their existing linear and CTV buys, then have Samsung’s DSP, managed by its team, find incremental reach across all of its buys in streaming apps.
Previously, marketers could only holistically manage incremental reach by using Samsung’s self-serve DSP. Now, they can do so via managed service.
Marketer demand for incremental reach is on the upswing. The number of ad-supported streaming apps have proliferated over the last two to three years (not including CNN+), and marketers need to know how audiences are mapping out across nearly countless streaming services. After multiple customers asked for suggestions about partners that could capture incremental reach on TV buys, Samsung decided to bring an offering to market itself.
“Incremental reach is [something] many of our advertisers have been working on with us for years,” said Joe Melaragno, head of platform sales and agency development at Samsung Ads. Advertisers who want to consistently reach their audience “need to be in ad-supported streaming (AVOD) environments – and not [just] one or two.”
The product makes it easier for marketers to use Samsung’s data beyond its own universe. (Samsung has offered its own free ad-supported TV channel, Samsung TV Plus, since 2015.)
Since Samsung tracks viewing in its TVs, its automated content recognition data can easily spot if someone has already seen an ad on linear TV and choose to serve an ad accordingly: incremental reach.
Enter BYOM.
Prior to the rollout, only a self-service Samsung DSP customer could bring in streaming inventory they had already negotiated through a programmatic guaranteed PMP (e.g., Paramount Plus) and optimize accordingly.
Samsung’s managed service solution sold direct IOs with advertisers, guaranteeing a fixed price for delivery across Samsung households, but it didn’t offer incremental reach across multiple buys.
Now, the two disparate solutions have tied the knot – BYOM is also available as a managed service through Total Media Solution.
Advertisers who “bring their own media” in pass the torch to Samsung Ads to handle campaign management and reach and frequency optimization across their streaming app inventory they directly negotiated with networks – if they want to.
It’s about choice. “We want to have a managed solution for advertisers who want to be hands-off,” Melaragno said, “but we also want to allow for advertisers who want to [optimize] in a self-service capacity.”
Samsung covers not just media buying, but measurement and optimization. Samsung’s goal is to address platform fragmentation by “streamlining” inventory optimization through its DSP and reporting.
On the measurement front, it can track conversion-based KPIs like sign-ups and web downloads to incorporate engagement metrics into its measurement methodology. Third-party measurement vendors can measure performance-based outcomes spanning the purchase funnel, from brand lift to consideration and intent.
With Total Media Solution, Samsung Ads hopes to help advertisers make sense of the tipping scales between linear and streaming audiences and plan their media buys accordingly.
The pre-upfronts timing is intentional, Melaragno added.
“Advertisers are thinking about their next upfront cycle [right now], and Samsung Ads can help them optimize across all buys they’re [already] working on through current partners.”
