One of the purposes of Deal ID is to allow buyers and sellers to negotiate deals that combine the personal touch of the direct sale with programmatic efficiency.
But the Deal ID also has challenges around sell-side scalability and limitations in audience discovery for advertisers. Nevertheless, some industry experts say the Deal ID might help dollars flow between programmatic video and TV and enable marketers to execute cross-screen buys.
“Unlike in digital, where programmatic changed the strategy in which inventory was sold, we see programmatic TV as enhancing the way assets have been sold for years,” said Jason Burke, VP of product for Clypd, a TV supply-side platform cofounded by former Where execs, the location-based advertising company PayPal acquired in 2011.
On Tuesday, Clypd rolled out an offering dubbed Deal ID For TV, intended to allow TV sales teams to factor in nuances in pricing, budget, deal prioritization and access to premium audiences for their upfront and scatter inventory (inventory set aside for “last-minute” sales close to air time, thus driving up pricing). This gives control to broadcasters used to direct sales and sponsorships while introducing automation.
“The supply side [wants optimization] that respects their business rules for who gets access to that inventory, the types of ads that are allowed on their inventory and the pricing rules,” Burke said. With the recent release of a programmatic TV API and a slew of buy-side partnerships with DSPs ranging from TubeMogul to Turn and The Trade Desk, “we’re marrying [supply-side rules] with the audience targeting put in place by the buy side to really drive up optimization for the media owner.”
Video supply-side platform LiveRail made a similar move last August when it gave publishers “contingencies designed to ensure their deals are about more than just getting the best price for inventory at a given moment.” This assurance is a critical selling point for premium content providers, according to LiveRail CEO Mark Trefgarne.
“While broadcasters aren’t interested in putting their inventory into open exchanges, they are interested in automating the process even more for guaranteed buys,” according to Jim Nail, principal analyst at Forrester Research. Nail had predicted that legacy TV processes would be soon be disrupted by tech-enabled media buys, which have already affected video and cross-screen advertising.
Richard Joyce, senior analyst, programmatic media at Forrester said if broadcasters adopt Deal ID or “Deal ID-like” protocol, they are able to provide an automated programmatic offering while still maintaining control over pricing and the advertiser.
One of the overreaching benefits of Deal ID in digital video and TV, is its ability to “help buyers and sellers transact around premium content and target demographics, no matter where playback occurs,” Chris Smith, EVP of emerging media at Turn, wrote in a blog post.
“To make video advertising ‘flat,’ such that all video buying feels like TV buying, buyers expect no less than TV-quality content and TV models of measurement,” Smith said. In other words, Deal ID and online gross ratings points could help mitigate the most common challenge in digital video and TV convergence: fragmentation. And additionally, Smith added, executing direct deals via Deal ID (as opposed to separate direct deals) could benefit the advertiser by providing one consistent view of all the audiences and inventories they’re utilizing.
“A lot of our SSP partners are recognizing that there’s fragmentation in the way their media is being consumed and it’s not always the 60-inch flat screen TV and that’s a challenge,” Burke said. “[Deal ID will allow] the owners of the inventory and the marketers to measure it in a way that allows them to find audience the way they always have, irrespective of how that media is delivered.”
