“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.
Today’s column is by Jonathan Teitloff, product director, CTV at TripleLift.
Television has long been one of the most transparent advertising channels. Likewise, programmatic advertising has always offered buyers incredible detail about the audience and context of their ads. Now, advertisers are rightfully frustrated that they have so little transparency into where their ads run when buying television programmatically.
Many platforms are trying to solve this problem by asking publishers to share “content signals,” such as genre, series and channel, that are included in bid requests. But to fulfill the promise of increased transparency, content signals need a little more prep work in the kitchen before publishers and advertisers can cook up something special.
Buyers want the whole enchilada, not just the raw ingredients
Imagine you’re treating yourself to dinner at a nice restaurant. After taking your order, the server brings out a cutting board, some raw vegetables and meat, a mixing bowl and cooking oil. “Bon appétit,” they say, leaving you to prepare your own meal.
This situation is not so different from the one buyers find themselves in today with content signals. Most DSPs do not support targeting with content signals or have very limited reporting available, leaving advertisers with few ways to take advantage of this increased “transparency.”
Even if buyers can target and report on content signals, the sheer scale of different possible values – especially for more granular details like series name or episode title – makes it difficult to use these ingredients as part of a cohesive marketing recipe. For broad attributes like genre, exchanges still see more than 15,000 unique values in a single day.
The juice has to be worth the squeeze for publishers, too
Tagging content with metadata and passing it through their ad stack is no piece of cake for publishers, either. Some SSPs require using specific values instead of the publisher’s own labels. And there are legitimate concerns publishers have about data leakage to DSPs and the risk of buyers cherry-picking impressions.
Yet, for all the effort, just turning on content signals cold turkey won’t magically lead to more revenue for publishers if DSP bidder algorithms are not trained to use this data and advertisers can’t target it.
Instead, publishers will have to rely on meat-and-potato tactics like Deal IDs to unlock benefits from content signals today.
For buyers and sellers hungry for a solution, Deal IDs can whet their appetite
Although not every DSP can target content signals yet, all DSPs can target and report on Deal IDs. And Deal IDs make content metadata more digestible for buyers, too, since SSPs can use them to aggregate the many genre, channel and show details sent by publishers into more useful categories. Case in point: a “Food & Drink” deal that includes everything from cooking competitions to food talk shows, restaurant reviews, travel documentaries and recipe how-tos.
Deal IDs can also alleviate publisher concerns about data leakage. SSPs can use the content signals received from publishers to sort their inventory into deals and – if the publisher asks for it – strip the bid request of any sensitive metadata before it’s sent to DSPs. Because the DSPs and buyers are targeting a Deal ID instead of the raw content signals, they don’t necessarily need the signals if the publisher prefers not to share them.
Half a loaf is better than none, for now
Deal IDs built using content signals can provide more transparency to advertisers and earn more revenue for publishers. But we’re still not cooking with gas. The solution falls short of what the industry needs to achieve the same transparency programmatically in television as other formats.
To start, buyers need content metadata that’s verified by third-party solutions and included within their existing campaign reporting. DSPs and measurement vendors have a clear opportunity to assist with this. However, for this reporting to be useful, it must also have a standardized taxonomy that’s specific to television and adopted across multiple platforms. SSPs can help here by normalizing and mapping the data from different publishers across their exchange into a well-organized tasting menu for buyers.
Save room for dessert! Once the industry has solved for table stakes transparency, buyers can look forward to solutions they’ve never seen before on TV. Contextual categories based on scene-by-scene analysis of content will help marketers match their ads to the most relevant moments and avoid content not suitable for their brand. But we have to eat our veggies first.
Although publishers today can use content signals to cook up a tasty appetizer with Deal IDs, advertisers shouldn’t spoil their appetite before the main entree comes. With content signals and Deal IDs, the table is set, but dinner isn’t ready yet.
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