Rate Card Aggregator Kantar Media SRDS Goes Programmatic

Kantar Media SRDS has added programmatic digital ad inventory to its media planning platform, which aggregates advertising rate card information for a wide range of supply sources. It’s another indicator of how demand for “programmatic direct” continues to transform the traditional planning and buying process.

WPP Group-owned Kantar is partnering with supply-side platforms (SSP) PubMatic, Rubicon Project, OpenX and programmatic direct platforms iSocket, Adslot, BuySellAds, and Shiny Ads. These platforms will act as data feeds through which SRDS.com can publish guaranteed-direct and private marketplace inventory to over 1,000 U.S. agencies for its subscription-only service.

Rising demand for programmatic digital ads among brands is driving the initiative. Dina Srinivasan, managing director of emerging media at Kantar Media SRDS, said the company is responding to market changes in the past year. “You had publishers soften up to the idea of ‘We’re going to give SSPs and these other platforms access to the good inventory,” she said, which has splintered inventory data across several platforms.

Kantar hopes the additional data will provide clarity to media planners who sometimes must navigate a maze of SSPs and direct buying platforms to make their ad buys. “There’s a tremendous amount of non-transparency in the market as to what is available for sale and where to buy it from and for what price,” Srinivasan said.

For RTB-based platforms such as PubMatic, adding programmatic inventory to an aggregator like SRDS increases the pool of potential buyers. Media planners using SRDS will be provided actionable data on how to make a buy through various platforms, Srinivasan said.

Kantar expects the programmatic inventory data to go live in June.

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