Netflix and Disney aren’t the only streamers flexing their programmatic muscles.
On Monday, Paramount announced a new ad product called Conduit, which is a direct integration layer between supply-side platforms (SSPs) and EyeQ, Paramount’s CTV ad selling platform that aggregates Paramount+ and Pluto TV inventory.
Direct integrations with SSPs help programmers decide which ads to put in which pods, said Todd Bender, SVP of advertising platforms at Paramount.
Paramount has been working on Conduit since 2020, when it launched EyeQ. The new product is currently available in several major SSPs, including Magnite and Google Ad Manager.
Connecting the dots
Advertisers have been demanding greater interoperability from their broadcaster partners.
But over the last year or so, there’s been an “even greater push from marketers” for programmers to support ad buying from an array of SSPs, said Leo O’Connor, SVP of advertising at Paramount.
Paramount’s inventory was already available via SSPs, but there’s a difference between selling through an SSP and integrating directly so there’s a connection into the ad server.
Otherwise, “programmers have to string [bids] together from different partners in a very manual way,” Bender said. That manual process is a time suck that also results in streaming pet peeves like ad repetition.
Integration station
Paramount uses FreeWheel as its primary ad server, but fragmentation issues arise when advertisers want to buy inventory through a supply path it doesn’t work with directly.
Having to manually piece bid responses together from multiple sellers means programmers generally don’t have all the information they need, such as a brand’s name, vertical, bid price and creative length. When programmers don’t get this information in a timely manner, they can’t manage ad frequency and competitive separation in their pods.
If, for example, a brand buys the same inventory via four different supply paths, but without direct integrations into those four sellers, programmers can’t see that happening. And a lack of data transparency leads to subpar ad experiences and suboptimal inventory yield, Bender said.
Now, if a buyer is using an SSP that wasn’t connected to FreeWheel, it still has a direct pathway to CTV inventory from Paramount through Conduit.
Conduit is Paramount’s way of saying: “We need to know who the brand is in an auction, and what is the exact value of its bids,” O’Connor said.
To provide that data, Conduit gathers bid responses from multiple SSPs directly into FreeWheel in time for Paramount to create an ad pod for a commercial break.
Paramount declined to share exactly how much time Conduit saves in processing bid responses, but Bender said the product is a “massive benefit” to Paramount’s ad tech stack because it cuts out additional hops between platforms that often “double or triple the timeframe” of an ad decision.
And time saved could lead to money earned.
O’Connor said that Paramount expects Conduit to help attract more programmatic demand from a wider array of agencies in the coming year.
