The dream of programmatic linear TV is getting a boost.
On Thursday, Comcast Advertising announced that the cable provider’s linear TV inventory will now be available on a targetable, biddable basis for advertisers that want to transact programmatically.
The inventory is only available through FreeWheel, Comcast’s video ad platform, but is already being used in live campaigns running on both linear and streaming.
Down the line, Comcast plans to also offer its programmatic linear inventory via other buy-side platforms and, eventually, allow other publishers to make their linear inventory available through FreeWheel.
Comcast Advertising President James Rooke told AdExchanger that the ultimate goal is to help buyers reach the same audiences across all forms of TV buying through a single unified – and, more importantly, programmatic – workflow.
Bid on it
It’s been a few years since programmatic linear dominated headlines during the summer of 2023, when both DISH Media and Charter Communications made their respective linear inventory programmatic exactly one week apart from each other.
Now, the trend is bubbling back up again.
In August, Spectrum Reach, Charter’s ad sales division, partnered with European ad tech company tvbeat to make its linear and CTV programmatic workflows more seamless.
According to Rooke, however, these other previous efforts only automated parts of the linear buying process, and only for specific individual ad spots.
In other words, buying and selling operated “more like a futures market,” Rooke said, as opposed to a real-time, biddable auction.
Comcast’s first attempts at programmatic linear inventory in late 2023 were similarly limited. In October of that year, AMC Networks partnered with FreeWheel and a few other ad tech vendors to roll out programmatic capabilities across AMC, We TV and BBC America, albeit only for three ad spots per hour of television.
In contrast, Comcast’s new programmatic workflow applies to all of its linear inventory, not just a portion of it, and allows for actual real-time bidding against targeted audiences, “just like how standard programmatic works on connected television,” said Rooke.
Down with silos
Despite the availability of RTB auctions, however, Rooke expects that most TV programmers will continue to gravitate toward programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace deals rather than a true open exchange.
After all, TV inventory is scarce, and media companies will likely want to maintain their control over what types of buyers get access.
Still, the move toward more programmatic linear inventory could unlock a lot of opportunity for performance-based brands in particular, said Kevin Weigand, VP of partnerships for video and audio at Dentsu.
Dentsu was one of the first buyers to test Comcast’s new programmatic workflow as part of its current campaign for the upcoming animated film “Stitch Head,” which hits theaters on October 29.
So far, said Weigand, there’s nothing surprising or novel about how the campaign is performing – which is a good thing, he said. That means the new linear components are fitting in as smoothly as the digital ones, which previously would have been siloed and managed through separate systems.
“As clients start to become aware of this availability,” Weigand said, “they’re going to lean in, because it unlocks incremental reach that a traditional digital-only advertiser would never be able to hit.”
