Google kicked off NewFronts with a glitzy presentation so it could strut its streaming stuff beyond its YouTube offerings.
Meaning it heavily focused on its ad buying platform, Display and Video 360 (DV360).
On Monday, Google unveiled updates to DV360 that should make it easier for advertisers to manage campaigns across Google and other connected TV publishers. Which means introducing more ways for brands to ink direct deals with publishers that aren’t Google – and to juggle those direct buys with biddable ones.
Among the updates are more options for customized deals, a budget allocation tool for guaranteed and biddable deals and plans to publish open web standards for its Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR) framework.
For marketers to maximize their streaming investment, they “need to see the whole picture of how their ads are performing” across publishers, regardless of deal type, said Kristen O’Hara, Google VP of agency, platforms and client solutions.
Get it together
Marketers want more cohesive planning and measurement, and they can now set up customized deals with top CTV publishers directly within DV360, rather than just relying on auction-based bidding. Previously, marketers only had this amount of flexibility with Google streaming inventory, namely YouTube.
For example, in March, Google integrated DV360 directly with DRAX, Disney’s real-time ad exchange, to create direct pathways to its streaming inventory. NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are among other CTV publishers directly integrated with DV360.
Now, advertisers can buy and manage both guaranteed and biddable deals across publishers using DV360. Buyers can also measure cross-platform campaigns based on brand lift, purchase intent and deduplicated reach between YouTube and other streamers.
Consolidating video buys within DV360 also helps marketers manage ad frequency based on how their ads are performing, O’Hara said.
She cited a recent partnership with French food and snack purveyor Danone (known as Dannon in the US) as an example. Since consolidating its video buys within DV360 last year, it has seen 50% more effectiveness against its KPIs, although O’Hara didn’t name what those KPIs are.
Satisfaction guaranteed
However, despite the advantages of direct deals, the scale and targeting possible through programmatic keeps biddable buying growing.
That growth is why Google also announced a new product that promises to optimize reach across guaranteed and non-guaranteed deals. Using its own AI, Google allocates ad spend to reach as much of a brand’s target audience as possible across Google and third-party streaming inventory based on that brand’s frequency cap.
Omnicom Media Group (OMG), one of the agencies testing the new product, can deliver up to three times as many impressions to a target audience compared to its previous buying strategy with Google, said Clare Ritchie, the agency’s SVP and global head of programmatic and in-housing, from Google’s NewFronts stage.
A budget allocation tool that manages direct and biddable buys makes it easier for OMG to bid on more non-guaranteed inventory to add reach and impact to the agency’s buys on behalf of its clients, Ritchie said.
PAIR up
Last but not least, Google used its NewFronts stage to tout the potential of its PAIR framework for CTV, available through DV360.
It allows publishers and advertisers to match their first-party data using LiveRamp’s clean room environment.
PAIR can reach 11% more unique viewers compared to cookie-based audiences, according to LiveRamp.
NBCUniversal and Disney were the first CTV publishers to integrate with PAIR. But other publishers, like Paramount, are also turning to PAIR to bring in first-party data – especially when performance and outcomes can improve by adding in this data.
Tapping more first-party data, including retailer first-party data, should help “reach our most relevant consumers and move them down the [purchase] funnel,” said Pete Chelala, VP of programmatic ad sales at Paramount.
As it pounds the PAIR drumbeat to recruit CTV publishers and advertisers to use the framework, Google said it plans to make its framework open source by working with the IAB Tech Lab to create open web standards.
However brands choose to work with DV360, programmatic guaranteed deals within the platform will count toward committed upfront budgets this year. Which is its plea for more CTV and video ad spend to run through its DSP during this year’s negotiations, beginning in May.
