AOL Platforms and Multi Channel Network (MCN) have today announced an upcoming pilot in Australia to run the world’s first integrated programmatic private marketplace for TV.
The move, which has been designed to advance Australia’s $4 billion television industry towards unified ad sales across TV and digital screens, hopes to provide advertisers and agencies with “targeted, data-driven, audience buying and consumer-led analytics”.
The pilot will be offered across 70 subscription television channels, including Foxtel, FOX SPORTS, BBC, Discovery, NBCUniversal, FOX International Channels, Viacom and Sky News.
Powered by AOL Platforms’ programmatic video platform, Adap.TV, the offering will leverage Australia’s largest TV audience measurement panel with data from 110,000 homes.
By automating the process, ad company MCN will aim to effectively package highly targeted audiences across its network programming – such as regular purchasers for specific products and brands – as well as aligning television ad sales closer to digital.
“Australia is a burgeoning market that has been ahead of the programmatic trend, particularly in video,” said Dan Ackerman, head of programmatic TV, AOL Platforms.
“MCN fully understands the shift occurring in our industry and, through our partnership with them, is putting a stake in the ground as a leader in moving the TV industry forward towards its inevitable converged future with digital through data-driven audience buying. We look forward to continuing to innovate alongside them and delivering on that vision through an advanced technology platform.”
In the UK there is perhaps more resistance to programmatic technologies in the TV market. Earlier this week, Thinkbox’s CEO, Lindsey Clay, said that while UK TV advertising could, like other media, go programmatic, there are many hurdles that the industry is yet to overcome.
“Programmatic has a role to play in TV’s future eco-system,” said Clay. “There is also good reason to hope that programmatic trading will help TV ads realise their full value as TV is the premium quality environment for advertising and the competition to buy it should be fierce.
However, according to Clay, TV is already “as automated as it needs to be” and will not be in a position, technologically, to be programmatically bought “any time soon”.
“It is regulated in a way which makes programmatic buying very complicated,” she added, “and the way it is traded is far more transparent and trustworthy for the people whose money is being spent: the advertisers.”
