Co-operation: broadcasters at AWE representing the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France
EBX, the new digital ad sales partnership between four major European broadcasters, is now ready to deliver its first campaigns.
Speaking at an Advertising Week Europe event on Tuesday, Chris Le May, CEO of the European Broadcaster Exchange, said: “We’re able to execute pan European campaigns now – but the bigger bells and whistles stuff is still over the horizon.”
Although it is early days, broadcasters see big potential in EBX, which consolidates their respective tech, giving them the scale they need to deliver digital advertising with a single buying point.
Crucially, it also gives advertisers access to TV’s premium VOD content and comes with brand safety built in due to the high standards broadcasters must operate to.
“It’s a very exciting and unique offer,” said Jana Eisenstein, executive VP advertising platform solutions for Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1. “It’s the first time we’ve been able to offer pan-regional TV advertising, in the truest sense.”
EBX will allow advertisers to book campaigns across the VOD services offered by ProSiebenSat.1, the UK’s Channel 4, France’s TF1 and Italy and Spain’s Mediaset.
The project – which operates as its own company, headquartered in London – was launched as a direct response to the threat posed by Google and Facebook, who between them control 90% of the programmatic advertising market across Europe. [advert position=”left”]
The so-called Duopoly have also made a strong push towards video content – including live streams – treading firmly on the toes of broadcasters.
“Tech is all about scale, and EBX offers both broadcasters and advertisers benefits,” said Eisenstein.
“Advertisers are also consolidating the way they work with media owners, and EBX is another way to therefore offer a competitive solution.”
With some laughter at Tuesday’s event, which was hosted by Channel 4, Google’s MD EMEA agencies, Mark Howe, asked if he could help EBX with any advice on delivering the sorts of pan-European campaigns Google and its YouTube platform already can.
Asked later by Mediatel if he saw the project as a serious threat to his own business’s dominance, Howe said: “A threat? No. We support anything that is good for pan-European advertising.”
Meanwhile, a separate – and clearly unresolved issue with the EBX project – is how it will deal with measurement: although the broadcasters involved separately use sophisticated, third-party systems, marrying them together is likely to cause logistical and slow-to-resolve headaches.
