Europe’s programmatic TV market needs plumbing, not slogans
Opinion
The challenge for programmatic TV advertising is not lack of demand. It is lack of alignment. That is the challenge that Stage Two of the European Programmatic TV Initiative has set out to address.
Programmatic TV in Europe is no longer a future-facing experiment. It is becoming part of the operating system of premium video advertising.
Broadcasters, streamers, agencies, platforms and advertisers all recognise the opportunity. Automated trading can make premium video more flexible, more data-enabled and easier to buy at scale.
It can help sellers improve yield, help buyers plan and activate campaigns more efficiently, and make television’s premium environments more accessible to a wider range of advertisers.
But the market is not yet equipped to deliver that promise consistently.
Across Europe, programmatic TV is developing market by market, platform by platform and deal by deal. Definitions vary. Metadata is inconsistent. Measurement conventions do not always map cleanly to established TV currencies.
Buyers want scale, transparency and comparability. Sellers want control, value protection and confidence that premium inventory will not be flattened into generic video impressions.
Technology partners want scalable workflows, but often operate across markets with different regulations, measurement systems, broadcaster models and operational expectations.
The problem is not lack of demand. It is lack of alignment. That is the challenge that Stage Two of the European Programmatic TV Initiative has set out to address.
The Initiative is not trying to create a single European trading system, replace national TV currencies or prescribe how broadcasters and platforms should configure their technology or sell their inventory. Europe’s television markets are too diverse for that. A rigid, one-size-fits-all model would fail.
Building shared foundations
Instead, Stage Two is focused on building shared foundations: a common language, practical reporting and operational tools, and proportionate governance mechanisms that allow programmatic TV to scale without undermining what makes premium television valuable.
The first priority has been to develop a set of ‘North Star Principles’.
These provide a shared reference point for the market: build on existing TV and digital foundations; promote clearer definitions, signals and processes; improve visibility in premium trading; support interoperability; and respect national differences.
Their importance lies less in their wording than in their function. They create a common test for future decisions.
Does a proposed workflow make premium programmatic easier to understand, verify and trust? Does it improve the flow of data and signals between broadcasters, platforms and agencies? Does it strengthen, rather than weaken, the value of premium inventory?
Definitions, measurement and currency
The second area of work is more practical. The Initiative has established Working Groups to address the operational, measurement and technical frictions that currently make programmatic TV harder to plan, activate, report and reconcile across European markets.
Working Group 1 focuses on definitions, measurement and currency. Its role is to make programmatic TV more legible alongside existing TV and BVOD trading and reporting systems, without creating a new currency or changing how audiences are measured.
Its first major output is a cross-platform impression delivery reporting framework.
Programmatic TV is largely impression-based, while established TV markets still depend on national measurement currencies, broadcaster reporting conventions and JIC-backed systems. The reporting framework is intended to bridge those worlds by improving consistency, comparability and auditability in how delivered impressions are reported across broadcasters, publishers, platforms and premium video environments.
In practical terms, this should give buyers and sellers a clearer basis for understanding what has been delivered, how it has been counted, and how delivery can be reconciled with existing reporting practices.
It will not remove all complexity. However, it should reduce the avoidable confusion that arises when different parties use different templates, definitions and counting conventions for the same campaign activity.
Role of JICs in programmatic TV
Working Group 1 is also producing a discussion paper on the future role of Europe’s TV JICs in programmatic TV. This is one of the most important market design questions facing the sector.
Europe’s JICs remain among the most trusted sources of independent audience measurement. They provide nationally recognised audience currencies supported by agreed definitions, methodological oversight, auditability and participation by broadcasters, agencies and advertisers. But their role in programmatic environments cannot simply be assumed.
Programmatic TV operates through a more fragmented ecosystem of broadcasters, streamers, platforms, DSPs, SSPs, identity providers, measurement vendors and data partners. It is coordinated through contracts, platform integrations, data permissions and technical protocols rather than through a single national market governance framework.
The likely future is therefore hybrid.
JIC-defined audiences, standards or validation models may support parts of programmatic TV, especially broadcaster-led BVOD, addressable TV, programmatic guaranteed and private marketplace environments. They are less likely to become the dominant transactional model across all open marketplace CTV, global streamer, OEM, FAST or platform-controlled environments.
The practical question is not whether JICs can govern the whole programmatic TV marketplace. It is where JIC-compatible programmatic TV can be defined credibly, and under what conditions.
Technical and operational plumbing
Working Group 2 focuses on the technical and operational plumbing that determines whether programmatic TV can function at scale.
Its purpose is to provide shared guidance that helps systems, partners and workflows connect more consistently across markets, without creating new technical standards, selecting vendors or mandating system architectures.
The first output is work on minimum viable signals and signal governance. This identifies the core metadata, identifiers and data signals that need to move reliably between broadcasters, platforms, agencies and technology partners.
It also addresses how those signals should be governed: which fields matter, what they are used for, how they should be maintained, and what expectations should apply when they support activation, reporting, verification or reconciliation.
The second output is support for the development of a persistent creative reference ID. This addresses a basic but important operational problem: creative assets need to be recognised consistently across platforms, workflows and reporting systems.
A persistent reference point can support campaign reconciliation, frequency management, copy rotation, clearance processes, delivery reporting and post-campaign accountability. In a fragmented programmatic supply chain, the ability to identify the same creative asset across multiple systems is a prerequisite for operational trust.
TV advertising market guide
The third output is a European TV advertising market guide.
Europe will not have a single uniform programmatic TV model, but buyers, sellers and technology partners need a clearer map of the differences that matter.
The guide is intended to provide a cross-market reference covering key regulations, standards, operational requirements, broadcaster expectations, measurement conventions, data practices and compliance considerations. Its purpose is to reduce the cost of understanding market-by-market variation and make cross-border execution less dependent on bespoke knowledge and repeated manual clarification.
Together, these outputs give Stage Two a practical centre of gravity. They are not abstract principles or broad statements of intent. They are designed to make programmatic TV easier to plan, activate, report, verify and reconcile.
For buyers, that should mean clearer delivery data, more consistent signals and fewer bespoke operational workarounds.
For media owners, it should mean reduced implementation burden and stronger protection for the integrity of premium inventory.
For technology partners, it should clarify the baseline expectations required to participate in a more trusted European programmatic TV marketplace.
Building confidence in intermediaries
The third priority area is the Premium Programmatic Partner (or 3Ps) Programme.
This workstream addresses one of the hardest questions in programmatic TV: how can the market have confidence in the intermediaries that route, package, classify and report on premium video inventory?
The 3Ps Programme is being explored as a proportionate assurance layer for programmatic partners. It is not intended to regulate commercial terms, certify individual campaigns or replace contracts.
Its purpose is narrower: to establish a shared baseline for responsible participation in premium programmatic TV.
That could include expectations around verified inventory sources, transparent supply and demand paths, consistent metadata, adoption of established transparency tools such as ads.txt and sellers.json, and accountability for inventory integrity.
This matters because programmatic intermediaries are not neutral pipes. Their systems influence what buyers see, how inventory is classified, which supply paths are used, what fees are disclosed and how delivery is reported.
If premium broadcaster inventory is pooled with lower-quality or misrepresented supply in ways that obscure provenance and context, the market risks value dilution.
If buyers cannot distinguish trusted, professionally produced environments from opaque or fraudulent supply, pricing signals deteriorate and confidence falls.
A credible 3Ps model would not remove the need for contracts, due diligence or bilateral negotiation. But it could reduce duplication, improve comparability and provide a clearer market signal of responsible participation in premium programmatic TV.
The challenge is proportionality: the model must be more robust than self-attestation, but lighter and more scalable than a formal licensing or accreditation regime.
Success means reduced friction
Success for Stage Two of the European Programmatic TV Initiative should ultimately be judged by whether it helps to reduce friction in the real market:
1 – For buyers, success would mean less uncertainty and less waste.
It should become easier to plan premium video across markets, activate through programmatic workflows, understand what was delivered and compare outcomes without manually reconciling conflicting definitions and reports.
The prize is not simply lower CPMs. It is greater confidence that working media budgets are reaching legitimate, high-quality inventory, with fewer hidden costs caused by opaque supply paths, duplicated integrations, inconsistent metadata and post-campaign reconciliation.
2 – For advertisers, the impact could be broader use of premium video.
If programmatic TV becomes easier to understand and easier to trust, it should attract not only established TV advertisers but also digital-first brands that currently find premium video too fragmented, too hard to measure or too operationally demanding.
Better alignment will not eliminate complexity, but it can reduce the perceived risk of moving money into premium environments.
3 – For media owners, success would mean programmatic growth without commoditisation.
Premium inventory should command value because buyers can see and verify its quality, context and provenance.
Better signal governance, clearer reporting and stronger partner accountability should help broadcasters and streamers protect pricing power while still making inventory easier to buy.
4 – For intermediaries and technology partners, success would mean clearer expectations and more efficient onboarding.
A market with shared reporting templates, signal requirements and transparency norms is easier to integrate with than one built on bespoke requests and inconsistent national interpretations.
The metrics for progress
The metrics of progress should be concrete:
- More campaigns using agreed reporting formats
- More inventory carrying minimum viable signals
- Fewer unresolved discrepancies between buyer and seller reports
- Clearer disclosure of supply paths
- Reduced manual troubleshooting
- Faster cross-market onboarding
- Wider voluntary adoption of recognised partner practices.
The European Programmatic TV Initiative will not solve every problem in programmatic advertising. Nor is it trying. Its value lies in focusing on the points where alignment is both possible and commercially useful.
Programmatic TV will scale in Europe. The open question is whether it scales as another fragmented digital marketplace, or as a premium, trusted, interoperable extension of television.
Stage Two is an attempt to make the second outcome more likely.
Jon Watts (pictured right) and Ian Maude are executive directors at PXI, which leads the European Programmatic TV initiative.