AOL has today announced plans for the world’s ‘first cross-screen programmatic platform’ to give advertisers and their agencies brand insight and action across all screens, including TV, video, display and mobile.
The plans for ‘ONE’ were announced during a keynote presentation on Wednesday at ad:tech by AOL’s chairman and CEO, Tim Armstrong. The launch would mean that for the first time clients will be able to plan, buy and execute campaigns across all screen formats from a single platform.
During the speech, Armstrong, alongside CEO of AOL Platforms, Bob Lord, described advertising’s future as “an open ecosystem” where partners and competitors, publishers and marketers, are “all beneficiaries of a platform-driven industry”.
IPG Mediabrands is set to be the charter agency network partner for ONE as the platform aims to fully automate half of its media investments by 2016.
In a statement, AOL said: “ONE will be the first platform that empowers brands with a holistic view of the consumer’s journey through the marketing funnel, and makes that insight actionable, in real-time on the platform. Development on ONE is underway and customers will be able to start using portions of the platform later this year.
“It is completely format, screen and inventory agnostic – from video, display and TV, to tablet, desktop and mobile devices, to reserved and non-reserved inventory across AOL or any other publisher or media source.”
It is estimated that a total of $100 billion will be spent on programmatic buying across screens globally in the next four years, according to the MAGNA Programmatic Forecast released last October.
By 2017, 80% of cross-format ad spend (display, video and mobile) will be transacted programmatically in the US, with international markets seeing a 240% growth in programmatic spend from 2013.
“Our industry has developed too many niche offerings and specialised services over the last 25 years, and chaos in ad tech is at an all-time high,” said Lord. “The inefficiencies, ineffectiveness and expense of managing multiple teams, tools and metrics for display, mobile and video, across all devices, are stifling.
“The holy grail of marketing is helping marketers understand how direct response and brand budgets can interact together…with the goal of driving economic efficiencies and media effectiveness, ONE ensures that data drives media selection and allocation, pricing and creative.”
