Breaking barriers: Uniting Europe’s fragmented TV ad market
Opinion
Europe’s TV landscape is evolving rapidly, paving the way for a programmatic marketplace. It’s in every stakeholder’s interest to collaborate on key issues such as standardisation and measurement.
Europe’s TV and video marketplace is experiencing a period of significant change and development, dramatically increasing the range of entertainment offerings available to consumers, stimulating innovation and creating compelling new opportunities for advertisers.
TV viewing is increasingly being consumed on streaming services and addressable TV platforms, and a growing proportion of TV ad inventory is ad-served and impressions-based.
Justin Gupta, head of broadcast and video ads, EMEA, sell-side partnerships, at Google, made the call for collaboration to optimise the potential of addressable TV advertising at scale when he told me: “Programmatic TV advertising in Europe must evolve to capture this opportunity.”
Fast-moving developments are paving the way for a programmatic TV marketplace — one that leverages data and automation to streamline TV and video ad buying and delivery.
Programmatic TV can encompass a range of channels and formats, from dynamically inserted linear overlays to ad-served streaming inventory. It can facilitate a range of trading models, including biddable offerings in open or private marketplaces or non-biddable inventory, as part of programmatic guaranteed or preferred offerings.
However, the key to unlocking programmatic TV’s full capabilities lies in technology integration, according to Hitesh Bhatt, senior director of CTV/OTT, EMEA, at PubMatic. He pointed out that the key to success lies in empowering broadcasters with technology that seamlessly integrates with their infrastructure and these bridging solutions “will be essential for making it easier to plan and buy campaigns and maximising the value of premium TV and video inventory across the entire market”.
Unquestionably, programmatic can offer considerable benefits to both buyers and sellers. It can help sellers access demand cost-effectively across multiple European markets, helping to unlock new budgets from international marketers and new-to-TV advertisers.
It can improve monetisation of zero-rated spots and lower-value inventory, and it can provide buyers with a flexible, efficient and automated way of buying across multiple media owners, leveraging first-party data and innovative, scaled identity solutions.
So what’s the problem?
The standardisation challenge
Like most solutions that leverage data and automation, programmatic solutions tend to work best when standards and data are consistently applied, supporting dynamic interoperability across the programmatic marketplace.
However, Europe’s TV markets are joyously, fundamentally distinctive. Countries and broadcasters operate under varying technical standards, regulatory requirements and audience measurement tools.
Even within individual markets, broadcast advertising codes — such as the UK’s Code of Broadcast Advertising or France’s Autorité de Régulation Professionnelle de la Publicité clearance — are not always uniformly interpreted. Although solvable, this lack of standardisation and consistency is widely believed to be slowing progress.
Moreover, Europe’s major commercial broadcasters are not new entrants. They are well-established, highly successful media owners with decades of investment and sunk costs in campaign booking and set-up systems, metadata solutions, playout and reporting systems, measurement solutions, trading mechanics and currencies.
Many of these systems, solutions and workflows are shared. These are not static systems but have been invested in and proven to work over many years. Legacy is often taken to mean outmoded or out of date, but this is generally far from the truth — many of Europe’s leading broadcasters are well-advanced in rolling out sophisticated self-service platforms that replicate at least some of the capabilities of the programmatic ecosystem.
Put another way: the benefits of programmatic adoption are somewhat unevenly distributed across the TV and video ecosystem.
Change is happening, but it will take time.
Measurement and currency: Need for common ground?
The evolution of measurement and currency is one critical area of contention in this marketplace. Europe’s TV joint industry currencies (JICs) remain relatively robust, evolving their solutions to incorporate big TV datasets and expanding to encompass broadcaster streaming services and major international streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. TV isn’t going anywhere; it’s growing and evolving.
However, JICs are not currently being widely used across the programmatic TV ecosystem and there is no clear consensus about how best to move forward.
In some markets, JICs are partnering major programmatic platforms to make their data available to buyers. Other media owners argue in favour of impressions, identity signals and/or contextual.
Some industry participants suggest that there is no immediate need for a single overarching measurement solution or currency — and no viable path towards one. Part of the promise of programmatic is flexibility and choice, so why not enable multiple options? Others note that reach and frequency remain crucial considerations for many advertisers and the market needs to align on measurement solutions that support planning across TV, streaming, digital video and display.
Rowena Taylor, vice-president of publisher partnerships, EMEA, at OpenX, underscored the point when she stressed: “By fostering collaboration and embracing more open standards, we can create a thriving programmatic ecosystem that respects each country’s unique structure and business practices while unlocking new opportunities for growth.”
A path forward?
There are no quick or easy fixes for these issues. Transformation is always challenging and, make no mistake, the TV market of 2035 will look very different from that of 2025.
At a minimum, broadcasters, streamers, platform operators, technology providers, agencies and advertisers need to collaborate to standardise technical requirements and measurement frameworks within each national market. Regional initiatives face more considerable challenges, but there are signs of progress.
No single player can address these challenges alone. Collaborative initiatives will be essential to facilitate the path forward.
By standardising metrics and building unified ecosystems, stakeholders can unlock the full potential of programmatic TV, providing a better experience for both brands and viewers. In a market as complex and diverse as Europe’s, cooperation is key to unlocking a future where programmatic TV thrives.
Jon Watts is executive director at the Project X Initiative, which is working with a number of adtech platforms as part of the European Programmatic TV Initiative
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