One month into launch, AOL Platforms and Australia’s Multi Channel Network (MCN), have signed four agencies up to the world’s first programmatic private marketplace for television.
The initiative, which combines the media, automation and data at scale necessary to drive “real value”, will offer marketers “a much greater efficiency and yield for TV programmers,” said Bob Lord, president of AOL.
“Whatever can be automated will inevitably be automated, especially TV,” he added.
In October 2014, AOL and media advertising company MCN announced their intention to build and pilot a “true programmatic platform” for TV, dubbed MCN Programmatic TV.
“In effect, through our trading platform, advertisers now have the same rich view of a customer’s journey experienced when booking web-based video,” said Mitch Waters, MD, AOL Platforms. “It’s an exciting development.”
The platform brings together consumer insights with first-party viewing data from 110,000 anonymous homes via MCN’s Multiview panel, and access to a range of broadcast linear TV inventory across all dayparts.
Four agencies have used the platform since the launch four weeks ago, including Dentsu Aegis Network (Carat) and OMD.
“The legacy media model, predicated on the notion that scale equals value, is antiquated and no longer works,” said Doug Ray, global president and US CEO, Carat.
“Value for our clients today is now measured in agility, powered by data and technology. We believe that the future of media planning and investment will move from reserved inventory to a more agile approach enabled by programmatic, and are committed to leading this transformation with innovative and collaborative partners like AOL.”
While the future of programmatic TV ad trading looks both promising and inevitable, there are still huge barriers to overcome in the UK, a recent white paper found.
After conquering digital, TV ad buying remains one of the last frontiers for programmatic, where agencies and brands are keen to improve efficiencies in a media where billions of pounds are spent on methods that have changed little over the past 30 years and where targeting is limited.
TubeMogul interviewed broadcasters ITV, Channel 5 and Sky; brands Nestle, Nationwide and Match.com; and media agencies MediaCom, Magna and G14, asking them to give their views on the future of programmatic TV.
While the majority of the nine representatives agreed that programmatic TV has the potential to benefit the entire industry, the report highlights a number of key concerns.
Lack of infrastructure, fear of commoditisation and difficulty in automating regulations which ensure TV advert compliance were among the main concerns, as well as programmatic being perceived by some as a threat to the current way of transacting rather than an additive approach to TV.
ITV’s group commercial director, Simon Daglish, said that ITV trading programmatically is “some way off” and “faces many challenges.”
“There are many changes we would need to make, not only from a regulatory point of view but also from a technological one,” Daglish said.
AOL said it is exploring opportunities to roll out programmatic TV in other global markets.
