Dive Brief:
- AT&T and Videology, an ad tech firm, partnered to create a programmatic private marketplace for a select group of advertisers buying linear ads on U-Verse and DirecTV cable networks.
- The marketplace will allow advertisers to use their own data as well as third-party data in a self-serve automated interface to reach targeted audiences with the TV ads.
- The capability is another step of TV advertising taking more cues from the digital ad world with more automation and audience targeting.
Dive Insight:
One key difference in AT&T’s programmatic TV and digital ads is digital ads bought programmatically typically run immediately, while TV ads still have to be place in shows ahead of time with advertisers booking the spots.
“What is unique about this is that we’re talking about premium, reserved, upfront and scatter-based TV ad inventory,” Videology Chief Executive Scott Ferber told the Wall Street Journal. “That’s very different than what’s been available historically. This is aimed at 99% of the ad money that is out there.”
Bringing technology to TV advertising is one way to make marketers who are becoming accustomed to the ease, targeting and measuring attributes of digital advertising more interested in TV. And recent research from Forrester Consulting found that 49% of surveyed decision-makers from US advertisers, agencies, and media companies predict an increase in traditional TV viewing over the next three years, a figure up from 22% in 2013.