Online Advertising - Premium Video Publishers Resist Programmatic Video
OTR Global attended LiveRail’s Programmatic Speed Dating event in New York last week and found Tremor Video, YuMe and AOL’s ability to gain television ad buyers' interest remains limited as publishers find ample demand for their directly sold premium video inventory.
Broadcasters Resist RTB Video
With television buyers redoubling their focus on online video and with premium online video seeing the highest spend growth, the need to differentiate high-quality inventory from longer-tail inventory is growing. Meanwhile, premium publishers, particularly The Walt Disney Co., CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc., continue to resist the rollout of premium inventory onto open networks and exchanges such as AOL Inc.'s Adap.tv, Tremor Video Inc.'s VideoHub and YuMe Inc., where the units would compete directly with units available on other publisher sites. This means that programmatic video, while still a nascent and booming sector of online video, could attract little, if any, television budget as broadcast dollars look for the highest quality digital inventory.
Buyers who are more comfortable with broadcast and who control larger budgets continue to buy guaranteed online video inventory at scale directly from publishers on a CPP basis using Nielsen Holdings N.V.'s metrics, with a primary focus on broadcaster sites. CBS and Disney are most effective in courting these buyers thanks to brand awareness and the close historical ties between buyers and these companies' broadcast platforms.
Online Content, Broadcast Content Stay Separate
CBS's strategy is still to silo its online and offline inventory. To digital buyers, CBS promotes the targeting of ads on its specialty online properties, such as Last.fm and Cnet.com, which is becoming increasingly available on both private and open exchanges. However, CBS continues to make a clear boundary between this inventory and its CBS.com pre-roll video inventory, which is sold at much higher CPMs through direct agreements with large agencies. CBS plans to release more static and video online-native inventory onto exchanges, but television-native content continues to be sold only directly at significantly higher CPMs.
Viacom has also sold out of its online inventory well in advance and has no plans to make any inventory available on an open exchange. Similarly, Disney has said that the demand for inventory on its ABC and ESPN properties remains robust and inventory continues to sell out several months in advance through direct buys with agencies. The company continues to restrict its television-native pre-roll inventory to direct sales.
Event: LiveRail Programmatic Speed Dating Event
When: Sept. 24, 2013
Where: New York
Who Attended: Ad agency executives and buyers and premium online video publishers.
Why it Matters: Best online video inventory remains out of reach for AOL, YuMe and Tremor Video.
