Following an announcement in the US that IPG Mediabrands' programmatic arm Cadreon has partnered with TubeMogul to build a TV automation platform, we caught up with Sydney-based MD of Cadreon, Marc Lomas, to find out more about the move, and what this means for the local market here.
It was recently announced in America that technology from TubeMogul and data intelligence from Cadreon will be used to jointly build an automation system to scale automated buying efforts in TV, creating a “proprietary inventory-agnostic, demand-side platform for TV”.
Some say the race is well and truly on for programmatic TV in Australia, with MCN and ONE by AOL:TV (formerly Adap.tv) making strides in the space and local TubeMogul MD Sam Smith previously telling AdNews plans were afoot to “nail the Australian solution”, but does this recent announcement shake things up and what inventory do they have access to in the US?
Lomas said that the US market is leading the way for advanced TV and therefore the new platform is launching first in the US with US inventory and data.
He said the platform aggregates inventory from cable/satellite operators, local broadcast affiliates and national cable direct inventory. The platform will provide a more automated solution for TV buying, with a custom-designed interface to increase the efficiencies Cadreon can deliver to IPG Mediabrands’ clients.
A “specialised, cross-functional team” of engineers, analysts, and operations from Cadreon and TubeMogul are now dedicated to co-developing the “advanced TV platform”. The platform is in beta and will roll out fully next month.
“The deal came about due to Cadreon and TubeMogul sharing a desire and vision to bring greater efficiency and effectiveness to TV advertising,” Lomas said.
He said that while the platform launched in the US first, as with all Cadreon projects there are rapid global roll-out and expansion plans.
Global CEO of IPG Mediabrands Henry Tajer said the platform is wholly focused on clients’ needs, rather than one specific media vendor.
“Today, there’s no automated system to access TV inventory from multiple suppliers, and our clients will be the first to receive the benefits of automation for this part of the market,” Tajer said.
“This is a great opportunity for our clients to apply and leverage sharp audience segments to TV buying. As an industry, we can be smarter with TV, where a giant portion of our clients’ media investment currently sits, and this partnership gets us there.”
Lomas said this will “absolutely” impact Australia and the business is working on this now.
He said market teams will adopt the platform and bring it to life in their local market by adding in their own unique inventory partners and data sets.
“It is too early to discuss any specifics, but suffice to say 'Watch this space'. There are a number of partners that are very excited by the proposition of driving automation and effectiveness into the space,” Lomas said.
TubeMogul runs the majority of Cadreon video advertising across mobile and desktop. Cadreon also recently launched a digital out-of-home project with TubeMogul.
“The powerful cross-screen advertising vision is really beginning to take life – we now have a single console that serves video advertising across a huge array of 'screens', backed by a powerful insights engine,” Lomas said.
He said that in addition, Cadreon has also created a platform that brings together multiple offline and online market data sources to deliver “rich actionable insights for more effective planning and buying”.
“The impact will be delivering much more effective advertising for clients whilst delivering operational efficiency for the agencies and vendors,” Lomas said.
Of the new partnership, TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson said while TubeMogul is actually building software with Cadreon, it will be “Cadreon-skinned”.
“It will integrate very unique TV data sets and it will bring in their inventory and they certainly have a lot of leverage in the market,” Wilson said.
“So that’s an exciting partnership and model, because you end up with a product that’s probably better than either organisation could develop on their own. And we’d certainly be interested in developing other custom-developed software solutions with large advertisers.”
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