Digital technology company PubMatic has launched a new programmatic offering that enables connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top (OTT) ads to run seamlessly and improve the revenue that media owners get from their streaming video ads.
PubMatic co-founder and CEO Rajeev Goel flagged the new product earlier in the year, telling Business Insider that the company had put 40 people to work on building it.
OpenWrap OTT is a header bidding solution that will make it easier for publishers to sell and advertisers to access OTT and CTV inventory.
Until now, header bidding did not exist at scale for OTT inventory.
The new product has been developed to fix problems around ad frequency, ad pods and publisher yields, while also providing a "TV-like" experience for ads in OTT environments.
Some of the ad pod challenges it will solve include frequency capping, competitive exclusions and back-to-back ads.
An ad pod is a group of ads that play back-to-back in one commercial ad break, and the PubMatic solution is aimed at enabling marketers to better control when and how their ads run, especially not in the same pod as a competitor.
OpenWrap OTT is built on the open source software stack PreBid and will see PubMatic take on competitor, the recently merged Telaria and Rubicon Project.
PubMatic vice president of video Jonas Olsen says the solution offers publishers and advertisers the next phase in programmatic advertising.
“The first priority for publishers and advertisers is to deliver a great, TV-like experience. OpenWrap OTT delivers for the viewer first, which in turn drives the business goals of our clients,” Olsen says.
“Powered by Prebid, our independent solution offers the next generation in programmatic advertising for the rapidly emerging OTT and CTV channels.”
In the US, clients including Kidoodle.TV, Limpid, Glewed TV, Interpublic Group (IPG) and MediaMath have already signed on to use OpenWrap OTT.
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