Now in its second year of offering television advertisers guarantees on audience targets beyond age and gender for national linear inventory, Turner Broadcasting is ready to scale up its offerings. “We were very intentional in keeping the number of clients in the first year, when we were in beta test, to a small number,” says Michael Strober, EVP, Client Strategy and Ad Innovation.
“This year, we’ve had the confidence and ability to scale that,” he notes in an interview with Beet.TV.
Because the programmatic ecosystem is still largely a manual process, Turner is prepared for the accompanying pressure on its internal resources, according to Strober. “I’ve heard the expression ‘progra-manual.’ I don’t even think we’re there yet. It’s still very much a manual process,” Strober says. “But I think over time as more and more interest comes, there’s going to be the need for more automation and better machine-to-machine capabilities.”
With the dust still settling on this year’s Upfront TV negotiations, Strober is gratified with the “enormous amount of demand and interest” in the company’s audience-buying solutions: Targeting Now and Audience Now. He was surprised at how many advertisers are ready to move beyond the traditional Nielsen age/gender demographic targets. “We’re also see a lot of the marketers come back year after year” for Turner’s audience guarantees, he adds.
Right now, Turner is offering programmatic buys on full-episode players, both long- and short-form content. “We’re not currently using the VOD and OTT inventory right now, but I imagine that will be coming online,” Strober says.
One of the key learnings for Turner at this year’s DMEXCO conference in Cologne will be how widespread the interest is in programmatic TV buying. “What I’m curious to see when we head to DMEXCO is the interest in programmatic and audience based targeting around the globe,” Strober says.
This video is part of “The Road to DMEXCO ’16,” a lead-up series with key influencers on the topics and trends to be addressed at DMEXCO. This series is presented by YuMe. Please visit this page for additional segments.
