COLOGNE-Most newspaper publishers might be satisfied with regularly selling out their digital video inventory via good old-fashioned direct sales, particularly if they’ve managed to survive for well over 100 years. Nonetheless, Italy’s RCS MediaGroup sees the importance of programmatic sales to help monetize video content in a rapidly changing media landscape, said Simone Branca, Head of Marketing, Digital Advertising.
“It doesn’t matter the channel you want to use to buy my inventory,” Branca said in an interview with Beet.TV. “We have to be flexible to be able to provide you the solution you need in this moment.”
Two major digital and offline properties of RCS—the leading newspaper publisher in Italy and Spain—are Corriere della Sera (founded in 1876) and La Gazzetta dello Sport (1896). “We are used to being sold out every week,” said Branca of his video inventory.
But at the same time, “the landscape is changing very quickly and we are trying to integrate in a very efficient way a programmatic strategy to monetize as best as possible our video inventory,” Branca added.
As part of its programmatic rollout, RCS contracted with StickyADS.tv just under three years ago. The results to date, according to Branca, “have been very, very positive,” enabling the publisher to become increasingly sophisticated about its products and solutions.
In the Italian CPM hierarchy, RCS is “at the top of the chain,” Branca explained. “What we’re trying to do is avoid overlapping between the two channels, programmatic and direct,” he said, while keeping pricing aligned.
Branca is hoping that more advances in technology will make ad serving across devices more seamless and enable him to better follow his audiences, although he believes it’s important to remember that “Simone Branca is always one brand. It doesn’t matter the device he’s using at the moment.”
We spoke with Branca at the recent FreeWheel European summit in Cologne presented along with StickyAds.tv. Please visit this page for additional videos from Beet’s coverage.
