BOSTON – The advertising marketplace has grown more complex amid increased fragmentation among media channels, including various digital platforms on connected devices. Centro, a provider of trading and media operations software for digital advertisers, sees an opportunity for continued automation among buyer and sellers of advertising in a more omnichannel environment.
“The biggest challenge is complexity,” Derek Newman, product lead of advanced TV at Centro, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “In a truly omnichannel media mix, an advertiser will want to have full control and insight into all of those channels and tactics they’re using.”
Centro’s flagship platform, which is called Basis, automates digital operations across programmatic, direct buying, connected TV, search and social advertising. Advertisers use Basis for planning, buying, bill payment, reconciliation, analytics and business insights through a single interface.
“We have digitally native customers looking for ways to incorporate video and TV in their media mix,” Newman said. “Simultaneously, we have marketers in traditional channels, but actually want to reach audiences that are digitally native. You have a market where buyers are coming in, and new solutions are being created. It all adds up to a complex and disjointed industry where these market layers would welcome any form of automation in any part of the process.”
As advertisers seek to reach households that have hooked up their TVs directly to the internet, connected TV ad spending next year will jump 40% to $11.4 billion in the United States, and make up 4.2% of total media spending, researcher eMarketer estimated.
Source: eMarketer
To help advertisers scale up their campaigns, Centro collaborates with companies including Xandr, the advertising and analytics unit of WarnerMedia Commercial, itself a division of AT&T’s WarnerMedia.
“Xandr has been an instrumental partner for Centro to help our advertising clients complement their digital campaigns with the reach of audiences viewing those traditional media channels,” Newman said. “Unfortunately, much of traditional media is still transacted network-to-network. Our partnership with Xandr and our platform provide automation work flows that synchronize well with Xandr’s solution, and help bridge that gap between media buyers and video suppliers.”
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