The decade-long journey of programmatic advertising is being upended by the rise of connected TV (CTV), as the channel redefines the meaning of automation.
That is according to Soo Jin Oh, Chief Strategy Officer of Comcast’s FreeWheel ad-tech unit, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“It’s definitely been a journey because programmatic has been around for over a decade,” Oh says. “It’s really thrived because of the ability to unlock reaching audiences across millions of websites, mobile apps in a very automated way.”
Finite Inventory Redefines Programmatic
But, when it comes to CTV, Oh says: “It’s really uprooting the definition of how you automate and how do you unlock that value. There’s not millions of premium sources when it comes to CTV, it’s much more finite.”
As a result, “a lot of the programmatic ecosystem players have to really redefine how they approach programmatic”, Oh believes. “It’s that one-to-one connection and connection directly to the source where that’s been the beginning part of the journey.”
Whilst programmatic advertising has historically been associated with real-time bidding on open exchanges, Oh says the CTV evolution has seen deals struck directly between ad buyers and sellers. “A lot of programmatic guarantee deals with buyers and sellers, and now we’re really moving more towards things like marketplace buying, layering more audiences, and doing that at scale,” she says.
Growth In Live, Shoppable Ads
Oh expects to see growth in programmatic availability of live content like news and sports.
“Even things like major sporting events or the upcoming presidential race that will become more and more programmatically enabled,” she says. “So that is exciting.”
Oh also expects growth in programmatic delivery of shoppable ads.
“We’re still in early stages of shoppable,” she says. “We’ve tried QR codes. We are testing out things like dual device, whether it’s a remote control or mobile phone.”
Millisecond Complexity
Oh says FreeWheel is working to bring programmatic delivery to live events like the Olympics. But she acknowledges the complexity.
“We’re talking about millions of people subscribing and viewing in milliseconds,” she says. “We have to deliver the right ads.
“So at FreeWheel we’re working on things like how do we get the creative to be approved and vetted in advance so that there’s no missed moments, and making sure that we make that also programmatically transactable so that advertisers could buy that type of inventory at scale.”
You’re watching coverage of Premium Programmatic Summit 2024, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by FreeWheel. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
