LONDON – Streaming TV may have come a long way – but it still has a way to go to support burgeoning consumer behaviors.
That’s the view according to one ad-tech leader whose company operates a major digital ad marketplace.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Alex Gardner, Chief Revenue Officer, Index Exchange, says the industry has much work to do to support quality ad experiences in the new world.
Standards needed
“A few years ago … we recognized the lack of true standards that were intended to specifically address the unique challenges of streaming within programmatic,” said Gardner.
Index Exchange has been working with the IAB Tech Lab on OpenRTB 2.6, a set of programmatic trading standards designed to support connected TV ad formats.
But Gardner said more challenges remain, especially when it comes to supporting quality ad insertion into live-streamed TV.
“Things like predictability around the scale and size of the audiences for a given live event, the signaling of the live event opportunities as a true live event as opposed to a pre-recorded event,” he says.
“There are requirements that are needed to accommodate these large bursts or surges in concurrent users and views, and all of those create a really interesting opportunity.”
Olympic starting gun
He cites the recent Tokyo Olympics as a watershed moment that proved consumer interest in live-streamed sports.
“The potential is significant,” Gardner adds. “I think to this year’s Olympics, as a great indication of what the consumer can expect from a live experience, where they become the curators of their content in many ways.
“We had those concurrent events around the larger, be it the relays or a big swimming event. And so, the Olympics for many was kind of the beginning, if you will, of streaming in sports, live events.”
Supporting advertisers
With that behavior growing, Gardner wants to see the industry come together to make the infrastructure and the standards to support advertiser goals.
“How do we unlock that in a way that is predictable and sustainable for marketers?” he asked. “All of a sudden, we (will) have an experience where the user themselves has a really quality, high-quality experience consuming that content.
“We are creating an opportunity for marketers that perhaps historically haven’t had the opportunity to engage with those audiences in a manner that they now can within a programmatic context.”
You’re watching Beet.TV’s coverage of CIMM London 2024, presented by Index Exchange. For more videos from CIMM London, please visit this page.
