NEW YORK — It’s being hailed by Comcast Advertising as “a step change for the advertising industry.” What, precisely, does that mean?
Agencies and brands can buy targetable, biddable ads on linear TV for the first time.
With addressable advertising a key desire for marketers and media buying and planning teams in today’s environment, media buyers “now have seamless access to traditional TV inventory within the Programmatic Private Marketplace (PMP).”
This, Comcast Advertising says, enables a media buyer to bid and target on linear TV alongside digital inventory, with unified media buying delivered through its FreeWheel busienss.
“Post beta phase, which is currently underway with Comcast’s inventory, FreeWheel publisher clients will be able to enable their inventory,” the Comcast Corp. unit said on Thursday.
How this could benefit broadcast TV was demonstrated by global ad industry giant Dentsu, with VP/Partnerships and Video and Audio Lead Kevin Weigand overseeing a marketing plan in which his team worked with Comcast Advertising and Rabbits Black to promote the movie “Stitch Head,” on behalf of Briarcliff Entertainment. Dentsu used a PMP campaign that includes Connected TV, and biddable linear.
“This first-to-market collaboration unlocks the largest opportunity yet to complement Connected TV with incremental reach into linear households in a programmatic buying platform, made possible by dentsu’s Modern Video and proprietary data and identity solutions, integrated with FreeWheel’s Buyer Cloud,” Comcast Advertising said.
Weigand added, “Through the promotion of the movie, we delivered true incremental reach via our scaled Modern Video approach, demonstrating the power of unified, audience-based buying across linear and digital channels for our clients.”
Key features include:
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Biddable, Targetable Linear Inventory: For the first time, linear TV is available via traditional PMP, making it biddable for buyers rather than executed on a spot basis. This inventory is also targetable on the buyer’s end, so they can bid based off of the same segments they are buying on digital.
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Choice & Control: Buyers are now able to set the mark on how they want to access inventory and audiences, whether through a managed IO, PMP, or PG deal. Additionally, agencies and advertisers have the ability to optimize their media buys.
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Simplicity & Efficiency: Brands can easily purchase linear and digital inventory together, effectively reaching their audiences– as research shows that when TV is added to a digital campaign, overall performance dramatically improves. For instance, there was a lift in purchase intent of +15% when ads aired on TV plus digital compared to digital alone.
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Incremental Reach: More than 11 billion impressions a month on premium linear inventory are available, creating a new, vast supply of content for advertisers who typically purchase programmatically.
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FreeWheel Buyer Cloud: FreeWheel’s powerful and customizable buying stack is leveraged for optimal campaign execution and management to add access to audiences above and beyond the traditional programmatic execution.
