AT&T and Videology Introduce Private Marketplace For Advertisers
The partnership duo offers opportunity to brands to use data and software to place TV ads.
AT&T states marketers will be equipped soon with the ability to purchase advertisements on linear television in 26 million homes using data targeting andinternet-like software. Through its collaboration with the ad tech firm, Videology, the telecom aims to launch a so-called “private marketplace” for a select group of advertisers.
Using the programmatic advertisement purchasing software of Videology, these advertisers will be provided an opportunity to purchase linear TV advertisements on an extensive range of cable networks in houses that are subscribers of the U-Verse service of the American telecommunication service provider or Direct TV, beginning in the 3rd quarter.
In 2015, the telecom purchased DirecTV for a sum of $49 billion. Advertisers who purchase ads in the private market of AT&T will get a chance to use their data and data provided by outside parties and sign onto a self-serve web interface. There, they will be able to buy ads on networks that are comparatively probable to reach particular target audiences like people who are likely to be in the marketplace for a new car in the upcoming few months, stated official of AT&T, Jason Brown.
The company is planning to conduct a beta test with a marketer to test the device in the upcoming few months. The concept to make television advertising more like “programmatic TV” or digital advertising has moved quite slowly in the previous few years, despite of a fair amount of buzz.
Last week, NBCUniversal announced that some national television ads would be sold by it using automated data and tools. Like the move of NBCU into this industry, the partnership between Videology and AT&T plays a role in bringing more precision and automation to TV advertisement selling.
Unlike most digital advertisements, which are delivered to people in milliseconds and made to target them based on their internet surfing history, AT&T TV advertisements will yet be placed inside shows before time and marketers will need to book advertisement space in advance.
Jason stated a huge selling strength of this project for AT&T would be the commitment to transparency. While the focus of this new private market is on linear TV, Jason told AT&T would explore expanding this ability to the recently announced mobile-focused devices of the company.
On March 2, 2016, AT&T disclosed plans to provide DirecTV subscriptions to mobile customers and separate advertisement-supported streaming facility. Now, the huge opportunity is in moving after the conventional national TV budgets of national marketers, while also fulfilling their wish to borrow some of the targeting capabilities of digital advertising.
