SpotXchange has hired Randy Cooke to the post of vice president of programmatic TV, marking the video ad platform’s entry into an emerging market segment that aims to bring more Web-style automation to the process of buying and selling TV advertising.
In his new role, Cooke will head Denver-based SpotXchange’s expansion into the television market, starting off wth developing and expanding the company’s partnerships with MVPDs, content providers, ad agencies and data suppliers. He most recently served as vice president of research at NCC Media, an organization that provides ad sales and marketing services to cable, satellite and telco video service providers.
“More than anything, the discussion around programmatic TV needs a narrative arc that starts with the industry challenges programmatic can mitigate, and ends with a vision of a future predicated on the television industry’s embrace of programmatic as an essential tactic, not a strategy,” said Cooke, in a statement.
SpotXchange claims that its platform processes over three billion video ad decisions daily, delivering ads to more than 335 million people across 100 countries each month.
SpotXchange is entering a programmatic TV market that’s starting to heat up. Of recent note, Cox Media, the advertising division of Cox Communications, inked a deal with Magna Global to form a private programmatic TV marketplace that uses the AudienceXpress platform.
But programmatic models aren’t expected to take over how TV ads are bought and sold overnight. At the recent NewBay Media NYC Television Week in New York, ad execs said a more automated, programmatic model will help advertisers reach audiences as they become more fragmented, but view it as a complementary component that won’t encroach into the traditional way TV ads are bought and sold, particularly when it comes to television’s biggest, most popular shows.
