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With interest heating up in programmatic advertising approaches that help automate buying and selling of inventory, B&C and MCN offer this list of advertising technology companies that are developing programmatic tools.
The list is not intended to be comprehensive; there are hundreds of ad technology companies playing one part or another in this ecosystem for digital platforms, where programmatic buying is already a well-established practice. In addition, deployments in the TV industry are still in their infancy, making it difficult to keep track of all the emerging players.
Rather, the list is intended as a snapshot of the range of technologies currently available. Each listing provides key contacts, a brief description of the kind of technologies the companies provide and, where possible, a sense of the work they are already doing with TV companies.
ADAP.TV, A DIVISION OF AOL PLATFORMS
CONTACTS: Bob Lord, global CEO, AOL Platforms, (212) 652-6317; Dan Ackerman, head of programmatic TV, AOL Platforms, (650) 937-3803
OFFERING: adap.tv’s programmatic video platform is already used to plan, buy and measure billions of video ads every month across the Web, mobile and linear television. Its cross-screen programmatic video technology is also being built into One by AOL, which the company says will provide a holistic view of a consumer’s journey through the marketing funnel.
ADMORE
CONTACTS: Brendan Condon, CEO, Media Properties Holdings, brendan.condon@mph.tv, (212) 260-4712; Sean King, chief revenue officer, sean.king@mph.tv, (951) 216-6570
URL:www.revshare.com/advertisers/admore
OFFERING: Launched in 2013, AdMore’s automated TV buying platform reaches more than 110 million households across 200 DMAs. The platform is designed to optimize TV campaigns and reach targeted audiences more cost effectively; provides real-time campaign analytics along with Nielsen-verified audience and ratings measurement; also includes new tools for capturing data and using it to better reach consumers and boost sales. AdMore is a division of Media Properties Holdings.
AERSERV
Contact: Josh Speyer CEO, (888) 451-4705
URL:aerserv.com
Offering: A mobile ad serving and mediation platform that includes a variety of yield optimization tools; works with thousands of apps, from premium publishers to independent developers, to improve their existing ad network revenue through mediation and by tapping into the aerMarket’s demand inventory. On the programmatic front, it allows mobile video buyers to purchase mobile video inventory across AerServ’s platform, which encompasses billions of mobile video ad impressions daily. AerServ mobile RTB, which is based on the openRTB standard, has served hundreds of millions of impressions to date across dozens of partners in the private alpha.
ALLANT
Contact: Dave Irwin, president, dirwin@allantgroup.com, (630) 778-2764; Eric Schmitt, executive VP communications, TV and media, eschmitt@allantgroup.com, (617) 794-1459
URL:allantgroup.com
Offering: A major provider of advanced TV advertising software and data products used by leading TV distributors, network programmers and Fortune 500 advertisers; its Audience Interconnect platform has been used in hundreds of TV, VOD and online household and zone-addressable campaigns by local and national ad sales teams. In the programmatic space, Audience Interconnect provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) system and analytic platform for audience research and segmentation, addressable campaign execution and campaign measurement for premium video ads across linear TV, VOD and online.
AUDIENCEXPRESS
CONTACTS: Walt Horstman, president, (212) 356-8070
OFFERING: AudienceXpress automates planning, audience buying, optimization and daily reporting for TV campaigns across a national footprint using technology from Visible World and data from many providers. It’s Web-based sell-side platform aggregates inventory from multiple TV partners and is designed to help agencies and brands simplify buying and managing programmatic television inventory. The company also provides dynamic ad insertion on more than 100 cable networks.
BRIGHTROLL
CONTACTS: Tod Sacerdoti, CEO/founder; Brent Horowitz, VP/business development, (415) 677-9222
OFFERING: Provides clients with access to more than 45 billion monthly impressions across Web, mobile, tablet and linear and connected-TV devices from more than 21,000 supply sources; its end-to-end platform includes BrightRoll DSP, BrightRoll for Publishers and the BrightRoll Marketplace, a 100% programmatic, real-time bidding (RTB) exchange. Works with operators and inventory aggregators to offer inventory to advertisers from networks owned by AETN, Discovery, Disney, Fox, NBCU, Turner, Viacom, Univision and others.
BROADWAY SYSTEMS
CONTACTS: James Ackerman, executive chairman; John Sorensen, president, (616) 454-4400
OFFERING: Broadway System’s traffic, billing and ad sales management software is widely used by cable and advanced television networks; as part of an effort to help its network clients expand their programmatic capabilities, the company has recently developed integration with a major programmatic advertising platform.
CIVOLUTION
CONTACTS: Alex Terpstra, CEO, Civolution, (31) 40-4100200
OFFERING: a major provider of technology to identify, manage and monetize media content, with a major focus on digital watermarking- and finger-printing-based applications. Civolution also offers a TV-Synced Ads platform used by agencies to deliver ads to second screens that are triggered by key words in TV content. Recently added “category targeting” in twenty-plus categories to its TV-Synced Ads platform.
CLYPD
CONTACTS: Doug Hurd, executive VP of business development and cofounder; Mark Mitchell, chief relationship officer, (844) 718-1100
URL:www.clypd.com
OFFERING: Its programmatic solution for TV advertising sales includes workflow automation, sales management and tools to improve use of data in making decisions; has a team of both TV and digital ad experts as part of a larger push to apply the best programmatic strategies from the digital world to TV.
COGNITIVE NETWORKS
CONTACTS: Michael Collette, CEO; Greg Hampton, VP of business development, Greg.Hampton@cognitivenetworks.com, (415) 697-3380
OFFERING: Major provider of real-time services using automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies that are deploying in nearly 50% of smart TVs sold in the U.S.; company’s Engage API allows smart TVs to launch applications that are synched to second-screen content or ads. Smart TV data captured by its systems can help match data to other data sets, building targetable audience segments, and measurement of return on investment in programmatic efforts.
COLLECTIVE
Contact: Joe Apprendi, founder and CEO, joe@collective.com, (646) 442-6512; Kerry Bianchi, COO, kbianchi@collective.com, (646) 998-6073; Eoin Townsend, CPO, (646) 918-1010
URL:collective.com
Offering: A marketing technology company that helps brands acquire customers through multiscreen, programmatic media. Offers the VISTO marketing platform and managed service offering as well as individual media solutions that provide technologies for data and campaign management, audience targeting, analytics and insight into performance, placement, quality and costs.
FREEWHEEL
CONTACTS: Doug Knopper, cofounder/coCEO; Jon Heller, cofounder/coCEO, (212) 913-9222
URL:www.freewheel.tv
OFFERING: Its FourFronts Programmatic solution is targeted to both the buy and sell side, with tools to plan and reserve inventory in advance; also allows advertisers to upload their data into a secure “data escrow” so advertisers can maintain confidentiality of data while providing publishers with the information from the “blinded data” they need to forecast available inventory and make proposals. Participants in a pilot of the FourFronts Programmatic platform include ABC, Discovery Communications, adap.tv, TubeMogul, Allstate, Magna Global, Starcom MediaVest and Optimedia.
CONTACTS: Neal Mohan, VP, display and video advertising, (650) 253-0000
URL:www.google.com/doubleclick
OFFERING: Google offers a complete programmatic suite for marketers and publishers that supports display, video and mobile ad formats on websites and in apps. Its DoubleClick Digital Marketing Suite includes an ad server (DoubleClick Campaign Manager), a demand-side platform (DoubleClick Bid Manager), a search-marketing platform (DoubleClick Search) and analytics (Google analytics); also has a cross-platform exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers. Recently purchased mDialog, which works with broadcasters to monetize live, linear and on-demand content on all screens.
INVISION
CONTACTS: Steve Marshall, CEO, steve.marshall@invisioninc.com, (917) 522-8567; Christina Barlowe, SVP, strategic sales and consulting services, christina.barlowe@invisioninc.com, (917) 522-8597
OFFERING: Has over 20 years of experience providing multiplatform advertising software that is now used to manage over $13 billion in ad revenue. For programmatic efforts has developed a “unified sales channel” to help sellers optimize their revenue, apply pricing constructs to their inventory and more easily integrate with the buying ecosystem; platform provides a complete range of programmatic tools from workflow automation, to advanced audience segmentation and dynamic ad insertion.
IMAGINE COMMUNICATIONS
CONTACTS: Charlie Vogt, CEO; Sarah Foss, vice president, media product line management, sarah.foss@imaginecommunications.com
URL:www.imaginecommunications.com
OFFERING: A variety of traffic and billing, ad sales, broadcast management systems for broadcast stations and networks, including LandmarkOSI Traffic & Billing, LandmarkOSI Cloud and LandmarkOSI Sales. To strengthen ad technologies, recently acquired eclipsePlus, eclipsePlus/xG Billing, eclipsePlus/xG Insights and eclipsePlus/xG Linear ad campaign management systems used by cable operators to manage more than 1.2 billion spots and $3 billion of ad revenue annually.
ITN NETWORKS
CONTACTS: Tim J. Connors Jr., CEO, timconnors@itnnetworks.com, (212) 572-9202; Alan Walz, EVP and chief marketing and research officer, awalz@itnnetworks.com, (212) 572-9211
URL: itnnetworks.com
OFFERING: Has over 30 years of experience running an “unwired network” that allows national advertisers to easily buy local inventory with extensive technologies for streamlining the process of planning, buying and measuring campaigns. Drawing on that technology, the company now offers Ad-Vantage, a complete programmatic platform of technology, inventory, data and services. It is starting to license the platform to companies and conducting beta tests, with a full-rollout this year.
LIVERAIL
CONTACTS: Erwin Castellanos, CRO, LiveRail, sales@LiveRail.com, (415) 512-7017
URL:www.liverail.com
OFFERING: Advertising technologies and video ad management platform focused on helping publishers manage and monetize online video content; system designed for use on a wide range of platforms, including Roku and Apple TV, gaming consoles, connected TVs, PCs and mobile devices. Has integrations with all the major demand-side platforms (DSPs), ad networks and agency trading desks. Over 200 companies including CBS, MLB.com, A&E Networks, PBS, ABC Family and BET use the technologies to sell video inventory.
MANAGE
CONTACTS: Fred Hsu, founder/CEO; Mike Miller, senior VP of sales and marketing, (415) 689-6017
URL:www.manage.com
OFFERING: Focuses on mobile sector, with spectrum of data-driven solutions for advertisers and publishers; fully managed programmatic platform offers real-time bidding (RTB) technology and secure digital monitoring products. Handles over 20 billion RTB impressions daily across mobile app and mobile display inventory that can be targeted against 15,000-plus unique audience segments.
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE ASSOCIATES
CONTACTS: Cathy Opsitnick, president and CEO; Mike McGuire, VP of media, (412) 362-8929
URL:www.msa.com
OFFERING: Its traffic, billing and ad sales and management software is widely used by networks. Several years ago, when Navic and Google were working to develop linear TV auctions, MSA created added capabilities so clients could participate in those programmatic sales. Current software development roadmap includes tools for sellers of linear and VOD TV inventory allowing them to participate in programmatic sales as those approaches develop and the industry settles on the best practices.
MEDIAOCEAN
CONTACTS: Bill Wise, CEO, bill@mediaocean.com; Cordie DePascale, VP product management, cordie@mediaocean.com, (201) 402-1758
OFFERING: Mediaocean’s software platform is used by over 80,000 advertising professionals to manage more than $100 billion in advertising. Mediaocean’s digital media buying solution, Prisma, electronically manages the entire agency campaign lifecycle, streamlining a traditionally manual workflow. Prisma’s Avails feature allows agencies to transact premium, guaranteed digital inventory in a programmatic direct fashion at approved client and agency rates.
NEUTRINOMEDIAGROUP
Contact: Scott Rosenblum, CEO, (404) 220-9872 x102, scott@neutrinomediagroup.com; Abhi Goel, CTO, (404) 220-9873 x103, abhi@neutrinomediagroup.com.
Offering: Its advertising platform provides companies with a complete system of inventory management for desktop, mobile and video inventory; processes billions of ads bids through Neutrino’s platform each day and delivers ads to millions of people in 100-plus countries per month. Offers programmatic advertising to its customers via its Supply Side and Data Management platforms; has partnerships with Google, Facebook (LiveRail), WideOrbit, AOL, large advertising companies, brands, trading desks and other companies. Clients include Dailymotion, Stardoll, Starmedia, National Rail of United Kingdom, Orange Latin America and others.
OOYALA
CONTACTS: Jay Fulcher, CEO, (650) 965-8920; Sorosh Takavoli, SVP Ad Tech, 44 (0) 20 7253 5530
URL:www.ooyala.com/
OFFERING: The October acquisition of Videoplaza will allow Ooyala to offer broadcasters and media companies a one-stop platform for managing, syndicating, publishing, measuring, personalizing and monetizing content across all screens, though the products are currently offered on a standalone basis. Videoplaza’s supply-side platform, Konnect, launched in October 2014, allows broadcasters to incorporate programmatic trading in their sales efforts, their CPMs and pricing models. More than 50% of the broadcasters in Europe run their advertising businesses on Videoplaza’s Karbon platform; Ooyala’s customers include ESPN, Univision, Telstra, Sky Sports and Comedy Central.
PLACEMEDIA
CONTACTS: Derek Mattsson, president, dmattsson@placemedia.com, (385) 232-2590
URL: placemedia.com
OFFERING: Cable ad rep firm launched the placemedia programmatic television platform for linear TV advertising in September 2013 to help clients automate buying and selling of TV advertising. The company is aggregating local and national TV ad inventory from cable and satellite operators, cable networks and broadcast affiliates available in 85 million TV homes; also uses data from Rentrak’s set-top box homes and consumer data from a variety of other sources to target over 500 audience segments.
RUBICON PROJECT
CONTACTS: Frank Addante, CEO, founder and chief product architect; Gregory R. Raifman, president; Kaylie Smith, head of seller cloud; Anthony Katsur, head of buyer cloud, (310) 207-0272
OFFERING: The Rubicon Project has developed the cloud, a global ad exchange, as well as a suite of applications for both buyers and sellers of advertising. On the sell side, the company’s Seller Cloud includes tools for maximizing yields through pricing algorithms and analytics, automation and security. In June 2014, the company inked a deal with Comcast Spotlight, which allows the MSO’s sales arm to apply programmatic tools to help sell display ads running on the Xfinity.com and XfinityTV.com websites.
SINTECMEDIA
CONTACTS: Amir Lavi, executive VP Enterprise Sales, (404) 869-4575; Geoff Nagel, VP, go to market strategy for North America, (404) 869-4575
OFFERING: Supplies enterprise-level software to major media companies, including networks owned by NBCUniversal, for traffic, billing, content management and advertising sales. SintecMedia’s OnBoard is a complete, supply-side platform (SSP) for direct and programmatic ad sales across all channels and platforms. This programmatic offering is installed and already working in Europe; with tests of the programmatic module planned by North American clients, with wider deployments to follow
SPOTXCHANGE
CONTACTS: Mike Shehan, CEO, mike@spotxchange.com, (303) 345-6601; Sean Buckley, senior VP, platform and global supply, sbuckley@spotxchange.com, (917) 828-2164; Alex Merwin, VP, global programmatic demand, amerwin@spotxchange.com, (303) 345-6824
URL: www.spotxchange.com
OFFERING: Its supply-side video advertising platform provides companies with a complete system of inventory management for desktop, mobile and connected TV inventory; processes over four billion video ad decisions through the SpotXchange platform daily and delivers ads to more than 335 million people in over 100 countries per month. Europe’s largest broadcasters, the RTL Group owns a majority stake in SpotXchange.
SYNACOR
CONTACTS: Ron Bernstein, senior VP, ad sales and operations, rbernstein@synacor.com, (908) 868-5813
URL:www.synacor.com/advertising
OFFERING: Brings programmatic advertising to its customers through its Supply Side and Data Management platforms; partnerships with Google, oracle (BlueKai), Facebook (LiveRail) and others allow it to offer best-of-breed systems that work with clients’ existing ad technologies. Also works to help sales teams at multichannel video programming distributors sell inventory programmatically across the Web, mobile and social platforms. Clients include Verizon, Suddenlink, Charter Communications, CenturyLink, Mediacom and others.
THIS TECHNOLOGY
CONTACTS: Jeffery Sherwin, CEO, (212) 253-9633; Denise MacDonell, VP of product and marketing, (303) 835-6954
URL: thistech.com/trajectory-dynamic-ad-insertion
OFFERING: Provides software to multichannel operators and programmers for monetizing content, centralizing operations and adapting to changing ad models; clients for overall offerings include Comcast, Verizon, NBCUniversal and ABC. The company’s dynamic advertising insertion software supports programmatic and addressable advertising for linear, time-shifted and on-demand content delivery; supplies Trajectory Dynamic Ad Insertion software that enables users to monetize inventory through any programmatic system with a controlled flow of anonymous data.
TUBEMOGUL
CONTACTS: Brett Wilson, CEO; Keith Eadie, CMO, (510) 653-0501
URL:www.tubemogul.com/platform/products/programmatic-tv/
OFFERING: TubeMogul is a software company for video advertising. TubeMogul’s programmatic TV offering, PTV, is the first self-serve software solution that enables automated buying of TV advertising. PTV aggregates TV advertising inventory from the major cable and satellite companies, national TV networks and local broadcasters, reaching over 90% of American households.
TVSQUARED
Contact: Kevin O’Reilly, CTO, (425) 501-6762, kevin.oreilly@tvsquared.com; Rory Paterson, product director, 44 (0)7500 111 785, rory@tvsquared.com; main phone and email: (917) 499-0998, info@ tvsquared.com
URL:tvsquared.com
Offering: Provides an accurate, real-time, linear television attribution platform with analytical systems designed to help advertisers to increase return on investment and performance of TV campaigns. Integrated into the AdTech ecosystem, it ingests programmatic inventory feeds from the VOD and addressable TV supply side and delivers TV insights and first-party data segmentations to the demand side for advanced video-buying decisions. Also supplies extensive session-level data for both internal and third-party attribution and media-mix modelling. Its technologies are used by the TV programmatic ad platform AdMore.
VIANT
CONTACTS: Tim Vanderhook, CEO, sales@viantinc.com, (949) 861-8888
URL:www.viantinc.com
OFFERING: Specific Media provides a multiformat, multiscreen programmatic solution that guarantees viewability; uses Vindico’s Adtricity technology. Designed to address current media buying inefficiencies by enabling real-time bidding of advertising inventory based on quality ratings; billed as a platform that offers advertisers and agencies greater quality control and enhanced transparency than existing programmatic offerings.
VIDEA
Contact: Shereta Williams, president; Brad Smith, senior VP, revenue and operations, (678) 645-6550
URL:videa.tv
Offering: Videa is a supply-side platform backed by Cox that brings automation and data-driven targeting to the buying and selling of television advertising. The suite of products and services is designed to help local broadcasters to monetize their inventory more efficiently while opening new demand channels to enhance the value of spot television. Works with companies including Videology, Hearst, Cox, Graham Media, E.W. Scripps, Media General, Carat, Starcom and 22squared.
VISIBLE WORLD
CONTACTS: Seth Haberman, CEO, (212) 739-1900
OFFERING: Provides an end-to-end programmatic TV ad sell-side platform called HighYield for targeting, selling and managing impression-based television ad campaigns. AudienceXpress, a Visible World subsidiary, is a key user of the HighYield system.
WIDEORBIT
CONTACTS: Eric Mathewson, founder and CEO, (415) 675-6700; Brian Burdick, EVP digital and programmatic, (425) 412-6819
URL: wideorbit.com and woprogrammatic.com
OFFERING: WideOrbit’s traffic, billing and ad sales software is the most widely used system among U.S. broadcast stations and is gaining market share in the cable network sector. The company has developed a programmatic marketplace for TV advertising inventory. It recently announced a partnership with Magna Global and Tribune Media Co. to launch WO Central, which offers programmatic targeting and automated buying in local media for local and national marketers. Hearst, Meredith, Raycom, Scripps and Sinclair also agreed to participate in testing the system.
YUME
CONTACTS: Jayant Kadambi, cofounder and CEO, Hardeep Bindra, executive VP operations, (650) 591- 9400
URL:www.yume.com
OFFERING: YuMe is a leading provider of global audience technologies, curating relationships between brand advertisers and consumers of premium video content across a growing range of connected devices. Uses a variety of data-driven technologies and tools to develop insights into audience behavior and provides an end-to-end marketing software to strengthen the way brands resonate with consumers.
Source: B&C and MCN research. Based on information collected from companies in January 2015 by George Winslow.
Cablevision Builds for Programmatic
After playing a leading role in the development of addressable advertising, Cablevision has been building a programmatic advertising platform in-house that it expects to be up and running in the first half of the year, in time for the upfronts. The platform will operate as a kind of private market with select agencies and clients.
A key part of their new programmatic efforts has been better use of the data it captures on set-top boxes and other devices, explains Cablevision’s president of media sales, Ben Tatta.
That data provided the basis for their addressable advertising systems, first launched in 2008. “But the real game change came a couple of years ago, when we introduced census level audience data,” says Tatta, who has a team of over 35 people working on data and analytics. “That allowed us to provide much more granularity in terms of targeted ads” and to increasingly offer advertisers “impression- and audience-based campaigns.”
Beyond building systems for handling that data, they also had to develop systems to automate the process and prepare their existing traffic and billing systems so they could be integrated into the programmatic platforms used by agencies. That process is describe in a white paper the operator published on how they were able to get all their systems expressing the data in one common protocol.
Over time, Tatta believes this will allow them to get much more value from “longtail networks that haven’t made much value because conventional measurement didn’t capture that viewing” and boost demand by offering advertisers greater efficiencies.
