US telco AT&T’s advanced advertising division Xandr today announced the launch of ‘Xandr Monetize’, a new selling platform which it says is geared towards premium TV and digital media companies. The company says Xandr Monetize is built on AppNexus’ sell-side offering and will offer the same features including an ad-server, a sell-side platform (SSP), and yield analytics.
Since AT&T bought AppNexus last year and incorporated it into Xandr, it’s been using AppNexus’ various offerings as the basis for its own new suite of services. Earlier this year it launched Xandr Invest, based on AppNexus’s demand-side platform, and now its doing the same with AppNexus’ SSP and sell-side ad server.
But Xandr says Monetize is more than just a rebranding of AppNexus’ existing technology. For a start it’ll link up more closely with the rest of Xandr’s solutions, allowing media companies to sell their inventory though Community, Xandr’s premium video marketplace, and giving access to unique demand from AT&T. And it’ll have a stronger focus on video and TV in particular, with Xandr saying it’s designed to cater to future TV capabilities.
One of the new features is what Xandr is calling programmatic OTT (over-the-top) with Prebid. Xandr says this will allow sellers to take in simultaneous programmatic demand through multiple SSPs while still enabling features which are essential to TV advertising, like competitive separation (where broadcasters leave an agreed amount of time between adverts from competing advertisers). It will also give greater control over over brand safety and frequency capping.
“Developed with our sales needs in mind, programmatic OTT with Prebid will be essential to better managing inventory within client campaigns and realising higher yield for our premium content,” said Amit Chaturvedi, EVP and head of revenue operations and ad products at WarnerMedia Ad Sales.
Xandr Monetize will also include a new server-side header bidding solution for SSP and ad server customers, ‘Prebid Server Premium’. The company says this will increase efficiency through reporting insights across formats, and through a single source of clearing across SSPs.
But while the product is billed as a new offering, rather than just a reskin of AppNexus’ offering, Xandr says it’ll continue to offer a lot of the flexibility that appealed to sellers.
