Videoplaza – a video ad tech company – is currently testing ‘Aunia’, now in beta, a private video ad marketplace for broadcasters. The product will first be launched in the Spanish market with ‘four of Spain’s largest commercial broadcasters’, although Videoplaza say they won’t be able to disclose the names of the broadcasters and agency/DSP partners until the official launch.
However, Videoplaza confirmed that brands currently advertising on Aunia include Honda, Hyundai, Kia,
Protecting Broadcast Level CPMs
Speaking to VAN, Maria Flores, VP of New Business, said, “Publishers in Spain are understanding the opportunities and efficiencies that programmatic advertising is bringing to the table, so they want to tap into programmatic budgets. We think a club model works so that broadcasters can protect the value of their inventory and maintain CPMs. Joining forces will make broadcasters stronger as they can offer unrivalled scale and quality, and their advertisers will no longer have to dilute the quality of their buys with long tail inventory.”
When asked why Spanish broadcasters are taking a lead in this area, Flores said that the state of the Spanish economy has been a contributing factor. “While video in Spain has been rapidly growing, the economic situation resulted in a deceleration of the market, so everyone has had to be a bit more creative,” she added.
On the technology side, Videoplaza are using an undisclosed third party provider for the RTB component of the exchange while Videoplaza’s technology will be used for ad serving, although a source at Videoplaza confirmed they haven’t ruled out building their own technology in the future.
How Does a Co-operative or Club Work?
The ‘co-operative’ or ‘club’ model is similar to the publisher co-operatives that were originally pioneered in France by companies like La Place Media and Audience Square. The idea is that by pooling inventory in a private exchange, premium publishers are better-equipped to compete with the scale offered by ad exchanges and the large tech players. Working together in an exclusively premium group also helps to protect the premium value of their inventory as buyers become aware that remnant premium inventory is less likely to be picked up for cheap on the open market.
Then there’s data. As data plays a greater role in video campaigns, advertisers need scale in order to to find the users they need quickly and frequently. So it makes sense for publishers – or in this case, broadcasters – to work together to offer greater scale. However, in order to do so, the premium domains are typically masked, so buyers buy audience segments rather than sites. Working in this way enables the publisher is able to protect the value of their direct sales, while advertisers get access to brand-safe inventory at scale.
