Tremor Video recently acquired Australian video SSP TVN, which has supply partnerships in New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. Here Greg Smith, Head of International and Programmatic at Tremor Video explains the ambition for the deal, the reasons behind their APAC expansion including how Australia is leading the way and why they won’t be entering the Chinese market any time soon.
Could you provide some background on why you acquired TVN and on Tremor Video’s ambitions in APAC?
Video advertising spend in APAC is growing rapidly, in addition to growth in video consumption. Those two things combined with a market ripe for brand advertising and programmatic buying made the market incredibly attractive. We hope to bring our expertise in all-screen analytics and a long-standing commitment to transparency to this new market with this acquisition.
Is China on your radar in the short to medium term? What challenges does the Chinese market provide for non-Chinese entrants?
China is on our radar but with more than eight country-specific video exchanges, it’s an extremely difficult market to enter, which is why you’ve seen others try and fail. We are inclined to focus on other markets in the short term.
How is video currently traded across APAC? Are there certain markets moving more quickly than others when it comes to adopting programmatic?
Each market in APAC is certainly growing at its own pace but overall there is huge potential in this region. For example, Australia has led the way for programmatic in APAC, and much of the world frankly, with top-down mandates from the agency groups that have made centralised video spend mandatory in a matter of months. Additionally, Australian advertiser spend per capita is one of the highest in the world. That coupled with constrained supply has led to high CPMs and a very healthy premium programmatic marketplace. On the other hand, Northern Asia has been somewhat inconsistent when it comes to programmatic growth but we look at that as an opportunity, not a challenge.
Mobile is growing rapidly everywhere, but APAC is known to be an exceptionally mobile-centric market. What have you been seeing firsthand and what do you think is driving such high rates of mobile video across the region?
In general, APAC leads the world in 4G adoption and in Wi-Fi connectivity, which drives more and more video viewership by consumers, not surprisingly on the device they carry with them 24/7. From a programmatic advertising perspective, demand for mobile is still playing catch-up with the amount of supply. Combine that with the limitations inherent in mobile at the moment – no OCR, limited frequency targeting, no viewability tracking, etc. – and you have pricing that is incongruous to the value publishers attribute to emerging screens. Many premium publishers have successfully bundled mobile and web inventory in trading deals, but in open-market and invite-only auctions desktop typically has much higher yield and fill.
