DMEXCO kicks off tomorrow, and VAN has been speaking with some of those attending to hear their thoughts and expectations for this year’s event. ProSiebenSat.1, one of Germany’s biggest media groups, will be on stage across the event, and one of ProSieben’s big focuses over the past year has been working with competitors on initiatives to help stave off the challenges to traditional broadcasters. VAN spoke with Dr. Jens Mittnacht, managing director of SevenOne Media, to hear more about two of the key alliances ProSieben is involved with.
ProSiebenSat.1 announced a new joint venture with RTL earlier this year around addressable advertising. Could you explain what this JV is, and what it hopes to achieve?
Our pioneering joint venture “d-force” with Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland gives advertisers the option to reach their addressable TV and online video customers much more quickly: via one automated booking platform from ProSiebenSat.1 and Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland. d-force’s demand-side platform (DSP) provides broad coverage in the German market in the fast-growing, high-demand advertising segments of addressable TV and online video —technologically from a single source and with an offer that is independent of whether viewers and users are to be reached via TV or online. The joint venture will boost growth in the segments of addressable TV and online video in Germany. By 2022, the is expected to be in the single-digit billion euro range. The basis of the new partnership is the demand-side platform Active Agent, which is part of the ProSiebenSat.1 ad tech holding Virtual Minds.
Alongside the DSP, will the JV also involve wider cooperation around addressable TV advertising, for example on formats and/or standards?
For historical and technological reasons, addressable TV campaigns could previously only be booked separately with the individual publishers. d-force makes comprehensive campaigns possible for the first time. However, the technological standardisation of addressable TV is also important in order to enable our customers to easily scale their campaigns. After we received the green light for d-force from the antitrust authorities, we are now tackling this issue as well. With success: with Bank ING, ProSiebenSat.1 and Mediengruppe RTL were able to win a first customer for a comprehensive campaign via d-force.
ProSieben is also part of Germany’s Login Alliance, designed in part to help cope with GDPR. It’s over one year now since GDPR came into force, how successful has it been?
Generally speaking, data is of course an important factor for targeting campaigns. From a technological perspective, we are also working on our cross-device bridge in addition to addressable TV. By using the IP address as a data point, we can assign different devices to a specific household and thus implement “household targeting”. This makes completely new forms of campaigns possible for advertisers – such as storytelling across different devices in the household. We are currently in beta status and are testing the possibilities with selected advertisers – at the beginning of next year we will go into regular operation. Our investments in the ad tech area are a great help here and make us technologically independent.
Which topics do you think will be big at DMEXCO this year?
This year’s motto of the DMEXCO is “Trust in You”. “Trust” is of course an important factor in the relationship between advertisers and the media house. This is one of the reasons why we focused early on the topic of ad tech and built up a comprehensive ad tech stack. This gives our customers the opportunity – independent of the global giants – to book programmatic campaigns with us. And all this with full control over data, but also over the environment – when we think about brand safety, for example. This year at DMEXCO, we at SevenOne Media are showing what we can offer and achieve in the video sector. Because after all, it’s the reach that counts! And here the combination of high-quality TV content, the high impact of TV advertising and a great digital offerin19g is unbeatable!
