UK broadcasters ITV, Sky, and Channel 4 have today announced plans to launch a joint self-serve advertising marketplace, in a move designed to draw a wider range of advertisers — particularly small and medium-sized businesses — into TV advertising.
The three broadcasters say the tool will let SMEs access and purchase addressable inventory to run a single campaign across the three broadcaster sales houses, with biddable pricing alongside other tools. The idea is to mirror the types of self-serve ad platforms offered by the big social platforms and tech companies, which many SMEs are used to working with. The platform will be powered by Comcast’s Universal Ads tool and FreeWheel’s technology, and is expected to go live next year.
The platform will offer unified buying, measurement, and reporting, according to a statement released by the participating broadcasters. There will also be tools to help brands measure outcomes and optimise their campaigns accordingly.
Sky, ITV, and Channel 4 are also in talks around simplifying the purchasing of addressable inventory for media agencies. Nothing is confirmed yet, but one option being discussed by the broadcasters is a joint agency-facing solution built on Planet V, ITV’s proprietary advertising technology.
Self-Serve Fever Reaches the UK
TV advertising has historically primarily been the domain of large brands. High minimum spends and the costs associated with producing a TV-worthy video asset have priced most smaller businesses out of the market. And up until recently, TV was too blunt a tool for many SMEs anyway, for example those which only serve a specific geography, or which have quite a niche target audience.
But the growth of addressable TV advertising means smaller businesses can now use TV to reach the specific audiences they’re after. At the same time the costs of TV advertising are lowering, as AI technologies make it easier to create quality video assets. Broadcasters, in search of new revenue streams and sensing an opportunity with SMEs, are also lowering or scrapping minimum spends which might previously have prevented smaller brands from investing.
Costs aren’t the only barrier facing SMEs in the TV world, however. Many smaller businesses don’t have the staff or resources necessary to navigate the TV buying process, which is built to serve larger brands working with an agency.
Hence the push into self-serve platforms, similar to those marketers use to buy social media ads. Universal Ads, the tool launched by Comcast which the UK product will be built on, was launched in the US back in January, offering self-serve access to inventory across NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, Fox Corporation, and Roku. Then in May, European TV sales house RTL AdAlliance announced Ad Manager, its own self-serve marketplace for the European market.
Scale is key for these sorts of products. The massive audiences offered on the social platforms mean they’re able to offer significant scale for advertisers even when the target audience the advertiser wants to reach is very niche. So the fact that the UK product will cover three of the UK’s largest commercial broadcasters is significant.
“As a TV industry, it is important that we collaborate to make television easy to plan, buy and measure for our established customers as well as the huge potential of new to TV brands,” said Kelly Williams, managing director of commercial at ITV. “Both of these initiatives, this new marketplace for SMEs and Planet V for agencies, represent a very exciting future.”
Indeed, the news that the three broadcasters are interested in developing a joint version of ITV’s Planet V signals a wider willingness to lay down competitive instincts and collaborate around a common cause. While Planet V has been well received by many on the buy-side in terms of the capabilities it offers, the fact that it doesn’t include inventory from the UK’s other major broadcasters is often cited as a frustration from agencies, who have been calling for more unified access to UK broadcaster inventory.
Follow VideoWeek on LinkedIn.
