• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, September 16, 2016

Some industry players have noted that use of programmatic TV is likely to happen more quickly for direct response advertising than branding advertising.

One line of reasoning: DRTV marketers and media buyers might simply be more open to PTV.

For instance, Andreas Schroeter, co-founder and COO at wywy, has argued that most traditional TV buyers have disincentives to want to jump into PTV — that the limited upside from their perspective is offset by the need to “relearn everything” and then convince clients of something they’re not convinced of themselves.

“While there will be traditional TV buyers moving to programmatic, I personally believe this is the wrong approach for the programmatic TV industry,” he wrote in MediaPost. “Instead of trying to build a bridge, we should focus on the new TV buyers out there, either emerging from 'digital marketing first' startups who move into TV advertising and expect the same metrics as online or, those coming out of the DRTV world, who embrace the new technology as the next step in direct response advertising.”

On a more nuts-and-bolts level, the remnant inventory that has dominated early PTV offerings was a natural fit for DRTV, but largely unattractive to brand advertisers.

That’s starting to change as the use of audience data and analytics enables targeting that should make so-called remnant inventory more efficient and valuable to specific advertisers.

That should actually make both brand and direct response advertisers happy, Rebecca Barr, VP, U.S. Media and partner at the Northern Lights Direct agency, noted in a recent blog. And at the same time, “the great news for direct response is that this can make coveted audiences accessible at a more realistic cost than targeting impressions via linear TV,” she pointed out.

Barr added that while multiple levels in the marketplace make it unlikely that one platform will be able to handle all types of transactions, “strides have been made [toward] streamlining [the entire buying workflow/process] on the local broadcast side in recent months as end-to-end solutions like WideOrbit … have entered into the fray, partnering with DSPs like The Trade Desk and TubeMogul, among others.”

Those observations provide context for another partnership development announced this week by WideOrbit and CoreMedia Systems — in this case, an example of expanding options that have the potential to help make PTV even more attractive to DRTV advertisers.

The new partnership will make inventory from broadcast TV stations participating in WideOrbit’s WO Programmatic TV marketplace (which offers broadcast inventory from stations reaching 97 million-plus households in 147 U.S. media markets) available through CoreBuy TV and CoreDirect, the widely used software for planning, purchasing and managing DR advertising. 

According to the companies, this is currently “the only programmatic direct response ad buying solution to automatically deliver offers from media buyers to broadcast TV station traffic systems for approval, execution and invoicing.” (They add that they plan to add cable inventory availability “soon.”)

Audience Buying Insider reached out to Northern Lights’ Barr to get an independent expert’s take on this latest development in PTV from the direct response buyer’s standpoint.

The partnership means, she says, that “brand response and direct response-focused agencies will now have a programmatic solution that offers a nimble and streamlined workflow utilizing a platform currently leveraged in many shops for planning, buying and campaign management. What remains to be seen is the quality of the inventory available. But this, plus adding the capability to plan and purchase cable network inventory in the future, are steps in the right direction for linear programmatic TV.”