• by Wayne Friedman , July 11, 2018

Programmatic TV advertising deals should not be limited to office hours.

In what the companies call a first, Tribune Media has started a 24/7 TV programmatic ad sales operation through a deal with WideOrbit, the TV/radio ad tech company.

A new rule-based auto-acceptance feature allows Tribune to accept programmatic offers around the clock -- outside of normal business hours -- allowing the operation to be always-open.

With the new auto-accept feature, Tribune’s sales teams can adjust pricing for sell-out levels and offer “dynamic” floor pricing. A WideOrbit representative says its system uses “historical data from the traffic system to set floor prices, so floors don’t have to be continually set manually for every program, daypart, etc.”

Kerry Oslund, vice president, strategy and business development at Tribune Broadcasting, stated that with WideOrbit “automating sales workflows ... allows us to take orders from ad buyers based on pre-set parameters anytime, just like digital self-serve platforms.”

WideOrbit’s system will allow TV marketers to review and order spots on Tribune’s 42 owned-or-operated local TV stations, which reach more than 50 million U.S. homes. This also includes Tribune’s local digital multicast TV subchannels.

WideOrbit says its Open Marketplace platform can access ad inventory from more than 1,000 stations reaching nearly 95% of U.S. households. Its traffic software is used in over 75% of all U.S. TV stations, and around one-third of the top 50 cable networks.