• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 20, 2013

The subsidiary placemedia of independent cable rep firm Viamedia TV will launch during Advertising Week. The platform will allow brands to purchase TV spots through a self-service online portal. The brands purchase spots based on audience segments. Today, the tool reaches into about 50 million homes across the U.S., but the company's president Derek Mattsson said that number will rise to more than 100 million by the end of the year.

"The self-serve network is all about helping media companies sell their unsold inventory," he said. "Brands buy TV ads by the audience, rather than the network."

When it comes to TV ad buying, Mattsson believes tools have failed to keep up with the move to digital. Another problem is  undersold inventory; the networks can't support it with data and ratings. Mattsson said the networks sell the space to direct-response advertisers for too little because they want to fill the spots.

Mattsson describes placemedia as an "Internet model for TV." The brand enters the audience target, budget and other details. The platform runs through the TV spot inventory and combines it with set-top-box data and consumer purchase and behavior data. It puts together a schedule, essentially planning a campaign. After the ads run, the platform scores the campaign against the set-top-box data to determine the impression count. The brand only pays for what they receive. The placemedia portal goes live Monday.

"One day" placemedia will tie product and service sales back to the TV ad impression, Mattsson said.

Although the majority of video viewing still happens on television, Google still shuttered its TV ad-buying business last year after introducing it in 2007. The company launched Google TV Ads in AdWords to bring digital buying and measurement technologies to traditional TV advertising in favor of moving clients to video like YouTube, AdWords for Video, and ad-serving tools for Web video publishers.

24/7 Media, a global digital media and technology company, and Shiny Ads, a premium advertising technology company, announced a partnership that gives clients a self-serve advertising platform to purchase media across the Web and on mobile.

Through direct integration into 24/7 Media's network of premium sites, the Shiny Ads platform automates the guaranteed ad buying process for advertisers with an aim to decrease costs and generate new revenue.