Turn Brings Programmatic Buying To TV

Programmatic continues to stretch its boundaries. The data-driven approach to ad buying is becoming more feasible, even in the most traditional of channels.

Turn, a demand-side platform (DSP), on Thursday announced the launch of a “programmatic TV” offering. Turn’s clients can now use the company’s data management platform (DMP) to create and target audiences on television.

Turn’s DMP -- named Audience Suite -- has a “Beta Connect” program running, and that’s where the programmatic TV offering will be rolled out. The new offering doesn’t have a stand-alone product name.

Sq1, a digital agency, is the first agency to join Turn’s Beta Connect program. Daikin, an Osaka, Japan-based air conditioner manufacturing company and Sq1 client, is the first named brand to be using Turn’s programmatic TV offering.

Daikin’s director of communications Rex Anderson stated that the programmatic TV offering “opens a new channel for [Daikin] to apply data-driven insights” when buying ads. That’s exactly what Turn -- and others foraying into programmatic TV -- are hoping for: let data find the right audience and channel on TV, as it currently does online.

The offering is “programmatic” in the sense that marketers can take a more data-driven approach to buying TV ad inventory using data.

“Turn clients can match their audience segments to TV inventory based on data,” a company representative told RTM Daily. The buying is done through Turn’s software platform -- meaning the planning and buying can be automated -- but it needs to be noted that this is not real-time bidding (RTB).

Brand and agencies can use first- and third-party data to build audiences. Turn says the third-party audience data comes from set-top boxes, and that the inventory comes from TV supply-side platforms (SSPs). The company claims to have the capability to reach “million” of U.S. TV households with its offering.

“We will be announcing our partners in the weeks to come,” the rep said, adding that they are continuing to build out partnerships.

Turn is one of the first to roll out a programmatic TV offering, but it is not alone in this venture. Other ad tech companies are also making the push into television.

AOL’s Adap.tv, for example, launched its own programmatic TV buying platform two months ago. Adap.tv claims their platform reaches a potential 90 million U.S. TV households, and says it uses Nielsen for audience measurement and Rentrak’s set-top box data. 

“TV is the next frontier for data-driven marketing,” stated Joshua Koran, SVP of product management at Turn.

"Watching TV" image from Shutterstock.

Next story loading loading..