There is a lot of talk about programmatic moving into television, but there are few industry experts on programmatic and local TV. Magna’s Janice Finkel-Greene is one of those experts. Her
collaboration with Wide Orbit in this area has led to a transformative new initiative called Wide Orbit Central, which was announced this week.
I sat down with Finkel-Greene, who filled me in on
the details in this video.
She explains, “What we are trying to address with this new
application is to improve the local buying process as we introduce elements of programmatic buying to it… It puts the buying process into an automated framework.”
Currently,
buying local broadcast is time-consuming. It is bought by individual market and often focuses on low-value inventory. There is also the issue of local television measurement, which is challenged by
low samples, large relative error and therefore performance bounce.
advertisement
advertisement
This new application, available to all agencies and broadcast stations and affiliates, is considered “programmatic in
spirit” because it’s console-to-console with near real-time buying and reporting. It is connected directly to a traffic system (Wide Orbit) as opposed to connected to a source of inventory
like other local sellers in the space. Finkel-Greene describes the application as “local TV programmatic on a national scale offering the ability to buy all broadcast across the U.S.”
While it does not include cable at this time, there are plans to expand into cable as a next step.
The stations decide which inventory they want to sell by DMA. Finkel-Greene says that the
system is transparent in that it surfaces “markets, stations, times and dayparts. Currently, programmatic TV is a dark pool arena for local TV -- there is not a lot of disclosure.”
Wide Orbit Central offers a data-driven solution, notes Finkel-Greene, adding: “We overlay qualitative data and if a station offer meets our criteria, we can buy it. It is data-driven, not
whimsical.”
Finkel-Greene concludes: “The transparency and speed of the Wide Orbit Central platform creates the feedback loop we need for continuous optimization. It makes insights
actionable by providing the opportunity to place buys nationally while targeting to the local market specifics. It’s the best of both worlds.”