Commentary
A Pre-Upfront Talk About Programmatic TV
- by Felicia Greiff , Staff Writer, April 8, 2016
At a panel hosted by Tremor Video Wednesday, improvement was a hot topic of the evening: namely, how programmatic TV can improve, and what partners can do to accelerate
the process. The event, held just before upfront and NewFront season, was moderated by Todd Wasserman. Participants were Cordie DePascale, VP-product management, Mediaocean; Richard Hall, VP-TV strategy, Videology; Tim Ware, VP-advanced TV, Tremor Video; and Marshall Wong SVP-market development, TV, Tapad.
The talk touched on changing the mindset of the industry to buy on an audience; improving standards and measurement; and the potential of learning not only about the consumer TV experience, but also about the experience across apps and devices.
Videology's Hall said instead of thinking of programmatic in binary terms, "what really matters at this point is applying the data and getting results."
And the conversation will continue to heat up, with the International Data Corporation (IDC) predicting programmatic TV spend will grow from $50 million in 2014 to $11.4 billion in 2019. The
IDC also predicts that by 2017, programmatic advertising spending in
linear TV will outgrow programmatic streaming video spend, and that by 2019, programmatic TV spend will be bigger than even digital real-time bidding.
By the time "programmatic" buying for TV gets to $11.4 billion it will be so altered that it will be virtually unrecognizable from what is being touted today. Instead of making the buys it will be mainly a tool for helping humans deal with the many time consuming paperwork and information exchanges involved rather than replacing them as buyers---or sellers.