• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, November 9, 2016

Videology on Wednesday reported that it’s seen a 5x growth spurt in advanced linear TV ad inventory on its platform extending from the first through third quarters of 2016. The finding comes as the software provider for converged TV and video advertising released its Q3 2016 “U.S. Video At-A-Glance” report.  

Videology attributes the growth to interest in programmatic capabilities as multiple TV supply sources in the open and private marketplace have made more impressions available. The company also attributed the growth to marketers’ spending on advanced or programmatic TV campaigns—those that go beyond age and gender to find linear TV programs, networks, or dayparts that index highest for their target audience—which has nearly doubled, increasing by 92% since the first quarter.  

The data would suggest that targeting data and workflow automation are starting to be applied to linear TV advertising. The report’s findings on the TV and digital video advertising market are based on more than 2.5 billion impressions that ran through the Videology platform in Q3.  

“Today, the day after the U.S. election, is a particularly interesting day to release these stats about the growth in advanced linear TV inventory,” Scott Ferber, founder and CEO, Videology, told Real-Time Daily via email. “While we’ve seen an increase in data-enabled inventory, it still wasn’t nearly as big as many expected, due to the strong upfront due to the Olympics and the election.”

The report also found that more than a quarter of digital-focused campaigns used TV segments to target audiences, with advertisers’ own TV ad schedule as their top segment choice. This metric suggests a focus on serving holistic video campaigns across both TV and video.

Typically, Videology said that advertisers employ one of two strategies. They either serve a digital video ad to audiences that were under-exposed or not exposed to their TV commercial—in order to increase reach. Or, they serve a digital ad to audiences that were exposed to their TV ad—often with a lower-funnel message that invites some type of actionable response. 

Among the report’s other findings:

--Beyond TV segments, advertisers embraced data sources such as demographic data (100%), geographic data (71%), and consumer behavior attributes (33%).

--Of the behavioral segments chosen, the top categories included advertisers that created their own custom segment (26%), advertisers focused on auto-purchase related behaviors (18%), and advertisers focused on consumer-packaged-goods-related behaviors (7%). 

--In campaign goals, view-through rate was the highest chosen objective (54%), followed by viewable rate (41%), and click-through rate (34%).

--Among advertisers that chose viewability as an objective, the Media Rating Council standard remained the most frequently used (90%), followed by custom, and more stringent, standards (10%).