• by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer, March 27, 2017

There was an interesting announcement from Sling TV last week: It’s diving into programmatic advertising with Adobe. Sling will team up with Adobe’s Advertising Cloud to enable marketers to bid in real time on live streaming and video-on-demand. In essence, this means marketers can bid on Sling’s inventory through a private marketplace. The arrangement means that advertisers can target audiences cross-channel using first- and third-party data including demographics, network, and genre.

If it works, it will be pretty powerful. It’s another way in which streaming TV services are finding ways to make TV addressable, and it’s another sign that Adobe has its toe in ad tech. Adobe said the service will enable digital and TV buyers to buy media—online and TV—through one platform.

The addition of the programmatic capability could enable Sling to compete against the networks and also platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Live event programming is an important component of this. Unlike programmatic media that appears in social feeds or publisher sites, Sling TV ads would be full-screen. While Sling doesn’t have third-party measurement partners yet, the company said it’s talking with Nielsen and comScore.