• by Wayne Friedman , April 22, 2020

Adding to the growth of efforts for programmatic buying of set-top-box VOD advertising inventory, Dish Media is making VOD ad inventory available on more than 60 TV networks on broadband-connected set-top boxes on both its Dish Network and Sling TV platforms.

Advertisers can bid on advertising VOD inventory through private, real-time auctions set up with demand-side platforms (DSP), including The Trade Desk, the big DSP.

Dish Media will be selling ads programmatically across both Dish Network and Sling TV platforms for the first time. In 2019, programmatic advertising on Sling grew to more than 10,000 brands from 7,500 the year prior.

Kevin Arrix, senior vp of Dish Media, said in a release that Dish was “agnostic” as whether brands bought via traditional ad sales services or programmatic advertising. It believes Dish Media can attract digital ad budgets that were not traditionally spent on TV.

Two weeks ago, video ad-technology platform Beachfront Media made a deal with Amobee, a demand-side platform, so it could sell set-top-box programmatic VOD ad inventory.

On the supply side, Beachfront Media has a deal with mid-size cable TV/broadband provider Frontier Communications, as well as around 160 other publishing partners.

Although many feel this can give marketers access to more traditional TV content similar to digital media platforms -- with greater scale -- set-top-box video-on-demand viewing impressions have been slowing recently.

Canoe Ventures says cable VOD programming impressions grew 4% in 2019 to 27.3 billion, down from a 12% gain the year before, in 2018, and much lower than the gain of 30% in 2017.