• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, August 25, 2021

Viamedia’s cloud-based television advertising platform, QTT, has launched a marketplace to enable automated activation of data-driven linear video advertising inventory, without changing existing workflows or technologies.

A+E Networks, Fox and Reelz are among the first sellers in QTT Marketplace. Magnite is the first participating SSP.

The open marketplace platform was designed to give advertisers and agencies accustomed to digital platforms direct access to premium, local and national television inventory, and give television inventory owners direct access to digital advertisers.

The solution eliminates the need for vendors to create distinct APIs for each player in the ecosystem in order for TV companies to make their linear TV ad inventory available through DSPs and SSPs, QTT President John Piccone tells Digital News Daily. It also avoids the need to then transact via phone or email due to lack of integration of linear and digital systems. 

QTT makes two video advertising systems interoperable by converting linear TV ad avails into digital IAB Video Ad Serving Template (VAST)-compliant tags that behave digitally, and can be handled like other digital video ad transactions by SSPs and DSPs, without changes to their technology or the inventory owners’. That makes the conversion process usable by all linear inventory owners, including MVPDs, broadcast affiliates and cable networks. 

Using the marketplace, linear TV companies can take inventory units they want to sell programmatically — either in spot or impression values — and upload them to specific agencies, DSPs or SSPs to make them available to buy. Agencies using a DSP to transact programmatically can activate the digitally converted linear ads, with their reporting to clients automatically consolidated. 

The solution also gives TV companies an alternative to needing to pledge chunks of their inventory to programmatic TV vendors, according to Piccone.

"In our environment where most ‘game-changing technology’ really isn't, the QTT Marketplace is," Eric Fischer, founder and CEO of buying agency HJA Strategic Marketing, is quoted as stating, in the release. "Their ability to provide a solution for digital-first advertisers to seamlessly access unduplicated linear TV audiences at scale, and conversely provide linear TV networks access to thousands of digital advertisers, adds a whole new dimension to the TV buying ecosystem."