A+E Programmatic Beginnings
Programmatic capability on A+E is not a new feature. In fact, the company has been offering forms of programmatic buying for at least a decade. “We were one of the first publishers to put long form inventory mobile inventory within the programmatic space. We started working with a partner who was then acquired by Facebook,” he explained and added, “It was where programmatic was very predominant on the display and pre roll space. We wanted to understand how this can be leveraged in a marketplace where it's predominantly Direct I/O. That's how we had started and obviously morphed into a much bigger business, but it was more on the mobile side of things.” From there, a great expansion took place that encompassed a range of technological advancements. A+E currently works with, “Six partners from the SSP side of things and we have other partnerships like the Roku and Amazons of the world.”
A+E Programmatic Today
From a start in mobile, the company moved into desktop where measurement was via the cookie. At the same time, mobile, “expanded overnight and came with the ability to have persistent identifiers outside of the cookie. Mobile identifiers offered the capability for audience targeting on a programmatic level moving into the mobile APP space. CTV followed suit. We continue to see this massive push into the connected TV environment that is also tied to these persistent identifiers like IP address, device ID etc,” he noted.
The result was that A+E was one of the first publishers to offer their entire ecosystem programmatically to direct agency buyers. “We use programmatic to be complimentary to what we're doing on the direct dial business where we fill unsold impressions. When buyers were starting to look on a KPI basis where they only want to target specific users that align with their brands, we utilize programmatic as a way to provide flexibility for our buyers to do a lot of these things on the back end,” he stated.
A+E Programmatic Components
Between the various platforms, data and metrics, the main goals for A+E Networks are ease, flexibility, transparency and simplicity. “We push everything across our networks and the three transactions paths,” DeNicola explained, “We have our traditional non-guaranteed private marketplace deals, we have our programmatic guaranteed deals and we are currently working on availing biddable guaranteed deals. We have very niche brands that perform incredibly well contextually so we can break things out on a channel level as well. We create customized packages for tent pole events and specials and bundle packages based on series, depending on the type of criteria that our partners need.”
As far as measurement is concerned, in addition to standard impressions data, “We work with partners like Live Ramp so we can layer in first party data as well as other third party audience segments. We can customize against our inventory that's more against audience for behavioral targeting versus an actual show level or content,” he stated.
A+E Programmatic Next Steps
As the technology continues to advance and the demand for programmatic grows, A+E is seeing future opportunity. “We are working with one of our largest virtual MVPDs and trying to get their STB data incorporated into our programmatic offering,” DeNicola noted, “We're trying to build and continue to evolve in a place that there is parity with Direct I/O and programmatic and push for flexibility on the backend for our buyers,” so as to insure that, “there is flexibility to target granular audiences on the back end where needed or hit whatever efficiencies you need but also still be able to maintain this very premium living room experience that is happening on the linear side.”
DeNicola’s advice for advertisers is straightforward. “You're going to have this entire ecosystem. We make it an incredibly fair level playing ground for all of our buyers - this is what you can get if you bid at these levels. We also try to be incredibly agnostic, working with so many SSP partners. We're not going to tell you where we want you to buy. We want you to tell us.”
Doing what is best for the advertiser is paramount. “The way we look at it is we want flexibility but with guardrails knowing that programmatic does have its nuances. For us, it's setting expectations up front. Yes, we want to have programmatic as a means for you to have flexibility but it depends on the use case or the scale that's needed. It’s all about fine tuning what the partner strategy is, asking a lot of questions, trying to understand, help educate them and doing a lot of listening,” he concluded.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
Artwork by Charlene Weisler
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