As we move towards a digitally-driven world at a high pace, it is essential for brands to stay ahead of the curve and discover/develop newer and effective ways to reach the consumers ensuring impact. Now in the ever-evolving digital world, advertising has bypassed the traditional approach. With affordable internet prices across the country, digital advertising has evolved into a global marketplace at large. This new and evolved sector requires many relationships that extend further than the typical publisher/advertiser bond that brands and agencies were familiar with. Although new platforms for advertising have emerged but the value for television advertising is still growing. Television is of paramount importance for brands as they know TV ads work in reaching a larger set of audience who either has limited access to the internet or no access at all. Over the last decade, television has undergone major technological development which has enabled marketers to direct commercial messages in a focused manner on an individual level.

With the invention of Smart TV’s, traditional ways of TV ad buying are being challenged by the programmatic approach.  Programmatic TV largely refers to the TV inventory that could be bought via a programmatic platform.  As simple as it may sound but it is rather a complex mechanism which has many broad categories with several types to choose from. They consist of video on demand (VOD), digital linear TV, video and terrestrial linear. One can always purchase the programmatic inventory of the TV by either open exchange or via a private market place. Open exchange can be accessed by anyone by using real-time bidding to auction inventory to the highest bidder and private market place, on the other hand, is more direct and based on impressions rather than the traditional guarantees of time and place. This digitization has overall enabled marketers to apply data segment to leverage big screen and create high impact on the audience. Programmatic TV is a one-stop solution for brands as well as advertisers as it largely applies digital advertising’s efficiency model to traditional TV advertising with the automation of buying process with connected devices.

While programmatic TV as an option has an exceptional potential but it’s still quite new. Hence, programmatic TV is not living up to its true potential given that we’re still in the very early stages. Going by the pace of the adoption, the industry is likely to adopt it in phases. The first phase will induce buyers and sellers to use programmatic tech to transact digital video buys. This phase is actually underway and making notable strides across platforms. As per a report by Google Data, a 4x growth in impressions for videos was visible in 2014 itself. The second phase will ensure the overall development of the programmatic infrastructure, making it easier for buyers and sellers to place ads in streaming and video-on-demand TV content across connected devices efficiently. Both these phases will create pathways for the third and most important phase i.e. Linear TV. Support for Linear TV in programmatic is the most complex phase as it will take some significant work to integrate digital platforms with traditional systems and data vendors across the TV ecosystem. If done right, programmatic TV will help the sector in overcoming several ideological and technical challenges. The sector needs to get programmers and broadcasters along with advertisers to help understand what programmatic TV can do instead of what people think it does. This will then result in brands focusing on the things that really matter such as universal measurement across all advertising platforms for better ROI, the ability to reach viewers across screens, access to inventory devoid of rights issues along with programmatic buying support for set-top boxes and so on.

As per e-marketers research, programmatic TV would be a multi-billion dollar industry by 2022. Though it accounts for less than 1 per cent of all TV ad spends for now. As brand advertisers, programmers, distributors and ad tech providers work their way through the real-world challenges, programmatic TV will begin to live up to its true potential making it the future of advertising on TV.

(The author is co-founder and managing director, Makani Creatives. The views expressed are his own and Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to them.)