Discovery partners with SpotX for TV everywhere video monetisation

SpotX, a video advertising and monetisation platform, has announced a partnership with Discovery to power programmatic monetisation for TV everywhere (TVE) video during the holiday season. The collaboration has resulted in Discovery running Automated Guaranteed campaigns through SpotX, the only supply-side platform (SSP) currently offering Discovery’s portfolio to advertisers.

Commenting on the partnership, Bill Murray, VP, programmatic revenue and ad products at Discovery Inc., said: “Content consumption increases dramatically during the holidays with more people home binge-watching and new devices being purchased, the viewership numbers we see across Discovery’s properties absolutely explode. SpotX provides a very streamlined approach to monetization, and we’re excited to be working so closely with their team to connect more buyers to all of our inventory.”

In 2017, the average viewing session for Discovery’s networks increased more than 17% during the holidays over previous quarters for the year. Citing that metric as a key selling point, Discovery is leveraging SpotX’s Demand Facilitation services to source even more demand opportunities as well as executing direct deals with advertisers. Making the ad opportunity even more enticing, the network can whitelist and blacklist series titles such as Holiday Baking Championship (Food Network), Long Island Medium: Best of the Holidays (TLC), Nightmare Next Door: Murders Under the Mistletoe (Investigation Discovery), Tanked Again for the Holidays (Animal Planet), Holiday Cookie Builds (Cooking Channel), and White House Christmas (HGTV), passing show-level data to SpotX for advertisers that wish to buy against (or exclude) specific shows or networks.

“This can be a very challenging time of year because so many advertisers want to reach the right consumers as they’re making purchase decisions for gifts,” said Amanda Cabrera, Head of Publisher Partnerships at Adobe Advertising Cloud, a demand-side platform currently working with both SpotX and Discovery. “SpotX’s programmatic solution for Discovery allows us to better ensure that marketing dollars are spent delivering messaging to the most desirable and relevant audience for an advertiser that wants a piece of the holiday pie.”

Commenting on the partnership, Ryan Kenney, VP of platform services at SpotX, said: “Discovery is really leading the pack in terms of programmatic for TVE because they are flexible and have no qualms about taking risks, two characteristics we believe are necessary to succeed as more digital publishers are dipping their toes into the TVE landscape. Brands that purchase inventory for the holidays have the opportunity to reach larger target audiences than any other time of the year, and Discovery offers not only a massive collection of premium brands but also a high-quality, engaged audience that brands covet.”

Until now, there has been limited success within the industry when running Automated Guaranteed campaigns programmatically due to the lack of technologies on the supply side that offer it. Automated Guaranteed campaigns reportedly allow publishers to receive guaranteed revenue for inventory, reserve impressions for buyers in exchange for higher CPMs, execute high fill deals programmatically, work directly with advertisers to set deal terms, and leverage SpotX’s campaign targeting to guarantee buyers get the inventory they want. Conversely, Automated Guaranteed transactions allow advertisers to programmatically purchase while gaining guaranteed access to a publisher’s inventory at a predetermined price, secure first-look access to a guaranteed number of impressions, reach a desired audience at scale with guaranteed opportunities that meet exact targeting requirements, and have self-service at scale by allowing SpotX to execute the targeting and pacing agreed upon in the deal terms, the release stated.