Consumers are streaming TV on OTT platforms more than ever before, and it is creating challenges in advertising. Open-source technology for header bidding is helping media owners and publishers implement a viewer-centric strategy and prepare for the future of OTT, writes Lauren Wiseman, vp, OTT & programmer partnerships at Xandr.
More people are streaming TV on over-the-top (OTT) platforms than ever before. As both traditional linear and digital advertisers look to increase their spendOpens a new window in this area, technology offerings and new ways of monetizing OTT and connected TV (CTV) content for publishers continue to grow as well. However, this rapid growth introduces a set of challenges not found in other digital formats.
What sets OTT apart from other digital inventory types is the commercial break. Often, when consumers are streaming OTT content, their ad break will consist of multiple ads back-to-back. The media owner, looking to maximize OTT’s full potential, is faced with challenges of how to construct that ad pod in a way that looks past near-term ad revenue optimization and improves the overall viewing experience for consumers in the long-term while still providing value for the advertiser.
Media owners and publishers also must tailor this ad pod across different devices — a range of connected TV and smart TV hardware manufacturers chosen by the consumer, whether that’s a Roku device, Amazon Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Smart TV, etc. It’s extremely complicated for publishers to create a seamless ad experience across each of these fragmented platforms. This is especially when they are using different ad servers and server-side ad insertion solutions that stitch the ads together with their content and sharing sales rights for their inventory with those platforms as well as many distributors who carry their content.
Because of these evolving challenges, publishers require a solution built specifically for ad-podded video inventory, built on scaled header bidding technology, meets the requirements of advertisers to maximize demand, and creates a seamless TV experience for the viewer. Enter: open-source technology for header bidding.
How Does Open-Source Technology for Header Bidding Help?
Open-source technology for header bidding, or a unified, dynamic auction, is helping publishers implement this viewer-centric strategy. With solutions built on open-source platforms like Prebid (and Xandr’s own Prebid Server Premium), publishers receive holistic inventory management. They can consider multiple programmatic demand sources simultaneously, and if they choose to, allow that demand to compete with their direct-sold campaigns, ensuring that the ad pod is constructed in an optimal way to maximize yield. This improves the ad experience for the publisher, advertiser, and consumer in various ways:
- Frequency capping: Unfortunately, as supply grows, consumers often endure repeat ads. This results in viewer fatigue and detracts from the overall viewing experience. Using a single technology provider to aggregate all programmatic demand will help guarantee a positive experience for the duration of the commercial break and stream. A publisher with high direct sell-through might introduce additional programmatic demand to increase ad diversity and help satisfy advertiser and consumer expectations around the optimal frequency.
- Competitive separation/exclusion across multiple SSPs: TV advertisers in the same category often don’t want to appear next to each other. For example, running a Coke and Pepsi ad back-to-back is a major brand conflict. Solutions built on open source technology like Prebid enable competitive separation and allow publishers to select a diverse set of creatives from a variety of non-competing brands and categories for each video stream.
- Remove latency with creative unwrapping: Technology that can “unwrap†creatives before sending them to the publisher eliminates time-consuming redirects and identifies invalid creatives before the ad serves. The publisher benefits by knowing the ad that gets stitched into their stream is, in fact, a valid creative.
Learn More: Why Affiliate Marketers Need Innovation in Ad Tracking Now
Open-source technology for header bidding has matured alongside the programmatic market, giving publishers more options for how they transact and sell OTT inventory in a smart and seamless way. It’s critical that publishers have a ubiquitous option that encourages standardization across a complicated and fragmented space. Concurrently, there’s a lot of work being done across the sell-side and the buy-side so that demand-side platforms (DSPs) can better understand exactly what type of inventory and they are buying and what format it’s in — whether that be a single ad or an ad pod.
As progress is made toward providing optimal demand for sellers and creating an ecosystem that DSPs are able to seamlessly and confidently bid into, technology platforms that support open source solutions with their sights set on the future of OTT and pristine focus on the viewer experience will come out ahead.