Imagine Communications is helping its broadcast sales house customers take another step towards unified Total TV campaign management thanks to the recent integration between its Landmark Sales ad-management platform and Google Ad Manager. Where a broadcaster uses Google Ad Manager to execute campaigns across some or all of its digital distribution, this digital part of the campaign can be managed from Landmark just like the linear broadcast portion of the campaign. The sales house gains visibility of inventory and impressions across broadcast and streaming via a single system (Landmark).
A key benefit is how easy it becomes to optimize a campaign to find audiences wherever they are. As Graham Heap, VP Product Strategy, Ad Tech, at Imagine Communications, explains: “If a broadcaster’s digital properties are over-performing, delivery can be moved there from linear, and vice-versa. Delivery can be moved from one platform to another automatically, which was impossible before. If you need to make up for any under-delivery in linear on a given day you can flood the ad server [in digital, via Google Ad Manager].”
The broadcaster digital inventory that Google Ad Manager has access to, whether it is within owned-and-operated or third-party properties, is absorbed into the Landmark campaign management system. Landmark then effectively delegates the digital part of a campaign to Google Ad Manager and becomes a demand source for it, pushing insertion orders into Google Ad Manager, which executes the digital part of the campaign, as before, and then reports back to Landmark with impression data as it appears. A brand advertiser or media agency only has to deal with one sell-side campaign management system and receives only one invoice.
“We are breaking down siloes. Bringing these [linear and digital planning/reporting environments] together is immense,” declares Heap. “Some broadcasters use Google for 100% of their digital inventory and in those circumstances this integration gives them visibility of all their digital inventory via Landmark. That is an instant view of their Total TV inventory with a single click, because 100% of their linear [broadcast] inventory is already in Landmark.”
This approach removes the swivel chair that media planners have been using to shift their attention between digital and linear systems, and it means buyers can place a single order in one place. Imagine Communications already has a similar arrangement with FreeWheel – albeit with a different workflow – to enable centralized linear/digital campaign management.
When announcing the Google Ad Manager integration in September, Imagine Communications said the collaboration is central to its strategy for developing converged linear, streaming and VOD solutions across both live and non-live content. “It is about accelerating the industry’s transition towards Total TV,” the company said.
This collaboration is viewed as a stepping stone on the longer journey towards holistic optimization across all media. Heap points out that converged planning still needs updated cross-platform measurement, notably if you want to know the unique reach (de-duplicated audience) from different platforms.
Imagine Communications hosted a webcast in the summer where it addressed the many challenges associated with converging the broadcast and streaming advertising systems, with the company’s President, Steve Reynolds, noting that many broadcasters still divide inventory into digital (including connected TV) and linear. “Frequently, there are two siloes – two different technology stacks for trafficking and decisioning. That is one of the sources of inefficiency in our industry.
“As an industry, we’ve been talking about the need to aggregate the audience into one, and treat it holistically instead of saying ‘These are my linear viewers, and these are my connected TV viewers’.” Reynolds outlined the need to pivot from a world where media owners sell inventory based on whether it is linear or streamed into a situation where the distribution no longer matters, and you only differentiate inventory according to whether it is premium or non-premium.
Photo shows Graham Heap, VP Product Strategy, Ad Tech, Imagine Communications.
