LONDON — While many news publishers have eyed the rise of so-called “programmatic” automated online ad trading with skepticism, Guardian News & Media has “embraced” the approach for four years, says revenue director Tim Gentry.
The latest example is the deal Gentry signed with ad tech vendor MediaMath last month creating Response+, a trading desk which lets theguardian.com continue showing ads to readers even after they leave the site – by buying up inventory from rival news publishers.
“We see 25 billion data events across the course of any month,” Gentry tells Beet.TV. “They can be made valuable for advertisers. That’s what we’re doing with MediaMath, to find that audience away from Guardian owned-and-operated inventory.”
Although some publishers have been suspicious, as this AdAge article suggests, Gentry says The Guardian “has always been reasonably brave” around this technology, asking peers: “Why would you have a question about a market that’s worth $2 billion?”
This video was recorded at the Beet.TV programmatic video leadership summit sponsored by Videology, hosted by Xaxis at the London offices of GroupM.