SAN FRANCISCO — IPG’s insight agency Magna Global is using the current TV upfronts, the annual process by which TV networks sell advertising inventory for the year ahead, to push cable networks to adopt programmatic trading techniques.
Says Magna Global USA president Kristi Argyilan: “We are pushing for our planning teams to reconsider cable television and think about how they can start to shift some of that rather large pool of money that’s invested through some blunt metrics, and start to think about it from a target audience perspective … even just a small piece of that … adjusting that in to programmatic television .. as we go in to the upfront.”
She was speaking during a panel debate on the idea that linear television may adopt the data-driven, highly-targeted trading techniques.
- Magna Global’s programmatic SVP Michael Brunick said the process was about encouraging networks to “unpackage” and “unbundle” the inventory they sell to clients.
- Business development SVP Paul Dolan of Group M’s data division Xaxis said: “Everybody wants the same thing – better targeting, more data-driven results, more creative formats – television is bringing us there. That’s a win for the seller and for the buyer.”
- Universal McCann north America COO Gregg Colvin said: “It’s incumbent upon us to be dictating back to the some of the networks – ‘our clients think this is the kind of inventory we need’.”
- Adap.tv CEO Tony Gabriner said: “The notion of using data and starting to move in and out of inventory in near-time is starting to happen – agencies are starting to wake up to the power of that. It’s being drive a lot by clients (like P&G) who sit on mountains of data.”
We interviewed them at the Beet.TV leadership summit on programmatic TV advertising presented with Adap.TV. You can find more clips from the event here.