LONDON — The Weather Channel has blazed a trail for programmatic advertising in the States, now it wants to do the same around the world – aware of the many different market challenges it will face.
The company has been using so-called “programmatic” technology to sell ads for a year or two now.
“I’m going to replicate the strategy all over the world,” Weather Channel programmatic and yield head Barbara Agus tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
The move comes not just with a selection of programmatic technology but with a planned up-tick in global video production to support programmatic sale of video ads. “We are changing our strategic approach – starting to produce in-house video,” Agus adds. But she concedes: “This is also a challenge.” Here are the challenges Agus envisages:
- “Trying to produce video in each country represents a strong cost we need to be able to compensate with the advertising investment.”
- “You face cultural barriers because you’re fighting with the culture and the ways to talk to each type of audience.”
- “Video is the type of creative where the publisher and advertiser are facing this challenge more than display banners.”
“The biggest issue is, most of the creatives produce video over 30 seconds,” Agus grumbles. “We cannot allow a video advertising over 30 seconds if my video content is just about a minute.
“It’s really hard to see what solutions are going to find. But advertisers and publishers should work more together to define the new metrics that are going to make this market successful.”
This video is part of the series Programmatic Video at a Turning Point, presented by SpotX. You can find additional videos from the series here.