It is now two years since Sling was reborn as an over-the-top TV experience for cord-cutters in the DISH Network stable.
In that time, DISH hasn’t just been helping position the service as a paid platform for the post-cable era. It has also been using Sling as a Trojan Horse in to the new world of programmatic TV ad sales.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, DISH’s Adam Lowy explains how DISH has turned on addressable TV advertising in which slots in live TV are bought in real-time using data-driven auctions.
“We brought programmatic advertising into Sling,” Lowy says. “We looked at the ability to target consumers with private auctions and either a) contextually or b) by using addressable, but to really reach them in a one-to-one relationship completely live in real-time.
“We set up auctions and we looked at our audience and said, ‘Okay, do we have a good amount of auto intenders within the Sling audience?’ And we went ahead and said, ‘Okay, we have this number. So let’s go ahead and set up a live auction, completely private, completely anonymized, but within our space,’ and it went like wildfire.
“We had advertisers come in immediately and they went ahead and used that, our platform, our programmatic platform to go ahead and target auto intenders in real-time.”
Lowy isn’t stopping at autos. Since then, DISH has used Sling to create new auctions of power users, homes with children and vacationers. And Lowy is now looking at offering advertisers further groupings.
“Maybe we create one just for retail, maybe we create a private addressable auction just for other brands or other types,” Lowy adds.
This video is part of series on developments with OTT. The series is presented by Sling TV and DISH Media Sales. Please find more videos from the series here. For the Sling/DISH report on OTT and the marketplace, download this report.