The more that US ad-tech vendors get consolidated in to larger European media owners, the more we hear about the relative simplicity of the European system.
Whilst the European market, like the continent itself, is fragmented, its broadcast ecosystem is far less so. Furthermore, initiatives like HbbTV have seen the entire chain of electronics manufacturers and broadcast groups come together to define common device standards.
Systems are simpler, through which media owners, more than underlying distributors, tend to control their ad sales.
That is something SpotX, the video ad serving platform, has discovered since it was fully acquired by RTL Group of Luxembourg in 2017.
“We see … a duty to work through the fragmentation, and the changing regulation around audience and targeting capabilities, around measurements,” says SpotX’s Sean Buckley in this video interview with Beet.TV. “We’re hard at work with, not only our customers, but partners across the industry, to really streamline those concepts.
“You … have a lot of inventory fragmentation in the market, in the US, in terms of who gets inventory rights, depending upon how the consumers are accessing content. Less so, in many cases, in some of the European markets.
“In markets like Germany and France and Italy, for the most part, the broadcasters control all of the inventory, and they’re just bringing these new capabilities to market. (They are) not as much dealing with the fragmentation, and distributors having an inventory share, et cetera.
“We do think OTT is the game-changer for that.”
This segment is part of a series titled The New Global Marketplace for Premium Video, produced at Cannes Lions and sponsored by RTL AdConnect. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. For all of Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019, please visit this page.