It’s the behemoth media platform that has a hand in a large proportion of US TV ad spending. So why do so few people talk about WideOrbit?
The San Francisco-based company offers a software platform that handles scheduling, billing, content management and invoicing for mostly local TV ads around the US.
CEO Eric Mathewson tells Beet.TV the company has been providing a “DFP for linear TV” since launching nearly two decades ago.
“We started aggregating stations back in 2001, he says. “We are now live in 3,300 stations TV and networks, we are contracted to install another 1,000 stations next year.
“We’re managing about $30bn in ad spend, we’ve rolled up about 90% of TV station ad dollars, about a third of cable network ad dollars and quickly we’ll be over 50% of radio station ad dollars.”
WideOrbit may have already succeeded at helping advertisers buy traditional linear TV using data-infused techniques. But, now that TV is getting connected to the internet, things could be about to get really interesting. WideOrbit may go stratospheric.
“It’s very early days,” Mathewson acknowledges. “Right now, the programmatic linear ad spend is under 1% in the US, under $750m, but we think it rapidly will roll through those numbers.
“We’re seeing a lot of interest from brand-name, large advertisers who would like to more definitely buy the content that they’re looking for.
“Three percent of television in the US is about $2bn in ad spend. Moving the needle even one or two points is a lot.”
This video is part of a series produced at the NYC TV and Video Week’s Advance Advertising summit. The series is sponsored by 4C Insights. For additional videos from the series, visit this page.