News Corp's Unruly partners with AppNexus to boost outstream video ad offering
News Corp-owned video ad tech company Unruly has partnered with AppNexus to allow advertisers and publishers to transact premium outstream video campaigns at scale in what it’s stakeholders say is a “fair and open market”.
Clients will have access to Unruly's ad placements across publisher sites through AppNexus’ open exchange and private marketplace, which will be made available by the end of the month.
It means AppNexus buyers will be able to benefit from more than a billion monthly viewable outstream video impressions via UnrulyX, Unruly's viewable video SSP. The latter's portfolio of user-initiated placements on premium publishers’ sites spread across business, news, sports and lifestyle sites - many of which are exclusive to Unruly.
UnrulyX claims to deliver 70 per cent of views across ComScore’s top 500 sites. Viewability is a key priority of the platform; ads running through UnrulyX do not begin to play unless 50 per cent of the creative is in-view. It also always allows the user to skip the ad.
UnrulyX’s in-house brand safety team works closely with trusted partners, including Moat and Integral Ad Science, to verify both viewability levels and human traffic and ensure advertisers’ creative will only appear in brand safe environments.
AppNexus recently announced its own solution for video viewability, for both instream and outstream inventory, to help clients quickly and effectively identify and reach ideal consumers within video environments. In this capacity, the company supports IAB, GroupM, and custom definitions of viewability.
Sarah Wood, Unruly’s co-chief executive, said: “Buyers want premium video inventory, but they also demand scale and viewability. The strength of this partnership is that AppNexus buyers have access to premium outstream inventory that is non-interruptive, while simultaneously increasing viewer engagement, brand performance and publisher revenues,”
Eric Hoffert, senior VP of video technology at AppNexus, said: “Now that Google has pulled YouTube inventory from the open market and as Facebook sunsets LiveRail, marketer choice, flexibility, and agility, has been greatly restricted.
“AppNexus is working fast to bring access to diverse, premium video supply pools like those offered by UnrulyX to our open platform for buyers. Together with Unruly, we’re offering superior reach, greater audience-building and more transparent pricing to elevate the entire video advertising ecosystem.”
AppNexus also added Dailymotion Exchange (DMX) as its video SSP partner to its video platform yesterday (7 June). The alliance is set to allow advertisers and marketers to find the most targeted audiences for their video campaigns.
News Corp acquired Unruly last year to bolster its advertising offering. Today's partnership is the latest move by the media group to bring more advertisers on board in outstream video, which, unlike pre-roll, doesn’t require a video player for the content to be viewed.