BBC and Tremor Video ink global partnership to boost global monetization opportunities
As arguably the world’s largest news brand generating almost 2 billion impressions each month, UK public broadcaster the BBC has decided to pair with Tremor Video to better monetize its global audience in APAC, North America and further afield; with the deal also giving an insight to the adtech company’s own global expansion program.
BBC Advertising hopes to boost its its revenues through its partnership with Tremor Video
The pair have today (November 14) announced a deal that will see BBC Advertising (part of BBC Worldwide) use Tremor Video’s seller platform to better monetize its inventory outside its domestic market (where it relies solely on the UK TV licence fee for revenue).
BBC Advertising is at pains to highlight the unique value its global audience of “culturally curious”, “worldly achievers” offer to brands interested in maximizing their campaign reach among a high value audience, especially when it comes to executing campaign extension, etc.
In particular, the broadcaster is eager to highlight how its audience over-indexes with globally-conscious citizens, whose jobs often involve high-powered decision-making, with the depth of its coverage taking in a breath of topics such as business, politics, sports, technology and travel, among other areas.
As part of the partnership with Tremor Video, BBC Advertising can now choose the currency it transacts in, even if it is one that spans international borders. For example, a fixed-rate deal in British Sterling can compete with a fixed deal in Euros, and an open auction in US Dollars. This feature allows publishers to maximize their yield across global demand however marketers want to buy, according to the adtech company.
David Goddard, global head of programmatic trading for BBC Advertising said: “Through implementing Tremor Video’s solution we will be able to gain a greater understanding about how to more effectively sell video globally and grow our capabilities.”
Adam Lichstein, Tremor Video, president, publisher platforms, told The Drum that the broadcaster has clearly recognized the opportunity for programmatic to improve monetization, and they went out looking for a platform that can help it span borders. "We’ve been working very closely with the team in the UK, as well as other regions too (in particular in the US), and one of the things that is important to them a global company was being able to transact in different currencies.”
For Lichstein, who heads up all of the adtech outfit’s publisher initiatives, this is an example of a growing trend among media owners that want to monetize outside of their domestic base, one the adtech outfit is observing as its ‘sell-side offering’ becomes a larger share of its ‘demand-side offering’ when it comes to a percentage of its overall spend.
“It’s an increasing trend we’re seeing as our platform [business] grows internationally, we’re working with publishers more-and-more who are monetizing impressions globally and they’re looking for that platform that will help them across the world,” he added.
Sell-side technologies is powering Tremor’s international growth
Tremor Video pivoted its UK business to solely focus on its sell-side offering in the early half of this year, a decision that was taken by its recently installed UK managing director and media industry veteran Andrew Morley.
“International growth is being driven by the seller platform, so when you look outside of the United States in other regions, it’s pretty analogous with what Andrew’s doing in the UK, as it’s much easier to go to market with a single offering and have a focus,” explained Lichstein.
He went on to say that in the US it still has a strong buyer platform business, which is an “important source of demand for us”, given that Tremor Video’s sell-side services source traffic from it similar to third-party DSPs.
“But outside the US the focus has been on growth through the seller platform,” said Lichstein, adding the fact it has been built in recent years, and doesn’t contain “legacy code” was a key selling point. “It sits in the cloud, works extremely fast, and works seamlessly across devices, plus in-app or mobile web with real-time reporting” he added.
Tremor Video reported a 1% annual decline in its revenues for the period ending September 30, which totaled $41.3m, with programmatic revenues (i.e. revenues spent using its advertising technology, as opposed to those that went through its legacy ad network business) now 91% of its total spend figure during the period.
Speaking during the company’s subsequent analyst call, Bill Day, Tremor Video, chief executive, said the growth in its platform business had largely been powered by spend on its sell-side offering. “Looking back at our business over the past two years, we have been able to fundamentally transition from a managed service ad network to a premium video marketplace,” he added.
“We believe that we have built the leading global video SSP [supply-side platform] and a highly differentiated video DSP [demand-side platform] and that we will continue to benefit from the secular shift of ad dollars to programmatic, which is forecast to grow by an incremental $4.5bn annually in the US, when comparing 2016 to 2018.”
He went on to highlight how Tremor has also take several measures to increase its footprint in APAC during recent years, with particular reference to its purchase of TVN in Australia, plus the opening of offices in Malaysia as well as New Zealand.
“We had a number of big publisher wins in the quarter, adding LeEco, a major content and technology provider in China, which recently acquired Vizio, and is now launching in the US market. We also added EW Scripps, Silver Chalice, MailOnline, and Boingo Wireless, to name a few,” he added.
For more insights into programmatic advertising and data come to The Drum's Programmatic Punch event in London on 8 December.