Dax rebrands and expands to absorb Global's digital outdoor screens
After a significant outdoor advertising landgrab in 2018 and 2019, Global's grand plan looks to be taking shape as it integrates its outdoor digital advertising inventory with Dax, its owned and operated digital audio ad buying platform.
DAX rebrands and expands to absorb Global's digital outdoor screens
Dax will rebrand from the Digital Audio Exchange to the Digital Ad Exchange to reflect the broadening inventory available on the platform. From February 2020, the inventory will be made available to buyers keen to make have local and contextual cut-through on their digital audio campaigns with digital outdoor creative.
Advertisers can now buy up screens through demand-side platforms (DSP) on Dax as they would audio and video. The Trade Desk, Vistar Media, Mediamath and Hivestack are helping deliver this functionality on launch.
Global hopes that by making the inventory easier to buy, and hosting it on the same platform, it can attract a greater share of spend and be a cornerstone of brand strategies.
Admedia, Elonex and All City Media Solutions have also signed on to sell inventory through the platform. In the last two years, it has bought up Exterion Media, Primesight, Outdoor Plus and MMD to build a 235,000 screens portfolio. 954 screens will be buyable upon launch.
Ollie Deane, director of commercial digital at Global, said: "We launched Dax back in 2014 to enable advertisers to reach their audience while they listen to the world’s most loved audio content. Its growth since then has been down to advertisers using a variety of data sets and programmatic technology to accurately target audiences and measure the outcome.
"We're now bringing this innovation to digital outdoor. Our launch product will enable advertisers to buy through their DSP and we will introduce new and unique targeting and measurement products as the platform grows."
Mike Gordon, chief commercial officer at Global, said the last few years operating in digital audio has given the group a newfound confidence to operate in the outdoor space, utilising programmatic tech to "create more moments that matter".
TSB and eBay are among the partners testing the tech on launch.
Gareth Jones, chief marketing officer UK at eBay, said the buying platform has changed his strategy.
"Prior to Dax we built one 30-second radio spot for many millions of listeners. Now we’ll have up to 65,000 different radio spots running concurrently based on our gleaned listener intent. It was really interesting to see Global move into Outdoor and we were anticipating a big move from them."
Pete Markey, chief marketing officer of TSB, added: "The potential to fuse audio with outdoor in a programmatic, highly targeted, way is really compelling."
Markey previously told The Drum how the marketing mix of radio and outdoor was being used to drive footfall to specific TSB branches through geotargeting and personalisation.
There is much excitement about the application of programmatic tech to the out of home space. As third-party cookies come under the cosh, it may also be the least intrusive application of the tech from a consumer standpoint.