There is currently a thirst in the industry for a solution to bridge the gap between television advertising and online advertising.

While traditional TV advertising is slowing in pace, programmatic TV advertising buying is increasing, and many believe that eventually all TV ads will be purchased programmatically. Up until 2019, programmatic TV has largely failed to launch, however various concrete vendor solutions have now become available. Research by PWC predicts that programmatic TV will represent approximately one third of global TV ad revenue by 2021.

Any TV inventory that can be bought by a programmatic platform can be considered to be programmatic TV. A buyer considering serving ads on connected TV (CTV) can buy from sources such as streaming device manufacturers, content aggregators, smart TV manufacturers and broadcast networks that allow advertisers to extend traditional TV buys into the digital space.

It makes sense to link up media buying and to use data-driven solutions wherever possible. Manually executing media buys (either TV or digital) that are entirely disconnected to each other makes less sense as time goes by.

This briefing will cover the benefits and challenges of programmatic TV advertising. The content of this briefing is taken from Econsultancy's Optimising Programmatic Campaigns Best Practice Guide, published in February 2019.