Adap.tv automates upfront online video ad buying

Adap.tv claims its platform, which can also be used for real-time bidding (RTB), saves time spent by media buyers and sellers on RFPs and allows agencies the ability to negotiate and execute upfront buys across hundreds of sellers at the same time.

Sellers are pre-qualified on a variety of data and metrics before being allowed to join the marketplace.

UK inventory currently accessible through the marketplace comes from sales houses Collective, Smartclip and Fox, according to Brian Fitzpatrick, the managing director of Adap.tv in Europe.

Another eight sales houses offer European inventory while the platform also covers Adap.tv's home market of the US.

No UK campaigns have yet been booked, Fitzpatrick told Media Week, but in the US independent media buying agency Horizon has run a multimillion dollar campaign running on sites including catch-up TV destinations from major broadcasters.

UK broadcasters are yet to embrace the platform, he conceded, claiming the UK's stricter regulatory regime made them wary of accepting third party ad tags out of concerns ads could be served to the wrong target group such as children. 

Upfront Marketplace bridges the RTB and broadcast television way of doing things, according to Fitzpatrick.

He said: "Let's say 'X Factor' has a million people watching on catch-up TV, you can book 200,000 people with the demographics that you want."

Adap.tv charges buyers a percentage per impression for video advertising, unlike in display advertising where it charges sellers a percentage per impression.

This is due to differing supply and demand balances in the two markets. Fitzpatrick said: "There isn't enough quality of supply to meet demand [in video].

"Some people are trying to use the MPU display unit for video. That's not video for us, video is pre-roll. The experience has to be TV-like, especially when view-through is the metric."

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This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk