NBCUniversal has rolled out a private ad exchange for select digital agencies, including BlueKai, Nielsen and Quantcast.
It is part of an online ad network it launched a year ago, meant to offer clients direct access to premium display ad inventory that can be targeted at scale across the UAP’s digital content portfolio. It is also one of growing handful of companies taking this step in order to reduce reliance on third party ad networks and take better control over uncommitted digital ad inventory.
The UAP network features inventory from all of the NBCUniversal Entertainment sites – bravotv.com, nbc.com, oxygen.com, syfy.com, usanetwork.com – as well as cnbc.com, accesshollywood.com, mun2.com, nbcsports.com, the 10 NBC Owned Television station websites, telemundo.com and mun2.tv. Reuters recently began contributing inventory to the UAP, making it the first non-NBCUniversal property to do so.
Of Course, It Would Be Admeld
NBCUniversal’s private exchange is powered by Admeld and is based on real time bidding. There are few examples of private advertising exchanges in the market - that is, a digital marketplace in which one very large publisher connects advertisers to its segmented user base - Admeld and its RTB platform is common to most of the ones that do exist.
Last year the Weather Channel launched a private network called Category 5 on Admeld's platform. It connects advertisers to more than 50 million consumers across TWC's web and mobile properties. The network also gives the publisher control over how each impression is sold.
Other examples include Technorati Media's partnership with AppNexus to create a private ad exchange, IDG TechNetwork's launch of Tech Media Exchange, and quadrantONE, a joint venture of the Tribune, Gannett, Hearst and The New York Times to launch Q-Exchange. This ad exchange’s focus is on premium local audiences.
Long-percolating Trends
In many ways these private networks are the creation of long-forming trends in the ad market. Cross-platform, audience-targeted ad buying is gaining momentum. Also sophisticated data management tools that can identify, package and sell a publisher’s most valuable audience segments have come to market. All of which is underpinned by agencies and advertisers longing for a more efficient means of executing cross-platform buys with publishers of this caliber. For their part, publishers have long resented the low prices set by ad networks. Over the last twelve months, as a result, agencies have begun diverting sizable budgets to audience-targeted media buys.
