Vevo introduces programmatic unified auctions for its global CTV inventory
Details
John Moulding
| 23 November 2023
2 Vevo introduces programmatic unified auctions for its global CTV inventory
Vevo is introducing programmatic unified auctions for its premium connected TV inventory globally, helping it to maximise ad revenue. A significant upgrade in capabilities also enables TV-like controls for advertisers, like the ability to buy the first slot within an ad break.

The programmatic innovations are the result of a global partnership with Publica by IAS, the connected TV ad server provider. The Publica by IAS technology also supports competitive separation – ensuring that car brands or soft drinks brands are not advertising in the same break as their rival, for example.

Competitive separation is another buying feature that advertisers are long used to in broadcast TV and which will encourage further ad spend growth in the connected TV space. Frequency management is also being improved for buyers using Vevo.

Vevo justifiably describes itself as the world's leading music video network, and you will find them regularly extolling the virtues of music videos as a way to engage mass-scale, multi-demographic audiences with strong contextual alignments. The collaboration with Publica by IAS is also going to improve targeting capabilities, the two companies say.

Vevo inventory will be available on more supply side platforms (SSPs) as a result of the partnership, adding more avenues for programmatic revenue.

"As the Vevo catalogue expands, we are excited to partner with Publica to ensure that we are providing a high quality and curated best-in-class viewing experience, while ensuring that our advertising partners can effectively reach our global audience of music lovers," says Natalie Gabathuler-Scully, EVP, Revenue, Distribution & Data Operations at Vevo. "By providing advertisers with greater control and increased transparency, they can better optimise their CTV campaigns when reaching our engaged viewers."

In more detail, the key Publica by IAS products Vevo has implemented include:
Advanced Ad Serving. Vevo has the ability to deliver advanced CTV ad breaks with the granular controls required by advertisers to target, and with the ability to optimise each slot by revenue per second within the pod.
Advanced Ad Pod Decisioning. This gives Vevo the ability to guarantee an advertiser first pod (streaming ad break) placement, and own a pod by brand category, helping with competitive separation and buyside frequency management.
Unified Auction. This enables Vevo to run a controlled, unified auction of all demand sources to extract the highest yielding ad per slot in each streaming ad pod.
Vevo is also using the Publica 'Live Logs' feature to enable real-time transparency into each of the programmatic auctions where the company's inventory is cleared. This permits Vevo to optimise yield and data strategies in real-time to ensure they do not lose demand to supply path optimisation (SPO).
The Publica CTV ad decisioning technology ensures Vevo’s connected TV inventory is being targeted and served in the most secure way possible. Publica by IAS notes that it has been instrumental recently in helping the IAB Tech Lab to build out the new protocols that bring increased security and targeting to streaming ad breaks via the introduction of OpenRTB 2.6, and also ads.cert 2.0 that secures the practice of SSAI.

Sean Galligan, CRO at Publica by IAS, says: “We look forward to providing Vevo with the ad decisioning technology to grow their global advertising revenues, offer outcomes to their advertisers, and improve the viewer experience in connected TV.”