Later in the morning, Beet.TV did this video interview with Magnite CEO Michael Barrett about the deal and what it means for the industry.
The adtech veteran reflects on the industry’s ups and downs, including unsuccessful IPOs that turned off investors. Also hampering investment had been a widespread perception that Google and Facebook would dominate and there would be no room for big, independent players in adtech. The Trade Desk has proved them wrong, he notes.
The combination of the two companies, which are primarily known as Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) will become an industry powerhouse in a technology which provides video and television programmers and publishers with software to make inventory available to advertisers in an automated, programmatic manner.
RTL acquired SpotX in 2017, after owning a controlling interest since 2014.
The public markets have embraced today’s acquisition news enthusiastically, with share price soaring some 25% to $55, increasing the valuation of the company by $1 billion in today’s trading (as of noon EST.)
]]>Case in point – Germany, where many kinds of modern ad practice are curtailed by regulation in a country long sensitive to privacy concerns.
That is something acknowledged by Rhys Nölke, SVP strategy at RTL Group, the pan-European broadcast and production owner.
RTL Group operates its eponymous RTL TV broadcaster in Germany, but it is nevertheless taking steps forward in upgrading the country’s advanced advertising capabilities.
Nölke says RTL Group is building on its previous acquisition of video ad-tech vendor Smartclip and its tech stack’s compatibility with Europe’s HbbTV technology standard, by launching a joint venture with Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1, a broadcast channel owner.
Earlier this month, the pair formed a joint venture, allowing them to control a platform for the automated booking of addressable TV and online video, the latest in a series of European alliances between rivals coming together against big tech platforms.
Nölke, in this video interview with Beet.TV, calls it “a booking engine for clients to actually simplify access and actually have an addressable TV product available from one spot”.
He says German addressable TV ad spending remains small: “We’re not even there on a significant million Euro figure today.”
But he is seeing “the first encouraging signs on some very small, very simple products that we’ve got out there, which also are still under scrutiny of regulation because replacing spots, et cetera, is also not possible” due to regulation.
This segment is part of a series titled The New Global Marketplace for Premium Video, produced at Cannes Lions and sponsored by RTL AdConnect. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. For all of Beet.TV’s coverage of Cannes Lions 2019, please visit this page.
]]>In another such initiative, French TV channel operator M6 is teaming with rival TF1 and public broadcaster France Télévisions to mix audience data and sell ads across their combined portfolio.
The initiative is due to launch in Q1 2019, according to Stephane Coruble, the MD of AdConnect, an ad sales unit across RTL group properties, which include M6.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, he says the aim is “to simplify the access to programmatic buying and online video”.
“It also uses first party data, and combining basically the first party data from our clients and mixing them, mixing the segments together with our first party data, and being able to reach the right consumers on our combined portfolio,” Coruble adds.
Adconnect unit is an ad sales arm for RTL-owned broadcasters and shows made by its Fremantle Media subsidiary (American Idol, Got Talent, X Factor) around the world, but also those owned by other operators.
RTL Adconnect uses a video marketplace platform to access premium inventory across linear TV and VOD, built on SpotX and Smartclip, both of which RTL acquired in recent years in addition to VideoAmp and Clypd.
The idea is to give video and TV companies a leg-up in ad sales against the might of tech platforms, appealing to international companies with a clear pitch in a fragmented market: “Buy Europe”.
The UK’s main free-to-air commercial broadcaster ITV recently signed a deal with Adconnect in which the latter will represent ITV outside of the UK on ad sales.
That is in addition to existing deals to represent RAI in Italy and Medialaan in North Belgium.
“In Germany, for instance, we are putting together … subscribers’ ID,” Coruble continues.
“You will see more and more alliances happening on the markets, on the different local markets, because I think that we need to be stronger together in order to compete or cooperate sometimes with the big international platforms.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Future of TV Advertising Forum 2018, London. The series is sponsored by Finecast. For more segments from the series, visit this page.
]]>Around the world, operators are coming together in partnership, seeking scale to fight common challenges.
That is what Germany-based broadcast group RTL is doing with more than 400 partners.
Its Adconnect unit is an ad sales arm for RTL-owned broadcasters and shows made by its Fremantle Media subsidiary (American Idol, Got Talent, X Factor) around the world, but also those owned by other operators.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, RTL Adconnect CEO Stéphane Coruble talks about the big idea, and how a recent extension to the partner network adds additional scale at a time of change.
“If you want to advertise for a single point of contact that we are, in Germany, in France, in Italy, in Spain, we can do that,” Coruble says. “An American company could say, ‘I really would like to reach Europe, and to reach the inventory of launching a group from one point of contact’. And you can do that, we can deliver that, through the video marketplace.”
RTL Adconnect does this using a video marketplace platform to access premium inventory across linear TV and VOD, built on SpotX and Smartclip, both of which RTL acquired in recent years in addition to VideoAmp and Clypd.
The idea is to give video and TV companies a leg-up in ad sales against the might of tech platforms, appealing to international companies with a clear pitch in a fragmented market: “Buy Europe”.
The UK’s main free-to-air commercial broadcaster ITV recently signed a deal with Adconnect in which the latter will represent ITV outside of the UK on ad sales.
That is in addition to existing deals to represent RAI in Italy and Medialaan in North Belgium.
This interview was conducted at the EGTA New York meetings hosted by Viacom. EGTA, the Brussels-based trade association of international television companies, is the sponsor of this Beet.TV series. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>But, whilst US penetration is high, it is not necessarily the country leading the tech charge, says one exec with a multi-country view of the opportunity.
“We see, in the addressable TV world. very much the UK is at the forefront,” according to Rhys Nöelke, the strategy SVP for German-based RTL Group, the FremantleMedia owner that also has a stake in online video ad tech operator SpotX.
“(It is) a market where we are not present with our broadcasters, but we see a lot of activity from Sky, for instance, with the AdSmart platform. That is very much the most advanced ad platform in the world, I believe.”
AdSmart is the addressable TV offering launched by UK pay TV leader Sky – a satellite TV firm, telco, channel owner and media sales house. It helps advertisers place ads on set-top boxes that, using data, can be triggered in individual households during commercial breaks.
But, whilst the UK apparently leads the way, other parts in Europe are far behind, Nöelke says.
“Don’t even speak about regulation,” he grumbles. “For instance, Germany and France, local advertising on TV is or geo-targeting is not permitted.”
RTL’s SpotX was just named the most trusted video ad platform in the US.
This interview was conducted at the Future of TV Advertising Forum in London. Beet.TV’s coverage is presented by the 605. For other videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>At least, it may look like that from the outside. The Santa Monica-based outfit spent plenty of time perfecting its platform before taking on a $15m first venture round in November, the latest in German broadcaster RTL Group’s ad-tech roll-up.
Now VideoAmp CEO Ross McCray says 2016 is primed to be “the year of execution” for the company he co-founded. So what does VideoAmp bring to the party?
A “cross-device graph”, McCray says: “We associate multiple device IDs to a user, we append intelligence to those devices. We’ll say, ‘here’s everything those devices have consumed’; it watches these ads or shows on TV.
“Today, we over 150m unique users in the United States and over a billion devices associated underneath those users, and consumption data across all of them.”
That means advertisers will get to more smartly target ads based on a holistic understanding of who exactly is behind the many devices that are now used throughout households.
McCray says an earlier seed round had funded the engineering build-out, but the effort in 2016 will be about sales.
This video is part of a series of interviews about the transformation of television produced at CES and sponsored by SpotX.
]]>In July 2014, the big European broadcaster RTL Group acquired a controlling interest in the company. Then, last year, the outfit rebranded from its former name, SpotXchange, as it gained traction in Europe thanks to the RTL deal. At the end of 2015, SpotX also partnered with RTL Digital Hub stablemate Clypd to support optimized targeting of ads on TiVo set-top boxes in the US.
After a year of “thought leadership”, CEO and founder Mike Shehan says the company is now embarking on a 2016 that will be “the year of execution”, with some company announcements coming soon.
First, Shehan says SpotX will be revealing which broadcasters are using its Clypd relationship to buy TV ads programmatically
1. Programmatic TV
“We’ll be announcing our first clients”, he says. “Those will be broadcasters, media owners who will be managing media with a link solution that’s both digital and linear.”
“You’ll also see some announcements from us in Europe, with set-top box activity – advertising on TV through the set-top box.”
2. Asia launch
In addition to its UK office, SpotX also opened in Amsterdam and a German joint venture last year. Now another continent is on the roadmap, and soon.
“The same announcements you saw in Europe we’re going to be making in Asia … next week,” Shehan says.
Connected TV
Shehan says advertisers are getting excited about over-the-top TV devices: “We saw, just over the holidays, traffic triple from Apple TV. A lot more people are buying them. That inventory is really desired by the advertiser side.”
After the sale
Despite selling up to a big company, entrepreneur Shehan says he is not moving on from the mothership any time soon: “RTL allow me to run the business. Our executive team is still in place, we’re still motivated and we still have pretty big goals to achieve.
Our coverage of CES is presented by SpotX.
]]>Now the Hub is on the hunt for more ad-tech acquisitions.
“We will also look for further investment opportunities that add on, that complement, that strengthen the existing portfolio,” RTL Digital Hub EVP Marcel Reichart tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
So far, RTL Group has made the following moves:
“If you look at the portfolio, those are all strong companies, leaders in their markets,” Reichart adds.
“The 2016 mandate is to ensure these companies and CEOs can grow these companies in the best way forward. 2015 showed very good growth and maturing – we believe 2016 could give that opportunity as well.”
Our coverage of CES is presented by SpotX.
]]>But is the industry too busy debating the potential, complex future measurement systems to notice that they are already here?
“I have to smile a little bit about that,” says Rhys Nölke, SVP for European broadcast group RTL, which has invested in ad tech platforms SpotX and Clypd.
He suggests people are getting bogged down by potential and complication: “A lot of the uncertainty and confusion is among the agencies and their clients themselves. They’re trying to have discussions on things we can actually already see and have done, in terms of ‘what is a viewable ad impression?’. It’s already written down, the IAB definitions.”
While some marketers imagine a holy grail of ultimate cross-screen measurability with 100% viewability, Nölke says today’s reality shouldn’t hold them back: “We have to take the small things as already proved and move on.”
And he says ad tech vendors’ pronouncements shouldn’t drive so many advertiser preoccupations, despite their promise of efficiency: “It’s a very biased role. We’re not going to be winning this game by just using solutions from interested parties.” He favors industry joint committees ruling the roost on which metrics are best to use.
This video was produced at the Future Of TV Advertising Forum. Beet.TV’s coverage is sponsored by Xaxis. You can find more Beet videos from the conference on this page.
]]>Already this year, the pair told Beet.TV they would team up, after RTL’s $144m investment in to SpotX in 2014 and $19.4m in Clypd this April.
Clypd CEO Joshua Summers says the hook-up is enabling advertisers to buy unduplicated audiences across both digital and linear video inventory, including retargeting from one medium to the other.
Although this works on an individual-advertiser basis, Summer tells Beet.TV the pair will bring it to “open market” in 2016.
Clypd already works to help US cable networks and channels like Discovery better target viewers. Summers says the RTL investment is helping Clypd understand the disparate multi-market of Europe.
This video was produced at the Future Of TV Advertising Forum presented by Xaxis. You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.
]]>