Luxembourg-based pan-European RTL Group is living out both of those trends.

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.

And it is doing that by trying to satisfy advertisers that have an increasingly global outlook.

“What we saw over the last few years with the appearance of the big pure players, to have global partnerships at HQ level, and we are here to answer to those needs,” says Stéphane Coruble, RTL Adconnect CEO, in this video interview with MTM’s Jon Watts for Beet.TV.

“We call this a ‘glocal’ approach. You know, global KPIs, because brands are very global now. You can go wherever you want in the world, you will see the same brands. But, when it comes to implementation, it’s clear that you need to have a strong knowledge of the local discrepancies across the world.”

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.

Last year, after acquiring SpotX, RTL Group created Video Marketplace (VMP), an initiative to combine various source of online video ad inventory which its AdConnect sales house represents.

And this June the company formed a joint venture with Germany’s ProSiebenSat.1, helping the latter to sell ads in addressable TV platforms.

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. 

Last year, acquiring SpotX, pan-European RTL Group created Video Marketplace (VMP), an initiative to combine various source of online video ad inventory which its AdConnect sales house represents.

Now the outfit is doubling down on its US presence.

“(When) I stepped into the company we had 37 people  mostly in Europe,” says Stéphane Coruble, RTL AdConnect CEO, in this video interview with Beet.TV.

“Now we’re reaching 100 people across the world and we’ve been opening lots of new offices.”

Mostly, AdConnect’s expansion has happened in the UK, where many international brands bridge in to Europe through major ad agencies. But AdConnect also set up camp in New York a year and a half ago, and is now opening a Los Angeles office, Coruble says.

“The US market is very dynamic,” he adds. “Many of our legacy clients are based here in the US, and it’s important that we get discussions and partnerships with them. (We want) to discuss with companies based in LA, but also based in San Francisco, in the Valley – direct consumer brands. Very important for us, especially for the European market.”

AdConnect represents broadcaster VOD, including its group’s own, totalling ore than a billion monthly views, Coruble claims.

VMP accesses 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.

Coruble’s strategy seems to tap two trends we are seeing in the marketplace;

• Around the world, operators are coming together in partnership, seeking scale to fight common media challenges against tech foes – but, whilst such partnerships are becoming commonplace in Europe and Latin America, they are as yet rarer in the US.
• The ongoing rise of direct consumer brands, which eschew marketing and retail intermediaries to sell as ecommerce operators, continues to provide impetus to marketing tech firms, many of which are now chasing their custom.

This video is part of the Beet.TV preview series titled “The Road to Cannes.”  The series is sponsored by 4INFO. Please visit this page for additional segments. 

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.