Broadcasters Create Programmatic Guidelines

Hoping to spur development of programmatic selling for spot TV and make the it more competitive in ad marketplace, major TV station groups and rep firms have produced a set of guidelines and best practices for programmatic selling of spot.

The broadcasters describe the nine-page guidelines as “a living document” — that is, one that will evolve over time. It is encouraging broadcasters, ad buyers and other interested parties to contribute suggestions for refining the guidelines over time.

To that end, it has posted the guidelines on the TVB website with an invitation to comment at [email protected].

Instrumental in assembling the guidelines was the Pearl group of nine station groups: Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps, Graham Media, Hearst Television, Media General, Meredith Local Media, Raycom Media, Schurz Communications and Tegna.

Also credited as part of the working group that wrote the guidelines are Fox Television Stations, Tribune Media, Katz Television and Cox Reps.

The working group recruited TVB to get the word out on the guidelines and encourage feedback from all broadcasters. TVB’s Abby Auerbach was scheduled to formally announce the initiative at a BIA/Kelsey conference in San Francisco Thursday afternoon.

Broadcasters are involved in various programmatic trials by Videa, Wide Orbit and others and they wanted to make sure that programmatic selling develops in way that benefits them to the fullest, said said Pearl Managing Director Anne Schelle.

“There are practices in television that are very different than in digital,” she said. “As an industry, we want to make sure that the ecosystem is a healthy one and not one where it becomes problematic just because of educational issues. These guidelines are going to help maintain an advertising landscape that makes sense for all parties that are participating in it.”

Schelle stressed the guidelines are a work in progress. “These guidelines are meant for the industry to be able to continue to reiterate on them and improve them. As the companies learn what works and what’s not working, they would be updated.”

The guidelines cite five “benefits” or goals:

• Drive consistency and repeatability in systems and process

• Facilitate adoption of multiple buy and sell side platforms

• Preserve and improve the art of selling broadcast linear TV advertising

• Improve the use of first- and third-party data overlays to better understand audience value

• Creation of new demand by simplifying access