Facebook Tool Handles Media Companies' Video Ad Sales
May 23 2017 - 11:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Jack Marshall
Facebook is testing a new tool designed to help media companies
sell video advertising on their own websites, apps and other
digital properties in a more automated fashion, the company said
Tuesday.
The new ad offering, called Audience Direct, will invite
publishers to list video ad inventory for sale from across their
properties, and to specify pricing.
Marketers will then have the ability to log on to the system and
to purchase ad space from specific publishers on a self-service
basis, potentially streamlining the buying and selling process for
both parties.
Crucially, marketers can also specify which types of users they
wish to display ads to, based on Facebook's mountain of user data.
For example, an advertiser might purchase video ads on a specific
TV network's website or app, but targeted only to women in a
specific city.
Video publishers including Hearst, A+E Networks and Scripps
Networks Interactive are currently trialing the system with their
advertising clients, according to Facebook. It is unclear how much
ad inventory they will make available.
Business terms are still evolving, but it is likely Facebook
will take a cut of revenue from the transactions it helps
facilitate. That could be a welcome revenue stream for the social
network as it begins to reach capacity in the number of ads it can
squeeze into users' news feeds.
The move comes as Facebook is intensifying its push into video.
Separately, the company is working to license TV-like original
programming and sports rights, to be featured in a video tab
separate from users' feeds. Facebook is also beginning to introduce
mid-roll advertising within videos across its platform.
Combined, all those efforts could help the company win a bigger
slice of a U.S. digital video ad market that touched $10 billion
last year, according to eMarketer.
Facebook believes its new tool can streamline and modernize the
labor-intensive ad-buying process. Currently, ad sellers and buyers
often negotiate and place orders in a more manual fashion,
including via phone, email and even fax machine.
"We've heard from video publishers that today their existing
business is mainly direct-sold," said Facebook's vice president of
publisher solutions, Brian Boland. "That business has some
opportunities and challenges as it moves to digital."
Various other advertising technology companies already provide
similar sales tools for publishers, which are often referred to as
"programmatic direct" or "automated guaranteed" technologies.
But Facebook is betting that the addition of its powerful
targeting and tracking capabilities will make its offering more
attractive for marketers, and potentially more lucrative and
efficient for publishers.
Mr. Boland said the Audience Direct tool will function
separately from Facebook's existing Audience Network, a product
that allows marketers to target specific groups of users across a
wide range of websites and properties.
By contrast, Audience Direct is designed to broker deals between
marketers and individual media properties in a transparent
fashion.
"If you're an advertiser, you can buy from the Audience Network
and reach audiences irrespective of the content they're on. But
some marketers do want to buy specific publishers because context
is important to them," Mr. Boland said.
Marketers have been especially concerned lately about their
online ads showing up alongside objectionable content. But Mr.
Boland said Audience Direct isn't specifically designed to help
alleviate those worries. Rather, it was designed to cater to the
needs of publishers looking for technology to aid their sales
process, he said.
Write to Jack Marshall at Jack.Marshall@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 23, 2017 11:14 ET (15:14 GMT)
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