Montreal-based French-language digital media network Atedra has launched a new programmatic direct platform, AtedraDirect, which it says will open up the Quebec market to programmatic buying.
“It’s big news for our Toronto clients, because it will enable them, through our programmatic platform, to reach the Quebec population with a lot more scale than they’re used to,” said Atedra president Pierre-Antoine Fradet.
Atedra exclusively represents 250 publishers in Quebec, and offers more than 300 million display, video and mobile impressions monthly, the vast majority of them on French-language sites. According to comScore’s October numbers, Atedra’s inventory reaches 4.4 million unique users in Quebec each month.
Atedra’s exclusive relationships with publishers generally mean that inventory they sell is not available for direct buying elsewhere, and isn’t resold as remnant to networks and exchanges.
Agencies that work with Atedra will now be able to tap into its inventory through a self-serve platform that enables real-time data targeting and other programmatic features. Fradet said the process involves no bidding — as in all programmatic direct buying, prices are negotiated between the publishers and agencies — but buyers can still selectively purchase impressions targeted using audience data and other programmatic features.
The process also doesn’t require a DSP or other third-party platform, since agencies can use Atedra’s own interface to make buys. That contrasts with programmatic direct platforms that involve independent DSPs and private exchanges.
“It’s a revolution in the sense that even with [other forms of] programmatic direct you need to have multiple players between the agency trading desk and the publisher. We remove all the third parties and connect directly,” said Fradet. “Publishers will gain a lot of commissions that were going to third parties before, so we expect more flexibility on prices, and that will enable agencies… to gain a real advantage for their client advertisers.”
One of Atedra’s main reasons for building an end-to-end system — similar to the motivation behind other companies building all-in-one programmatic systems — is to ensure the majority of buyers’ dollars are going to working media, rather than going to third-party vendors as a ‘tech tax.’ Atedra claims with the AtedraDirect platform, 75% of each dollar the advertiser spends will go towards media.
Weak reach in the Quebec market has been a common complaint among programmatic advertisers in Canada. Quebec publishers have been especially reticent to release inventory onto exchanges or networks for programmatic trading.
Programmatic direct offers a third way — where advertisers can use real-time data targeting to reach the audiences they want, without a bidding process where publishers have limited control over who the eventual buyer will be and what they will pay. With Atedra’s scale and relationships with top Quebec publishers, AtedraDirect will likely go a long way towards opening up the Quebec market.
However, for the time being that solution will be only available to media agencies and agency trading desks that have relationships with Atedra. For now, Atedra is not looking to work with third-party buyers or supply aggregators, which means it’s unlikely advertisers will see Atedra inventory popping up on big multi-source platforms like TubeMogul or AppNexus, alongside inventory on YouTube or TechCrunch. French inventory will still have to be bought separately from English inventory, and in that sense Quebec will remain a walled garden.
