CBC/Radio-Canada, Shaw Media and Rogers Media have partnered to create a new online bidding exchange service that advertisers and agencies can use to buy digital inventory from the three Canadian media giants.
The service, dubbed the Canadian Premium Audience Exchange (CPAX), officially launches May 16. Although CBC, Shaw and Rogers will each continue to sell inventory individually, a portion of each organization’s digital ad space will be available for real-time bidding on CPAX.
The online ad inventory includes space on more than 100 sites in English and French.
Alan Dark, executive director of CBC Revenue Group, said the exchange offers advertisers a better deal than online ad networks.
“This was a way for us to bring a new product to the Canadian ad agencies that we do a tonne of business with – using technology, not a rep firm – to bring unsold inventory to the marketplaces and allow our partners to bid on that inventory.
“We don’t believe a lot of these networks have skin in the game. They’re in the game purely from a volume perspective and they keep growing their inventories by bringing less-than-premium sites into the equation,” said Dark. “The advertisers are frustrated because they’re putting money into these [networks] because of the economics of the inventory, but it’s not working for them the way it was five or 10 years ago.
“We believe we have a really lucrative product for the industry. It’s cutting-edge and we control who plays and doesn’t play, and it’s a very transparent bidding process for folks to access the inventory.”
Jason Tafler, chief digital officer for Rogers Media, said CPAX is the latest development in his company’s ongoing drive to create robust digital offerings.
“We repositioned Rogers Digital Media a couple of months ago around having the best of both quality – audiences, brands and content – and also extended reach and efficiency,” said Tafler. “This fits in really well with our strategy and where we’re going.”
Paul Burns, vice-president, digital media at Shaw, said that having three large media players involved in CPAX gives the service its intended mix of reach and targeting.
“We’d contemplated building a real-time bidding ad exchange by ourselves,” said Burns. “One of the value propositions of a real-time exchange is efficiency and we thought, if we go down a path of building our own separate and private ad exchange, it really defeats what we’re trying to create, which is giving clients the ability to get scale and reach and targetability in really efficient ways.
“We knew that if buyers and investment managers could know without a shadow of a doubt that their brands and messages would show up on premium assets and brand-safe environments, we’d have a winner.
Burns said CPAX’s launch partners were open to the possibility of other major media owners becoming part of the exchange.
The CPAX announcement comes a month after media agency Starcom Mediavest Group launched a real-time bidding exchange partnership with ad networks Olive Media and TC Media.
