Programmatic direct has taken off in Canada, and nowhere is it more in demand than premium ad space like pre-roll video. TubeMogul, one of the video-focused platforms benefiting from this shift, says the number of Canadian video impressions bought via its programmatic direct offering, BrandAccess, has more than quadrupled in the past year.
The platform released its Canadian Q2 video report last week, showing impressive growth in Canadian programmatic video inventory overall. BrandAccess saw 342% more impressions bought by Canadian advertisers in Q2 2015 than in the same quarter of 2014. In raw numbers, the quarterly average number of programmatic direct transactions grew from 160,000 to 712,000 per day.
Though some of that growth likely comes from TubeMogul’s expanding business in Canada, it’s also evidence that Canadian advertisers are embracing the technology to buy real-time, targeted ads directly from the publishers they want to work with, rather than bidding against other advertisers on real-time exchanges. Other platforms operating in Canada, like Index Exchange (formerly Casale Media) have also noted a dramatic increase in programmatic direct business. Index says that more than half of its Canadian revenue now comes from the direct transactions it facilitates between buyers and sellers.
As opposed to real-time bidding (RTB), programmatic direct means the pipes are connected directly between an advertiser and the publisher they’re buying from, so they can negotiate deals the old fashioned way—up-front and in-person—but fulfill the order with targeted impressions, using their own data. The channel appeals to brand advertisers because it means they can better segment their audience without incurring all the perceived risks of buying ads from an unknown seller posting to an exchange—think fraud or pirated content. The U.S. and U.K. haven’t shown as much interest in programmatic direct as Canada. Industry observers tend to attribute this difference to Canadian advertisers being more cautious and risk-averse than their global counterparts.
In both programmatic direct and RTB video, the biggest stumbling block for Canadian media buyers has been a lack of premium inventory available to buy through programmatic—though according to TubeMogul’s report, that problem is being solved. The amount of pre-roll inventory TubeMogul sees on exchanges has grown 647% year over year, from an average of 86 million impressions auctioned off daily in Q2 2014, to 645 million average daily auctions in Q2 2015.
From TubeMogul’s Q2 2015 Quarterly Update Canada
“Programmatic video’s story has changed,” the report authors write. “No longer are the questions ‘Is it big enough to scale? Is there enough premium inventory?’ Now the discussion shifts to how to drive the results that matter most to you.”
Growth in mobile video inventory was a little more modest, though still impressive. Impression volumes were up 231% year-over-year, rising to 41 million average daily auctions in Q2 2015.
Average CPMs in both mobile and desktop video—often used as a proxy for advertiser demand for the channel—are also showing gains, up almost 7% year-over-year in mobile to $11.48 per thousand impressions and up 10% in desktop preroll, to $11.80. An increase in average CPMs while inventory volume is growing so quickly is evidence that demand is more than keeping up with the new supply that publishers are bringing onto the exchanges.
