RTL AdAlliance, The Trade Desk programmatic partnership
June 19, 2023
RTL AdAlliance, the international total media sales house of RTL, and global advertising technology leader The Trade Desk are joining forces to expand the programmatic buying infrastructure for linear TV advertising across Europe.
In a first step towards integrated programmatic TV buying, the partners enable the programmatic buying of addressable TV spot replacements and in-programme L-shape ads within linear broadcast TV across Germany, Spain, France, and Austria in addition to the growing reach in connected TV streaming environments.
International advertisers can now reach over 30 million unique households on major European TV channels from RTL AdAlliance’s addressable TV inventory. Among many more, channels of RTL Deutschland, Atresmedia in Spain, and M6 in France are part of the available portfolio.
The detailed plans will be revealed by Tim Sims, Chief Revenue Officer at The Trade Desk, Stéphane Coruble, CEO at RTL AdAlliance and Dr Oliver Vesper, Deputy CEO and Chief Digital Officer at RTL AdAlliance on the RTL Beach at Cannes Lions on Tuesday, June 20th, 2023.
“At The Trade Desk, we believe in a future where all TV advertising will be data-driven and addressable,” commented Sims. “While more consumers are shifting to streaming TV content, there is also an opportunity to make linear TV addressable. Our partnership with RTL AdAlliance enables us to drive this change by giving advertisers the tools to buy even more addressable TV inventory including CTV in Europe. We’re excited to see how this partnership opens up more opportunities for everyone in the ecosystem as the TV marketplace continues to evolve.”
“This is the next level towards a more integrated European TV advertising ecosystem, that serves the needs of advertisers and keeps broadcasters in control of their own data,” added Vesper. “Broadcast TV remains an integral part of the European media landscape. Almost 70 per cent of Europeans watch linear broadcast TV daily, according to our latest The New Life of the Living Room research. Viewers in Europe spend over 50 per cent more time watching broadcast TV than US viewers. In over two years, we have successfully established a programmatic Advertising-Funded Video on Demand and Broadcaster Video on Demand marketplace. In The Trade Desk we have a partner that shares our values and goal to also transform broadcast TV advertising from a one-to-many marketing environment to one-to-one targeting. HbbTV-based linear addressable TV has greatly innovated TV advertising over the past years in Europe. Now we can add the programmatic offering at scale — our goal is to establish a complete programmatic TV solution.”
The Trade Desk and RTL AdAlliance will initially enable international advertisers to programmatically book targeted addressable TV banner ads within the programme of broadcast TV channels and replace linear spots. Through programmatic ad break booking, individual spots can then be placed into predefined positions within the linear ad break digitally — expanding TV advertising with versatile targeting options to deliver individual messages to defined audiences in Germany, Spain, France, and Austria. Additional European countries will be added shortly.
Target audiences can be defined based on established targeting criteria, including location, segment targeting based on viewing behaviour per device, exposure, ad sequencing, or cross-device retargeting to other devices within the same household. The technical framework and targeting for all ads leveraging addressable TV via HbbTV is based on the capabilities of smartx — the holistic full-stack ad serving, and SSP solution of smartclip, the adtech unit of RTL Group — and follows IAB guidelines to provide open access standards for DSPs.