About a month ago, TV4 announced that its entire digital ad inventory can be purchased programmatically from the beginning of the year. We think this is good news and took the opportunity to talk to Johan Mähler Nelander, Digital Business Manager at TV4 about this.

Hello Johan,

Dwise: Your role is Digital Business Manager at TV4. Can you tell us briefly what that entails?

Johan: My working days revolve around, from a sales perspective, handling all the digital issues that TV4 faces. At the moment, this means that I put a lot of focus on programmatic, CTV (Connected TV) and how TV4 is working on making its linear inventory addressable, which means a connected inventory or digital distribution.

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Dwise: You recently announced that your entire digital ad inventory will be available for programmatic purchase from the beginning of the year. Can you tell us more about what this means and how you came to this decision?

Johan: We see that the programmatic buying approach continues to grow in popularity which means that there is also a great demand to buy TV4 programmatically. The benefits for our customers are that they can buy us omnichannel and optimize on reach. We also think that the basic idea of programmatic is sound, i.e. that the market gets to value an advertising exposure in real time, in other words that the purchase of advertising space takes place via a digital bidding (Programmatic Real Time Bidding).  

Dwise: What benefits do you see from this decision? 

Prof_200D↩Johan: The benefits of an addressable inventory and programmatic are many. One example is optimizing frequency, which is good for both advertisers and us as publishers. We also look forward with excitement to what AI-optimized media buying will look like in the future.

For advertisers, addressability also means more measurement opportunities and the more measurement points, the closer to the truth you get.  

The possibility to buy a specific audience based on our 4.5 million logged-in users is also appreciated by many advertisers. 

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Dwise: What are the main challenges/opportunities with programmatic according to you?

Johan: Programmatic is in a way undergoing a metamorphosis given the phasing out of the third party cookie and there are several ideas for solutions for this. Our approach is to offer controls to the market based on our first-party data and to dress that data with additional information to enable deep controls on, for example, interest or income, of course without any PII (personally identifiable information). A major challenge for the programmatic ecosystem is to streamline the value chain and make it work to increase the efficiency of each invested dollar.

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Dwise: What has been the reaction to this news? 

Johan: The market has hailed the decision. To me, it is clear that there is a desire for more quality media among programmatic buyers. As the buying mode matures, there will be higher demands that the purchases you make can be defended both in terms of soft and hard parameters, such as a publisher's content or view through rate (VTR) for advertising.

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Dwise: Do you think this will affect the industry at large and if so, how? 

Johan: TV4 is Sweden's largest CTV publisher and has a weekly digital reach of over 30% of the Swedish population, so it's clear that it affects many media buyers. We also hope that more media buyers will realize how important the quality of the media they use is.

Dwise: What are your top three tips for advertisers buying Connected TV programmatically?

Johan: Try to buy! CTV is democratizing TV buying, which means that even smaller advertisers now have the opportunity to advertise on TV.

The TV screen is one of the best media in the world. Therefore, when you buy "real" CTV - and by that I mean TV quality - you can be confident that you have prepared as much as possible for a campaign to deliver good results in terms of media performance. Today, there are many players offering CTV, but far from all of them are quality publishers, which can affect campaign performance.

Many advertisers often overlook the fact that the creative aspect is crucial to the success of an advertising message. My tip is therefore to put the focus there. Today, there are many AI tools to optimize commercials.

Another tip that many smaller advertisers overlook is to decide in advance which metrics the campaign will be evaluated on. Maybe you should look at the search trend for your product/service before, during and after the campaign period, how many more people buy (before, during and long after) or how many people visit your website?  

Historically, TV has created great effects in terms of brand lift, but it should be kept in mind that CTV and linear TV have different advantages. Linear TV is a campfire that gathers many individuals at one time, while CTV builds reach over time.

Dwise: Thanks Johan!