With connected TV (CTV) viewership continuing to grow, Google is providing advertisers more options in buying CTV inventory – including audience guarantees based on Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings (DAR).
Advertisers can access these audience guarantees through Display & Video 360, Google’s digital ad campaign platform. Nielsen DAR is essentially a way for advertisers to gauge how many unique viewers they reached within a given campaign.
Some media companies have leveraged Nielsen DAR for their audience measuring platforms, such as Tubi and Roku.
Ad buyers can now choose a specific age and gender demographic when setting up audience guarantees. According to Google, advertisers for all types of video campaigns – including CTV – only have to pay for the ad impressions that reach their target audiences.
Additionally, Google said it’s expanding programmatic guaranteed options, which allow advertisers to buy inventory through automated processes. Programmatic ad buyers can tap into Google audiences across various ad exchanges, including Google Ad Manager, Xandr and Magnite.
Google is also improving ad frequency management for programmatic campaigns.
“Once your campaign frequency goal is reached for certain users, whether via open auction, Programmatic Guaranteed, or a combination of the two, Display & Video 360 now stops showing ads to these users while still prioritizing and delivering the agreed number of impressions from your guaranteed deals,” said Jake Jolly, SVP for Google’s Display & Video 360, in a blog post.
Further enhancing CTV advertising, marketers can now purchase YouTube ads directly within Display & Video 360’s insertion order dedicated to CTV ad buying. This feature, Google says, helps CTV campaigns minimize technical barriers that typically limit reach on CTV devices.
Google’s CTV insertion order also compares YouTube’s ad inventory alongside that of other CTV platforms. On its second quarter earnings call, Google noted YouTube’s impact in the CTV space.
“As the number one streaming video platform to reach viewers across all devices with billions of hours of video watched every day, YouTube remains well-positioned to deliver the reach, results and relevance that advertisers need,” said Google Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler on the call.
In other news with YouTube, the company last week hired Verizon executive Miguel Quiroga to manage and develop partnerships for the video platform, including YouTube’s app on connected TVs.
YouTube may also be working on developing a streaming video aggregator, according to last week’s report from the Wall Street Journal.