More than half of the advertising inventory on Sling TV’s platforms in the last month was sold via programmatic, private auctions. “The growth we see is astounding,” says Adam Lowy, Director of Advanced TV & Digital Sales at DISH Media Sales.
Sling works with two supply-side platforms—SpotX and Telaria—and interfaces with all the major demand-side platforms, Lowy explains in this interview with Beet.TV.
“We set up different auctions, whether they’re contextual auctions where we set up ways to access inventory into World Cup, March Madness, sports networks, news networks, kids networks and we set auctions into that.”
In addition, Sling does addressable auctions wherein certain audience segments can be bid upon. “And we set up different auctions. Some are always on, some are on during different times of the year, whenever we feel most appropriate,” Lowy adds.
“What’s essentially happening is the way that we’re seeing our growth, so much of our business is now going into these bidding type of process or programmatic private auctions.”
He stresses the private nature of the auctions. “We don’t do open auctions so we are pretty clear on what’s coming through our pipes. We want to make sure it’s safe and top tier premium stuff coming through into our top tier premium content.”
More than 50% of DISH’s Sling/digital business last month came through auctions, while more than half of the advertisements were coming through a bidding process, according to Lowy.
On the TV side, DISH built its own supply-side platform a few years ago, “and that is growing well. Over time, we are looking at merging these two platforms where you’ll have audience-based buying or contextual buying all bid upon, whether it’s on the Sling platforms or the DISH set-top box platform.”
While Lowy foresees a continuation of the Upfront selling process and other ways to buy, he believes that almost all impressions will be done through a bidding process or an auction.
“That opens up a whole new way to buy inventory, a whole new way to buy television. You get the true value of your content, your true value of the audience.”
This video is part of the Beet.TV series titled Targeting Today’s TV Viewer sponsored by DISH Media Sales. It is published along with this DISH Media Sales Straightforward Guide in ADWEEK. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
