Which one is right for your media company? When it comes to adopting a programmatic TV solution, one size may not fit all goals for both buyers and sellers. Programmatic has evolved from meaning simply data-driven real time buying' to become an umbrella concept that covers several different transaction styles.
WideOrbit supports three primary flavors of programmatic TV advertising Open Marketplace, Private Marketplace, and Programmatic Direct. Each flavor is right for different situations for both buyers and sellers. Station groups that want to grow their programmatic business should understand the benefits of each and how they map to the needs of their current and potential advertisers.
Open Marketplaces Best for: Opportunistic buyers, advertisers coming to TV from digital
Not so great for: Guaranteed buys
Imagine a bazaar where buyers stroll through the aisles, browsing inventory from numerous sellers. They can evaluate which items might fit their goals and propose a price when they find something they like. Sellers can accept or reject any offer based on their business situation and their own assessment of the value of their wares.
This is a good analogy for a programmatic TV open marketplace. In the open marketplace, buyers can review and make offers on ad inventory from many TV stations. That's perfect for buyers that want to buy campaigns airing across multiple stations, geographies, and dayparts in a single transaction.
For station groups, participating in an open marketplace exposes their inventory to digital buyers who may not have previously considered local TV. There is little downside to join in because they still reserve the right to turn down or ignore any offer that doesn't meet their expectations.
The downside for buyers who make an offer is that there's no guarantee that their ad will run. So while open marketplaces are good for scatter or opportunistic campaigns, they may not meet the needs of buyers who want their spots to run at a specific place and time.
Private Marketplaces Best for: Transacting with your best customers, reserving certain ad spots for their use
Not so great for: Winning business from new advertisers
Private marketplaces (PMPs) are like an exclusive flash sale or a members-only shop. Only invited customers are allowed to come in. That's great for maintaining relationships and offering the benefits of programmatic to your most favored customers, but won't help you meet anybody new.
In a private marketplace, the seller can place limits on what spots are available in the shop. Sellers sometimes opt limit the inventory in their PMP to only their most premium ad spots, but that's entirely at their discretion. It's their store!
Programmatic Direct Best for: Transacting with high-volume customers, selling programmatically with previously negotiated business terms
Not so great for: Winning business from new advertisers, working with customers that prefer to do business in traditional ways
Programmatic direct is a mutually-agreed connection that moves the old-fashioned manual back-and-forth between brands, agencies, and media companies to a programmatic platform.
Programmatic direct can speed up the process of transacting with your high-volume customers because the platform can be configured to automatically respect existing business rules and standards. Offers that meet standing business terms between buyer and seller are automatically approved, effectively creating a guaranteed transaction for compliant offers.
A retail analogy is less appropriate for programmatic direct. Imagine instead an old-world industrial inspection line. Transactions that meet contractual expectations move along the line to completion, while offers that don't fit are rejected and automatically thrown off the line. The efficiency and appeal is that humans don't have to evaluate each offer as it passes down the line.
The programmatic direct model best suits transactions between station groups and high-volume buyers that have business terms already in place. Both sides can also tap into programmatic TV's ability to use data to assess inventory value.
Finding the Option that Works Best Programmatic TV open marketplaces, private marketplaces, and programmatic direct reflect different ways of doing business with your clients. Your station group can elect to use one style or all three. It's completely up to you and your sense of how programmatic TV can best benefit you and your clients.
WideOrbit offers all three flavors' to station groups, and we're happy to work with you to identify the right ones for your business. Contact us today and let us know how we can help.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
28/08/2025
IBC stand 5.F81
Wowza to Reveal Next-Gen Video Streaming Innovations at IBC 2025
Amsterdam, August 28, 2025 Wowza, a leader in video streaming infrastructur...
Which one is right for your media company? When it comes to adopting a programmatic TV solution, one size may not fit all goals for both buyers and sellers. Programmatic has evolved from meaning simply data-driven real time buying' to become an umbrella concept that covers several different transaction styles.
