Sponsored content is going programmatic, courtesy of a partnership between native ad company Nativo, and demand-side platform The Trade Desk. GroupM’s native ad division, Plista, will be a key buyer in the new partnership.
The deals transact via a private marketplace, but with fixed pricing. Nativo will add in a programmatic guaranteed option later this month.
Nativo added the programmatic option because it saw demand from buyers.
“Agencies desire to consolidate their buying through a single platform,” said Nativo CEO Justin Choi. “They want to buy all different formats, but they want to buy it through their preferred trading desk.”
Buying sponsored content programmatically through Nativo also will allow brands to control for reach and frequency, Choi added.
Plista will be able to use the data management platform Turbine in its sponsored content campaigns.
“We can now overlay Turbine, which allows us to do the audience targeting and hone in on the audience that we are trying to capture,” said Elizabeth Harrington, head of Plista for North America. “This is an important evolution in our relationship that allows us to target using our real-time audience building and allows us to scale.”
Publishers working directly with a client on a sponsored content campaign could point them to their DSP to allow them to execute everything there. And native ads they sell indirectly will come from brands who signed IOs as well as those transacting programmatically.
Choi sees this addition of programmatic solving for a key problem: The most time-consuming advertising to execute often creates the biggest effect.
“So much of digital advertising has been a trade-off between impact and scale,” Choi said. “By making it programmatic, we are removing that limitation to buying high-impact stuff.”
