Programmatic CTV Ads Benefit from Contextual Signals: Wurl’s Ria Madrid

CANNES – Households that connect their televisions to the internet enter a digital world filled with a growing number of streaming-video apps. The publishers of those apps are seeking ways to achieve the highest sales of advertising from the automated, or programmatic, marketplace of sell-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs). “There is a lot of competition now within the SSP and DSP world, and right now, they’re really looking for unique and valuable ways to have a competitive edge,” Ria Madrid, vice president of advertising partnerships at connected-television platform Wurl, said in this interview with Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst at consulting firm TVREV, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. SSPs that represent CTV publishers face challenges in valuing their ad inventories, Madrid said. “We have seen a huge influx in content consumption to the point where supply is superseding demand by a landslide,” she said. SSPs “need to provide custom solutions that address the challenges they have. Just having some level of standardization across the bid stream, I think, is becoming really challenging for them.” DSPs that represent advertisers are seeking ways to increase how much those buyers allocate to streaming video. They face challenges with reaching the right audiences at the right time. “At Wurl, one of our biggest responsibilities is to our publisher and making sure that we are providing them with the tools that they need to best value their supply,” Madrid said. “In order for us to do that, it’s been really critical for us to understand the challenges of the DSPs so we can kind of come in at that intersection between the two to provide solutions.” Wurl recently released a generative artificial-intelligence product called Brand Discovery to place ads within content that’s most appropriate for the brand. That includes moments that match ads with the emotional context of the programming. “We’re actually analyzing the content right before the ad break, giving advertisers the ability to target contextually relevant, and at a time where the audience is emotionally primed for that type of creative,” Madrid said.