Magna, the data arm of advertising and marketing powerhouse IPG Mediabrands, has cut a major ad deal with Roku which brings it programmatic advertising across all of Roku’s VoD content in the US. As far as we can see, with the exception of a deal that Roku has cut with Viacom on its own channels, this is the first major industry advertising partnership that can reach out to the 13 million US homes which have a Roku installed to deliver targeted advertising.
IPG Mediabrands clients – which include BMW, Coca-Cola, The Hershey Company, MillerCoors, JetBlue, Dunkin Donuts, Charles Schwab, IHOP, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Office Depot – will get accelerated access to advanced advertising capabilities on the Roku platform, including precision targeting, programmatic workflows, interactivity, and audience measurement.
Roku launched a series of advertising capabilities at the Upfronts in 2015 in April under the heading Advanced Video Advertising and Measurement, including its Roku Ad Framework. At the time, it was shown to be working with Nielsen’s audience measurement. Roku claimed at the launch that half of the top 250 streaming channels on the Roku platform were ad-supported, led by channels like CBS All Access and CBSN.
But back in October 2016 US analytics company comScore suddenly turned up with its own deal for audience measurement on Roku, so we presume that both sources of audience data can now be used at the request of advertisers – comScore and Nielsen. At that time, it was suggested that Roku now accounts for around 50% of the US OTT streaming market.
Back in February 2016 Viacom made a minority investment in Roku and then claimed to be the very first programmers to be granted right of entry to Roku’s valuable audience data, to send targeted ads to specific areas and demographics of Roku’s monthly active accounts.
Magna’s web site carries the sole message that it is an agency that is not stuck in the past, and that it wants to embrace all new types of media. It says this deal cements its video diversification efforts and that during the 2016 Upfronts, Magna secured the largest ever Google Preferred deal and shifted a portion of clients’ TV advertising spend to YouTube. Partnering with Roku will enable Magna clients to reach viewers who have shifted their TV consumption to OTT.
Magna is trying hard to expand its TV advertising strategy across emerging platforms like OTT. Roku data plus the proprietary systems of Cadreon, the programmatic arm of IPG Mediabrands, will provide clients the ability to precisely target audiences on the Roku platform.
Roku is the industry’s first OTT platform to support Nielsen’s Digital Ad Rating (DAR) measurement and all IPG Mediabrands campaigns will be DAR measured.
IPG Mediabrands manages $39 billion spend on behalf of clients, and employs 9,000 specialists in 130 countries.