Dentsu brings keyword buying to connected TV to improve brand safety and targeting

Dentsu is working with ad tech players to bring keyword-based contextual targeting and brand safety controls to programmatic connected TV buying, filling what agency executives see as a gap in the market. Dentsu’s Contextual Intelligence for CTV, which utilizes GumGum’s Verity and Iris.tv, does away with the need for cookies and personal identifiers while also going beyond genre-based and other broader contextual targeting methods. It offers keyword targeting at the video level, similar to what’s broadly applied across other digital media today but to movies and video series that are staples of free ad-supported (FAST) and other ad-supported offerings today. Ad Age Media Summit Hear from industry leaders during October event in NYC Register here That in turn allows for brand safety controls that are also widely offered across the open web through third-party verification companies or from social platforms, which have been lacking for programmatic buys of FAST and other ad-supported video libraries. That does create some blind spots. For example, Procter & Gamble Co. has been expanding its use of programmatic buying of FAST networks, but it hasn’t dropped its historically strict content standards for ad placements. As a result, at least as of last year, one could find P&G ads popping up on Tubi while streaming “Fight Club,” a 1999 film with extreme violence and sexual references that would historically be restricted from the company’s ad placements. Asked in an interview last year if P&G’s ad placement standards had changed for CTV, P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard said they have not and that he wasn’t aware of that particular placement. Getting ‘very specific and very niche’ Part of the problem is that contextual targeting of ads in streaming content has been, at best, a blunt instrument up to now, said Akash Jairath, chief product officer for Dentsu Media U.S. “What we’re allowing is very specific targeting of content with keywords and categories that isn’t available in the market,” Jairath said. “Traditionally it’s been driven by categories and third-party segments, whereas we’re allowing advertisers to get very specific and very niche and make their own segments to reach audiences.” That is, to the extent supply-side platforms and demand-side platforms allow Dentsu to deploy its keyword targeting, and that’s a work in progress. “This is starting off with smaller SSP partnerships,” Jairath said. “DSPs, they do allow for the [contextual IDs] to pass through, but they haven’t started decisioning on it. So things are catching up. We’re definitely working with our DSP partners to push them on this” as well as with more SSPs. But, he said he believes “100%” that the client interest will generate sufficient scale that both sides of the ad tech world will fully allow for the use of Contextual Intelligence. Brand safety is a concern for many big advertisers, and the new system allows for filtering “the most egregious types of categories of content based on [Global Alliance for Responsible Media] standard protocols,” said Keith Pieper, senior VP of product for Dentsu Media U.S. “It’s taking consistent contextual signals and applying those GARM filters just like you would in any other type of content” to CTV. At the same time, Contextual Intelligence allows for more precise exclusion of content, such as just extreme violence, rather than excluding all R-rated movies from a FAST library, Jairath said. "We applaud Dentsu for quickly taking action to build a first-of-its-kind video-level solution to ensure advertisers have transparency into where their video ads are being placed,” said Phil Schraeder, CEO of contextual digital advertising platform GumGum, in a statement. "We can build a network of partners that sets the standard for how the video advertising ecosystem should work,” said Field Garthwaite, CEO and co-founder of Iris.tv, a CTV content data platform that helps enable the keyword classifications of video. “Videos with universal content identifiers that allow for true contextual analysis will give advertisers increased transparency into where their ads are being placed and confidence to invest in CTV.” Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs

Dentsu brings keyword buying to connected TV to improve brand safety and targeting

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