Media Owners Warming Up To Private Marketplaces

Hulu announced this week that it is to offer selected advertisers the opportunity to buy premium video inventory using enhanced targeting capabilities from the peak Fall Season onwards, after the online video on demand streaming service struck-up partnerships with IT giant Oracle, and Facebook-owned video advertising platform LiveRail.

The announcement, dubbed “the next evolution in its sales process”, means advertisers will be able to buy premium inventory across a number of screens, using Oracle’s data management platform (DMP), to improve targeting capabilities by matching first and third-party data sets.

For its part, Hulu maintains this technology will help maintain its relationship with viewers, as it means it will be better able to serve viewers with ads that are more relevant to their tastes (quite importantly, ads on Hulu are unskippable).

Industry sources noted that this marks a distinct departure from Hulu’s initial subscription strategy, with some expecting similar moves from rival online video-sharing sites, such as Netflix, and Amazon Prime.

The direct sales model is where media owners do a direct deal with advertisers – often in person – over specific media placements via insertion orders, commonly referred to as IO’s.

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