Programmatic advertising on course for expansive year as engage:BDR adds further integrations

Advertising company engage:BDR (ASX: EN1) has kicked off 2019 with a flurry of new integrations that will further extend the capability of its proprietary programmatic advertising platform.

The company’s chief executive officer Ted Dhanik has steered engage:BDR to include ThirdPresence and AcuityAds with a further set of integrations also waiting in the wings.

The next wave of integrations is said to be in “validation mode” and can generate “upwards of US$100,000 per day (A$139,000)” in revenue when fully operational.

First on the list of integrations for this year is ThirdPresence, a key player in the connected TV video inventory market. The company specialises in distributing programmatic ads and focusing on selling users, rather than placements or website space.

ThirdPresence is Finland-based but is heavily US-focused, relying on curated mobile in-app and smart TV advertising to provide quality video ads and drive revenue for large brand advertisers.

Upgrading advertising capability

What’s known as “connected television” has become a prominent emerging sector in the US and thereby attracting a larger proportion of large marketing budgets spent by top-tier companies seeking to promote various goods and services.

ThirdPresence is an important integration for engage:BDR because of its experience, knowledge and large reach within the connected television space.

The second key integration this year is AcuityAds, a Canada-based programmatic company, that provides significant incremental business for engage:BDR – specifically within Canada, which supplements its North American focus.

Acuity offers digital advertising insights, activation and optimisation across screen and formats, working with top brands such as Nike, MasterCard, Mazda, Purina, RBC Royal Bank, TD Bank, Nestle, Amazon, and Warner Brother Pictures.

The list of top-tier companies is forecast to grow as advertising continues its transformation from simplistic media ads to fully trackable and bespoke online campaigns that serve both the buy and sell side of the sector.

Since the introduction of mass advertising, ads have traditionally been rather one-dimensional and shown in the same fashion to all viewers, either via TV or billboards as just two examples. This methodology often led to poor conversion ratios without verification that the ad was reaching the right audience.

In modern times, online technology is far more accommodating allowing targeted ads to reach niche audiences with potential buyers being “pinpointed” based on demographics or location.

Engaging with both buyers and sellers

Engage:BDR publishes ads which buyers want to see and therefore facilitates delivery of ads to the right users.

This strategy has been proven to induce a significant premium because wasteful ad publications are eliminated and the campaigns perform significantly better in terms of securing customers.

At the current time, more than 90% of engage:BDR’s revenue is generated in the US, however, as the company continues to grow, the possibilities of expanding internationally and cross-continentally will be more prominent, according to Mr Dhanik.

Mr Dhanik said that the company is “in the business to ensure that publishing, or user content, is viable for the publisher, by providing and maximising their source of revenue”.

“This enables the highest yield for publishers and constitutes its competitive edge which the company has worked to master over the last decade.”

“As this industry continues to develop and mature, budgets allocated to video ads and enabled TV will continue to take up larger percentages of ad spend. The more integrations the company obtains, the higher its ability to monetise for publishers,” said Mr Dhanik.

“Over the next year, investors and shareholders can expect to see the company attain new programmatic integrations, as well as, see previously signed integrations go live and begin generating revenue,” he added.