The European Programmatic TV Initiative (EPTVI) has released its Stage Two report, with six proposals aiming to simplify and enhance programmatic premium TV operations across the continent.
With automated trading opening market opportunities across Europe, programmatic TV is gaining momentum, but fragmented models across different territories continue to present interoperability problems, said the organisation. EPTVI’s Stage Two proposals aim to ensure existing systems can work together consistently, addressing cross-boundary operations while respecting the differences between national markets.
Underpinned by five North Star Principles, the proposals build on existing standards, institutions and workflows, aiming to increase transparency, improve comparability and clarity and support interoperability while preserving national and commercial differences.
The proposals are:
- The future role of Europe’s TV Joint Industry Committees (JIC): Europe’s JICs are its most trusted measurement institutions, but most programmatic TV is traded beyond their reach. EPTVI proposes they expand to cover planning, activation and reporting of programmatic campaigns, and assuring audience claims based on publisher, platform and third-party data.
- Impressions Reporting Specification: A common structure for reporting delivery across linear and IP-delivered television, removing much of the manual reconciliation now needed to compare records across different platforms and services.
- Signals Framework: The technical foundations already exist. What is missing is agreement on what each bid requires, how that information may be used, and why bids fail. EPTVI proposes a framework covering all three, tested first in Programmatic Guaranteed and Private Marketplace deals.
- Creative ID Interoperability: Europe has no shortage of creative identifiers, but there is often no link between them, so ads lose their identity through the supply chain. EPTVI proposes that every ad carries and retains an originating reference and issuer, improving traceability, reconciliation, frequency management and ad-pod controls.
- Frequency capping, ad pod management and competitive separation: Television controls ad repetition, adjacency and break structure. Programmatic can too, but usually only within a platform, so controls can fail across systems. EPTVI proposes a common format for intermediaries to state their limits, allowing buyers to compare.
- The Premium Programmatic Partners (3Ps) Programme: Programmatic transactions can involve a dozen parties without agreements linking them all, blurring responsibility for provenance, reporting and remediation. EPTVI proposes shared commercial principles through existing procurement, contracts and onboarding, not a new certification scheme.
The proposals were presented and debated at a Stage Two Virtual Industry Summit on September 30th, with senior executives from broadcasters, streamers, technology companies and more.
Sandra Whitney, MD, global partnerships, sellside EMEA at Google, said: “Broadcasters are putting more of their most sought after inventory into programmatic, and they need to maximise yield and protect pricing while ensuring a great viewer experience. This work establishes the practical connections needed across our industry to make that a reality.”
“Europe is not one television market and may never become a fully unified media market. A buyer working across five countries deals with five sets of trading conventions and five ways of describing the same inventory,” said James Grant, SVP, advanced television at Equativ. “Shared frameworks enable companies to work with those differences rather than around them.”
William Jones, senior director, head of advanced TV and omnichannel activation at Adform, said, “Run a campaign across five markets and you can still end up with five different sets of numbers. As television becomes a more integrated part of omnichannel planning, greater consistency in reporting will help advertisers compare performance with confidence and make television a more seamless part of the wider media conversation.”
Stage Three
With a focus on market testing, AI and market growth, Stage Three of EPTVI will advance from design to implementation. The Stage Two proposals will be tested and developed alongside an examination of the next generation of commercial and technological opportunities for premium TV.
Tests are expected to cover impressions reporting, signals, creative IDs and frequency capping. EPTVI will also work with its participants on the JIC assurance model and the 3Ps procurement materials, said the organisation.
