Walking the tightrope: broadcaster technology and operations in the age of programmatic TV
Introduction
During the last six months, the members of the European Programmatic TV Initiative (EPTVI) – The Trade Desk, Google, OpenX, PubMatic, Equativ, Magnite, Cadent and Adform – have been working closely and collaboratively with leading European broadcasters, streamers, pay-TV platforms, trade bodies and major agency groups to explore the benefits of programmatic TV.
The Initiative members have explored areas of misalignment and potential barriers – commercial, operational, technical, strategic – to embracing programmatic sales and execution and have looked to develop practical solutions and a roadmap for moving forward.
This article, the second of three that will be published during the coming weeks, focuses on assessing some of the technical and operational barriers facing commercial broadcasters in the programmatic marketplace.
These and other issues will be the focus for debate at the European Programmatic TV Initiative Industry Summit in London, on Wednesday March 26th, 2025. The Summit is open to qualified industry participants.
You can find out more and register your interest in attending here: https://www.projectxinitiative.com/eptvi.
Navigating the Transition to Programmatic
Programmatic TV offers European broadcasters a range of potential benefits, from attracting digital-only and international advertisers to increasing the yield on lower value inventory. However, despite its promise – and the strong demand for greater access to broadcaster inventory – this transition is complex and requires meticulous execution. A well-managed approach is key to helping broadcasters navigate operational complexities, regulatory considerations, and financial factors in the transition to programmatic.
Europe’s broadcasters operate in highly regulated marketplaces, with regulations varying country by country across Europe’s diverse national TV markets. These include broad restrictions, such as GDPR and ePrivacy laws, and specific TV advertising rules covering ad minutage, competitive separation, watershed restrictions, commercial trading terms, advertising codes of practice and clearance requirements. In most European markets, local industry participants have developed their own institutions and industry bodies to support delivery against these requirements, such as Clearcast in the UK and ARPP in France.
As more and more inventory shifts to digital environments and becomes potentially available for programmatic sales and execution, Europe’s broadcasters need to work with programmatic partners that can comply with these rules - and this can be challenging, requiring careful technical and operational integration.
Even with robust pre-integration work, operational challenges persist, especially in reconciling programmatic transactions with linear sales. Pricing models for linear TV are often based on fixed rates and negotiated deals, whereas pricing can fluctuate dynamically for ads that are bought and sold in real-time through automated platforms based on audience data, impressions, and bidding mechanisms. There are no universally accepted measurement solutions that work across linear and programmatic channels and no standardized way of translating between Gross Rating Points (GRPs) and impressions.
Inventory control can also present challenges, with linear TV ad sales typically tied to scheduled programming or particular dayparts, with inventory managed directly by the network, while programmatic inventory is more dynamic and can be managed in real time, via DSPs and SSPs. Targeting solutions and capabilities also vary, as do data and attribution solutions. If poorly executed, this can result in operational inefficiencies, reduced speed to market, and challenges in scaling their programmatic offerings efficiently.
It is also worth noting that commercial broadcasters already have the infrastructure and operations they need to support their existing TV ad sales. Traditional TV advertising systems have been refined over decades and are deeply entrenched on both the buy-side and sell-side. These include traffic and playout systems, handling everything from scheduling ads and managing commercial breaks to ensuring compliance with broadcast regulations. They are tightly integrated with broader linear broadcast workflows, including ad sales and booking, campaign management and scheduling, audience measurement, and compliance and verification, providing end-to-end control over the ad insertion process, from booking and trafficking ads to delivering them seamlessly during scheduled programming.
The broadcast ad sales process involves far more than simply executing insertion orders (IOs): it represents a complex and highly coordinated set of operations that underpin campaign success. While programmatic guaranteed deals may resemble IO-based transactions, the traditional broadcast model remains fundamentally distinct due to its reliance on manual workflows, long-standing trading agreements, and human oversight.
Broadcasters use the IO process to secure premium rates, precisely manage inventory allocation and maintain stability in pricing and inventory quality. The manual nature of many IO transactions, though sometimes seen as outdated, is integral to enabling bespoke deals and custom campaigns. These processes tap into the longstanding relationships and workflows broadcasters have built with agencies and advertisers, leveraging the stability and precision of existing systems that have been optimised for linear TV over many decades.
In practice, these long-standing systems are highly efficient for broadcasters for managing large-scale campaigns, particularly when dealing with premium inventory during high-demand programming, such as live sports or primetime shows. They excel at maintaining strict adherence to broadcast regulations, delivering accurate audience targeting within traditional demographic frameworks, and ensuring seamless ad delivery without the latency or technical glitches sometimes associated with digital ad serving.
The good news is that these challenges are very solvable, with broadcasters in many markets adopting converged TV platforms that blend linear and programmatic ad buying, offering unified ad platforms, cross-screen measurement tools and audience-based targeting. TV sales are gradually migrating to digital-like converged offerings, with self-service platforms and joint ventures offering capabilities that can help to bring new digital-first advertisers into the TV ad market.
Programmatic complexity - an inconsistent marketplace?
While the IAB Tech Lab provides comprehensive, standard specifications for programmatic CTV and Online Video, such as OpenRTB and VAST, not all market participants adhere to the latest versions or support all attributes. For example, some DSPs don’t yet support the video.plcmt attribute in OpenRTB 2.6x, which means that outstream video formats can sometimes be misrepresented as instream.
Additionally, system upgrades take time, often leading to delayed adoption of new standards. VAST 4.x, for instance, was adopted so slowly that the IAB had to implement backward compatibility with VAST 2.0 in its 2024 CTV Addendum, enabling more wide-spread support for features like Ad Creative ID Framework (ACIF) and Digital Services Act (DSA) compliance.
Even then, implementations can vary partner by partner. For example, the use of metadata and content taxonomies can differ from one stakeholder to another. The majority of OpenRTB’s attributes are optional, which can leave room for misalignment - some publishers use a first- or third-party content ID to declare the content category, while others may use genre to declare the content category. The IAB Tech Lab Content Taxonomy is on version 3.1, yet many players are using the deprecated version 1.0.
Despite these inconsistencies, it’s important to note that the programmatic ecosystem has made enormous progress. Thanks to the work of the IAB and its partners, there are now globally-adopted standards such as VAST and RTB that facilitate a fast-growing, dynamic, interconnected ecosystem capable of supporting billions of euros of ad spend. Standards and taxonomies take time to get right, but the marketplace is clearly moving in the right direction.
Running in parallel
The challenge for broadcasters is managing a migration. Running programmatic deals means that broadcasters need to juggle hybrid workflows across their advertising and content platforms, simultaneously managing both direct-sold and programmatic inventory, integrating disparate systems that were not originally designed to work together.
Inevitably, this creates further operational complexities, if integration and alignment is the goal. Ad delivery and reporting mechanisms must be synchronized between traditional linear TV infrastructure and digital ad servers, which can introduce discrepancies in pacing, measurement, campaign execution, and audience duplication. Additionally, ensuring compliance across different buying methods while maintaining optimal yield management creates an added layer of complexity, requiring more sophisticated operational oversight.
Take, for example, ad serving. A commercial broadcaster might contract with a third-party to serve ads into its streaming services, sold directly to an advertising partner. If the same broadcaster wanted to sell ads in the same ad break or pod programmatically, it would need to ensure that the programmatically-transacted ads are compliant with the same codes as the direct sold ads and that they do not infringe rules on competitive separation. The complexity of integrating a third-party programmatic platform varies depending on the broadcaster’s choice of partner and approach to leveraging programmatic sales and execution.
Broadcasters often find themselves managing two distinct technology stacks, one for traditional linear TV and another for streaming and on-demand services. Presumably, the ultimate goal may be to converge these systems into a unified workflow, but achieving this is no small feat. Each broadcaster’s bespoke linear tech stack, coupled with their unique set of ad tech partners for digital and programmatic operations, introduces significant variability in standards adoption and execution.
Adding to this complexity, a number of Europe’s commercial broadcasters are advanced in developing their own adtech and joint partnerships, which vary widely. For example, in the UK, Sky has invested heavily in AdSmart, its addressable advertising offering. In Germany, RTL Group and ProSiebenSat.1 are integrating their ad tech businesses, Smartclip and Virtual Minds, aiming to create a holistic TV advertising solution that merges linear and streaming platforms. The European Broadcaster Exchange (EBX) is a joint venture among major European broadcasters including Channel 4, Mediaset, ProSiebenSat.1 and TF1 that specializes in multi-country programmatic Broadcaster Video on Demand (BVOD) campaigns.
The variety of technologies and the range of partly or fully programmatic solutions underscore the challenges in aligning with evolving industry standards and ensuring consistent campaign execution across platforms.
The priority for broadcasters is to manage these risks by working with programmatic partners to ensure compliance and consistency across the ecosystem. Issues such as data leakage, fraud, mislabeling and arbitrage continue to undermine confidence, but can be resolved, with concerted industry action.
Broadcasters are walking a tightrope, looking to make TV-grade inventory attractive to digital-only and programmatic-first buyers by offering more data, ease of access and optionality, while simultaneously guarding against commoditization and devaluation in a highly competitive marketplace. However, the entry of new players such as Netflix, Disney and Amazon, none of whom have a linear legacy for their digital first services adds to the pressure to find a solution
Sven Hagemeier, GM, Inventory Development, The Trade Desk expands on this idea, explaining:
"Advertisers are increasingly prioritising value and quality over cheap reach. They’re willing to pay higher CPMs when they can make their data work for them - optimising frequency, targeting audiences more precisely, and driving better performance in programmatic auctions. The result is higher yields for publishers and a better viewing experience with more relevant ads. It’s why major media companies like Disney and leading European broadcasters are embracing data-driven decisioning. And at the heart of it all are privacy-safe, encrypted ID solutions, which are already in place and powering this shift."
Unlocking the opportunities
The work of the European Programmatic TV Initiative has focused on looking for common solutions and approaches that can help to unlock the full potential of the programmatic TV ecosystem for Europe’s commercial broadcasters. However, when it comes to technology and operations, it is clear that progress is going to be driven in local markets by local players, with each European market moving at its own pace, sharing experiences and improvements as work progresses.
Nevertheless, there are opportunities to make real progress, notably in three critical areas:
The need for standardisation and interoperability: The inconsistent use of technical standards, inventory classifications and metadata limits holistic targeting, optimisation, measurement, and cross-platform and cross-market operations. Some broadcasters and adtech partners still rely on older versions of OpenRTB, VAST and IAB Content/Audience Taxonomy, leading to inconsistencies in campaign and inventory management.
Premium inventory: High quality TV and streaming content risks being undervalued and overlooked due to the prevalence of mislabeled and, in some cases, fraudulent inventory. With no centralized industry body to promote proper content and device labeling, it is left to sellers (and resellers) to self-classify. Although various video formats can now be identified in the bidstream with the IAB Tech Lab’s video.plcmt spec, some DSPs are still using outdated specifications, leaving the marketplace still trying to differentiate between intentionally-viewed instream video and sound-off outstream video, for example. Growing adoption of ads.cert, which offers cryptographic signatures for inventory validation, will also help, as will active curation by SSPs.
Scalable, consistent ad clearance processes: Creative ad clearance is a logistical bottleneck as regulations vary across broadcasters, streamers and markets. Furthermore, many agencies rely heavily on manual creative clearance workflows, which in and of itself limits scalability. This is compounded when ad creatives that are out of specification or non-compliant with broadcaster codes make their way through DSPs and into broadcasters’ systems.
Addressing these challenges is essential for ensuring long-term success and value for all stakeholders. Although difficult to rapidly deliver consistency, it should be possible to more clearly signal progress and to provide greater transparency.
A Path Forward
Tackling these challenges will require a coordinated effort across the ecosystem, including broadcasters, agencies, technology providers, and programmatic platforms, focusing on some very practical goals.
First, the industry needs a standardized framework for ensuring uniform use of metadata and taxonomies across the programmatic ecosystem, with agreed standards, minimum expected data, and a phased roadmap to improve consistency. Encouraging adherence to the latest IAB Tech Lab standards, coupled with collaborative industry workshops to align on standards and pilot regional implementations to demonstrate effectiveness, can drive adoption. Additionally, incentivizing participation through technical support, co-marketing opportunities, and ROI case studies for adopters can further accelerate industry-wide standardization and interoperability.
Industry-wide adoption of verification tools, such as ads.cert for inventory authentication, can strengthen broadcaster confidence in programmatic transactions. Broadcasters and programmatic platforms must work together to enhance transparency and enforce clearer differentiation between premium and lower-quality video content. Ensuring robust verification processes will help eliminate fraud and mislabeling, ultimately protecting the value of premium TV inventory.
Automating parts of the creative approval process through shared industry protocols is another critical step. Developing standardized workflows and tools to streamline compliance checks would reduce friction, allowing broadcasters to handle programmatic demand more efficiently. By implementing automation, broadcasters can significantly enhance the efficiency of creative approval, reducing operational bottlenecks and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. Industry stakeholders that support consistent use of Ad Creative ID Framework (ACIF) to track unique creative ad IDs throughout the ecosystem will bolster their ability to uphold quality, competitive separation, frequency capping and cross-platform measurement. Through this approach, SSPs will then be able to provide a thin layer between broadcasters and advertisers to bundle premium inventory and offer as packages to advertisers, while meeting all regulatory requirements.
Justin Gupta, Head of Broadcast & Video Ads, EMEA from Google underscores the significance of this transformation, noting that:
The digital transformation of TV means every broadcaster also has a meaningful digital ads business. Although riding two horses can be challenging, this transformation presents huge new opportunities, helping TV to capture new buyers with novel ad experiences and advanced targeting through programmatic. Standardising and automating these workflows now will drive the next wave of innovation in TV advertising, and pay off in the years to come.”
The European programmatic TV ecosystem holds immense potential. By addressing these operational and technical challenges collaboratively, the industry can unlock new efficiencies, improve advertiser outcomes, and sustain the value of premium content in an increasingly programmatic world.