ZypMedia Opens Up Programmatic Video for Local Advertisers, Focusing on OTT

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For local advertisers looking to access cutting-edge marketing technology, programmatic advertising company ZypMedia promises the full package. ZypMedia helps large media companies with local outlets, like television and radio stations, “plan, buy, and execute local campaigns,” said Aman Sareen, ZypMedia CEO and co-founder.

“Our mission and model was always to help local advertisers,” he said, adding that it was difficult to reach those advertisers directly. Instead, ZypMedia partners with companies that already have relationships with the local market and then helps those companies empower their advertisers with products like over-the-top (OTT) advertising, Sareen said.

Local advertisers tend to lack the ability to access OTT products, which provide advertising space on streaming video. “Their budgets are so small that most large companies won’t even talk to them,” Sareen said. “These guys are not very digitally-savvy, and that is okay. … Local has always been slightly behind the curve.”

Sareen’s company offers programmatic advertising to all companies, regardless of the size of their campaign budgets.

“We prioritize impression delivery over budget,” Sareen said. This “ensures that even a small campaign will be not be de-prioritized even if it is very, very small compared to a large campaign” on the same platform.

ZypMedia has serviced more than 20,000 advertisers and uses the data from those relationships to create strategic plans targeted for each local business and its individual ad campaigns.

ZypMedia launched its OTT product for the local market in April 2017 in a few select markets. “We exploited what is known as a … remnant inventory on the open exchange,” he said. The company purchased inventory that would be considered premium for local advertisers but had been left on the market because it was not premium in the eyes of large advertisers.

ZypMedia first launched the OTT service in markets with larger amounts of premium inventory. “By the end of last year, we became one of the top five buyers of OTT In the country,” Sareen said. Large publishers then started to reach out to ZypMedia, which allowed the company to grow its OTT product by building direct relationships with those publishers.

The partnership yields benefits for ZypMedia’s publisher partners, too. It offers them connections to local advertisers who would otherwise not turn to them due to the daunting nature of the OTT advertising process.

ZypMedia’s clients are increasingly turning to video now that the company has prioritized OTT. More than 70% of its video advertising this year falls in that category.

“Now that OTT Is readily available to the local advertisers, more and more dollars are shifting,” Sareen said. Local advertisers understand OTT because of the prevalence of streaming devices in everyday life, he said. 

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