Our journey towards digital TV

Launched in 2020, VMP_connect offers premium video inventory across 14 European markets, providing a single access point for cross-market media plans. Advertisers benefit from an operational effectiveness of buying programmatically, while publishers gain incremental budgets and leverage our 120 sales representatives. VMP_connect consolidates video offerings from legacy TV players up to digital online video natives, providing a scalable and quality controlled European Total Video ecosystem.

Key partners include Ad Alliance Germany, Ad Alliance Netherlands, M6, and many other national and international video publishers and streamers, covering Italy, Spain, the Nordics, the UK, Austria, and Switzerland. Since its launch, we have serviced hundreds of clients, achieving a +140% increase from 2022, demonstrating our marketplace’s appeal.

Our Smart Audience initiative helps advertisers find target audiences in a scalable, privacy-safe way. We focus on simplicity, making audience profiles easy to understand. Our concept combines best in class, first and third-party data sources, including publisher data and Addressable TV household profiles.

Within Smart Audiences, we provide two targeting methodologies; our smart affinities target specific audience segments such as “Serious Gamer,” “Culinary Epicure,” and “Pet Fanatic.” Smart demographics on the other hand, allows us to focus on age groups and income levels
 

At Cannes Lions 2023, we launched our advanced TV partnership with The Trade Desk, starting with an integration of addressable linear TV into our programmatic offering.

This initiative aims to bridge the linear and online video world out of one Demand Side Platform (DSP), creating a cohesive advertising ecosystem. Successful campaigns demonstrate the potential of this approach in enhancing flexibility and scalability for media buyers.
 

As we shift to digital TV, recognising its fragmented consumption is key. Reaching audiences at scale often requires diverse content across multiple publishers and devices. We curate transparent collections to help advertisers effectively reach their targets at scale.

Our media collections enhance Total Video campaign strategies across Europe. The big screen video collection offers high attention value and CTV scale, while the Total Video collection targets all digital devices.

Using advanced privacy safe targeting, we merge linear and non-linear content. Our “Smart Audiences,” leveraging data from Addressable TV, other publisher signals and external contextual targeting, create effective audience segments, making this our most popular product.
 

Enhancing content discovery is crucial. Our new tool, “RTL AdManager,” offers a dynamic digital content catalogue for buyers and planners, filling the gap in Europe. It also allows direct digital content purchases through “automated IO,” a self-service option for buyers to improve efficiency while maintaining the most optimal supply chain.

Our collaboration with RTL’s tech company smartclip and Pro Sieben’s Virtual Minds, revolutionises cross- media advertising. While smartclip excels in Addressable TV, online video, and Connected TV, Virtual Minds focuses on linear TV. Together, they create a unified Adtech system that integrates digital and linear platforms for effective campaigns.

This partnership introduces promising programmatic products, allowing buyers to purchase optimised ad breaks using enriched panel and real-time census data on a CPM basis. Launching in Germany, this approach merges classical and digital TV for broad audience reach. The Adtech Made in Europe initiative is a true European innovation for a holistic Total Video ecosystem.