In the world of sports coverage, DAZN is a serious contender for the heavyweight crown. DAZN Player, the sports video on-demand platform that attracts tens of millions of sports fans from across the globe, is a key component of the UK-based media company's portfolio. This platform aggregates premium sports content from a variety of sources including DAZN brands, rights holders, and news agencies, and distributes the content across some of the largest publishing sites globally. DAZN Player offers advertisers more than 900 million impression opportunities per month, reaching more than 60 million fans in some 200 countries, across desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps.
Programmatic video is a vital component of DAZN Media’s strategy
Programmatic advertising is critical for DAZN Media, the entity responsible for media partnerships across DAZN’s brands. DAZN Media’s goal is to connect advertisers with sports fans around the globe, and programmatic technology offers new buying opportunities for advertisers. But managing programmatic access to DAZN Player’s instream video inventory is complex due to their multi-portal inventory network. Configuring each platform, improving integrations, consolidating reports, addressing discrepancies, and minimizing technical errors requires significant operational resources.
Streamlining the programmatic video workflow process
Hoping to streamline the programmatic video process, DAZN began using Google Ad Manager's Exchange Bidding for instream video feature on the DAZN Player in September 2017. Unlike traditional waterfall mediation which queries different ad exchanges sequentially, Exchange Bidding is a server-to-server solution that lets publishers have multiple advertising exchanges compete for all their ads at the same time. It also simplifies the integration process and centralizes reporting, analysis, and billing.
Driving yield and media efficiency with Exchange Bidding
DAZN saw positive results immediately, thanks to Exchange Bidding’s easy integration, streamlined reporting, and automated workflows. Within six months, the company began expanding Exchange Bidding to DAZN Player’s entire global footprint. Since then, Exchange Bidding has become a key source of DAZN’s programmatic video revenue, which has grown more than 150 percent year-over-year.1 The volume of video impressions sold through Exchange Bidding has also doubled in just six months, exceeding 30 million per month.2
Adopting Exchange Bidding also slashed the amount of time needed to manage multiple video demand sources. This allows DAZN Media to devote greater resources to more strategic tasks, such as investing in high value advertiser partnerships. The company’s recent adoption of Unified Pricing has also reduced operational overhead by removing the need to manage pricing floors across multiple exchanges. This enables the company to create business rules based on its existing ad inventory hierarchy, further automating the process.
Additionally, because Exchange Bidding operates at much lower latencies than tag-based bidding, it positively impacts DAZN Player’s video performance, which ultimately leads to a more enjoyable user experience.
“Reducing latency is a key focus area for our video product team. Exchange Bidding reduces the need for passing available inventory between multiple demand sources, improving user experience alongside the other operational and commercial benefits,” said Andre Bento, Senior Product Manager, Commercial and Data, DAZN.
In the future, DAZN Media plans to add new demand partners to its Exchange Bidding program, expand its usage of Unified Pricing, and further optimize the performance of the DAZN Player to benefit both viewers and advertisers.
You can get started with Exchange Bidding for instream video today. Visit the Google Ad Manager website or the Exchange Bidding help center to learn more.