The SundaySky SmartVideo Platform Is Helping Marketers Fulfill the Promise of the Adtech and Programmatic Worlds, by Enabling the Use of Their Valuable Consumer Data

Video is now a staple technology for most marketing teams, providing relevant content experiences at scale. As we move to the middle of 2018, modern marketers have already written it on the wall for you — Video is ubiquitous to personalized content experiences across all channels. From creating one-to-one connections with your customers or delivering an emotional story to each segment of your audience, personalized video platforms leverage real-time data and insights to match the audience’s taste. SundaySky, a leading personalized video technology provider, launched its SmartVideo platform to create unique stories based on each individual’s profile, interests, transaction history and current behavior.

To better understand how SundaySky’s SmartVideo technology could revolutionize the video marketing ecosystem, we spoke to Mark Flaharty, COO Advertising at Sunday Sky. 

SundaySky SmartVideo Could Disrupt the Existing Programmatic Ecosystem

SundaySky SmartVideo platform is helping marketers fulfill the promise of the AdTech and Programmatic worlds, by enabling the use of their valuable consumer data (first, second, and third-party data sources) to drive more meaningful interactions with the power of sight, sound, and motion.

– Marketers are already spending a large amount of time and resources to understand and organize their data. SundaySky SmartVideo gives them the ability to drive individualized video engagement and make their data more actionable than ever before.

– As for the delivery of these SundaySky SmartVideo ads to the exact right consumer, at the right time, in real-time, we have built our own advertising technology capabilities – from our proprietary bidding and ad-serving to our algorithmic optimizations to facilitate superior marketer value.

– Some might say this is “disruptive” for those in the marketplace who believe that marketers should bring their AdTech “stacks” in-house. But, the smartest marketers understand that they can never bring all of their advertising and marketing under one stack. So, they focus on partnering with the companies that offer the greatest value and opportunity. Delivering truly individualized video advertising, driven by marketers’ data, is hugely compelling and not easy to do.

As a result, our customers rely on us to be their expert and we, in return, make their value our top priority. I’ve heard many marketers say that it is increasingly important to centralize what has been commoditized (e.g. display buying) and then focus elsewhere on what is unique and offers the greatest future potential.

What is Programmatic Personalization?

Logic and data coalesce to establish a scene’s inclusion or exclusion and dynamic content elements shown inside each scene for each individual viewer; each video is optimized to play on the viewer’s device. The result is a personalized video for every individual consumer, delivered at the right time with the right message.

The SmartVideo Platform is built to automatically generate a video at the moment a viewer clicks play, and allows for an unlimited number of videos and permutations.

The Role of Data Privacy Laws in Restricting the Capabilities of Data Management Platforms to Deliver on Personalization Promises

Clearly, user data and permission is important. We focus on helping marketers use the most valuable data they have – first-party customer data they have permission to use.

Our customers are many of the largest brands in the US. Protecting users’ data and privacy is hugely important to them. So, once they have determined, with the consumers that are engaged with them, what data they have and what of that they can use, we are there to help them use it most effectively to drive meaningful video engagements.

 What Brand-Safety Standards Are Advertisers Expected to Tow?

Brands should insist on knowing where and how their advertising is interacting with consumers – from the quality of the content to the location of the ad (e.g. viewability) to whether or not it was even viewed by a person (e.g. fraud).

But, it is not just about brand safety measurements, as listed above. It is also about measuring the marketing effectiveness of their advertising. Understanding marketing engagement and ROI/business value have to go hand-in-hand with brand safety.

Brands also need to understand this is an active learning process and that there is no “perfect”. The key is effort and understanding. Each brand needs to be resolute in their commitment to achieving a better understanding of the brand safety and engagement measures that matter most to their business.

OTT and Connected TVs Becoming the Ubiquitous Adtech Model by 2020!

It is undeniable that our marketing and advertising world will continue to be more video-centric. Consumers love the video and we can now get our video content whenever, wherever we want it. So, yes, the video will be more predominant in the coming years, but OTT/CTV are just a part of the video world – and a part that needs to evolve greatly when it comes to measurability and addressability.

Our marketing world will also increasingly move towards identity marketing and personalization. While many millions of people are consuming video today via OTT/CTV, it is still difficult for marketers to identify their target consumers and even harder to generate a quantifiable understanding of how these areas drive business results.