Imagine Communications' ad inventory optimization platform has been updated to ease the transition to impression-based ad buys. Launched in 2017, xG GamePlan is designed to improve the efficiency of audience-based campaigns with less inventory. The latest update includes the ability to blend both spot and audience-based ad campaigns so that customers can gradually ease brands toward impression-based buying.
"We know that our broadcaster and MVPD customers globally want to move to impression-based ad models to more strategically optimize their inventory, but most markets are built so heavily around 'the spot' that it's not as easy as flipping a switch," said Ronnie Bell, vice president of Global Product Management, Imagine Communications Ad Tech. "xG GamePlan helps start to solve that problem by making it simple for our customers to transition to audience-based strategies at a pace that's right for them and the brands they work with."
Cloud-based and modular, xG GamePlan is designed to be integrated into multivendor environments with existing business systems through open APIs for campaign control and visibility. A booking optimizer is intended to ensure that all opportunities are monetized without over-delivery, allowing even last-minute campaigns to enhance relevance by automatically adjusting campaigns when projected viewer demographics shift. The platform is designed to book more than 9,000 commercials per minute based on 2.5 million optimization calculations.
In other Imagine news, the company has partnered with Nine Entertainment in Australia on the broadcaster's 9Galaxy automated TV trading platform. Nine is using Imagine's xG GamePlan cloud-native booking optimizer to take an audience-based approach to ad inventory management.
"We know that audience-based buying is the future of TV trading and built 9Galaxy to lead the market to a near-term destiny where platform-agnostic ad buying was a reality," said Mat Yelavich, CIO at Nine. "Imagine's xG GamePlan offers the most advanced inventory optimization capabilities and a proven ability to deliver on our evolving roadmap at our desired pace to fulfill our 2020 vision of making all inventory available for advertisers and brands in an automated way that delivers supreme value and reach."