Q&A: Videology's Managing Director Is Making Programmatic Ad Buying More Exact

Specs Current gig Managing director, North America, Videology Previous gig COO, MediaVest U.S. Age 44 Twitter @castree Adweek: Why did you leave the agency world for Videology? Tim Castree: There were two decisions in that chain for me. About seven years ago, I went from being a creative agency CEO to working in a media agency. All of the excitement and innovation in the larger advertising ecosystem was happening in the media agencies. Cut to a year ago, and I made another similar decision. The power of platforms and technology in shaping the future of our media business has been, and will continue to be, really profound. In Videology I found a company that was most aligned with my worldview. Over the next few years there's going to be a lot of shaking out and consolidation in the world of advertising technology. There are too many players offering narrow solutions in disconnected ways at the moment. So I was also looking for a company that had the right positioning and the right product. How does Videology differ from other programmatic services specializing in video? A lot of programmatic technology was really built for real-time auctions. What Videology does that's ostensibly unique is it creates the opportunity for our customers to buy in upfront ways, in near-real-time ways and also in real-time auctions. They're able to take all that inventory and optimize it, forecasting very specific outcomes. We think a lot about how we can help our customers manage their inventories across these three time-based trading modalities. In the online world, where there's unlimited inventory supply, it's perfect for auctions. In the world of video [TV], where there's a very limited supply, we think the vast majority of inventory will continue to be sold on an upfront, guaranteed basis. And to have the ability to manage that alongside real-time transactions is really important. Videology's clients include Dentsu, Havas, Omnicom and WPP—are you also working with TV networks? We are. We have a lot of existing relationships and we have a lot of developmental work with partners in that ecosystem as well. I'm bound by nondisclosure agreements, and can't name names on our supply-side customers. They're national broadcasters, well-known cable networks, MVPDs and also SSPs (supply side platforms) and [inventory] aggregators. What results has Videology garnered for clients? There was a study released recently by Nielsen that showed campaigns managed through the Videology platform achieved a 70.8 percent improvement in purchase intent for advertisers. For the total U.S. panel for Nielsen, the improvement in purchase intent was about 13 percent. So in aggregate, campaigns managed through the Videology platform were six times more impactful. You're Australian. Do you have any interest in going back there to work again? I'm proudly Australian by birth. It's intertwined with my identity. But I have an American wife and two American kids with strange accents, and we're here to stay. I might jump into the naturalization realm in the next year or so. I'm there emotionally. Now it's just about finding the time to go through the process. This story first appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Performance Marketing

Q&A: Videology's Managing Director Is Making Programmatic Ad Buying More Exact

Tim Castree has the results to prove it

Janet Stilson

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Janet Stilson