Global, the Media and Entertainment group, today announced that DAX, its market leading digital audio advertising product, will be available to digital outdoor advertisers from February 2020.
Global, one of the UK’s largest media owners, announced their move into programmatic outdoor advertising with the introduction of digital outdoor through DAX. This latest move gives advertisers the ability to buy digital outdoor campaigns through demand side platforms (DSP), as they are already able to do with other programmatic media such as audio and video.
Demand side platform (DSP) launch partners include The Trade Desk, Vistar Media, Mediamath and Hivestack, with more to be announced in the coming months.
This move brings together Global’s significant outdoor portfolio alongside its market leading radio and entertainment business and will give advertisers access to Global’s digital outdoor and digital audio inventory, in one programmatic platform. Advertisers can integrate their programmatic audio and outdoor buying in areas such as geo location targeting.
In addition, in the same way that DAX represents 238 publisher brands within the audio sector – including ITV, Sky and Telegraph Media Group – Global also announced that a group of third-party outdoor media owners will be putting inventory into DAX. Admedia, Elonex and All City Media Solutions, have already signed up as digital outdoor inventory partners on DAX.
Phil Daniel, MD Sales and Marketing, Admedia, said: “We are thrilled to be a launch partner of DAX. We feel they are in an ideal position to harness the incredible potential of our Motorway Service Area Nexus screens to deliver targeted and relevant audiences in a unique mindset in the most dynamic and efficient way.”
Nick Smith, CEO at Elonex, said: “As a launch partner, it’s great to see the Elonex Digital Out of Home portfolio included in this new and exciting development of the DAX platform. Being first to market here really fits with how we’ve driven the rapid growth of Elonex and further strengthens our commitment to always deliver the widest variety of advertising options to suit brands and budgets of all sizes.”
Anitha Ilangovan, Co-Founder & Director at All City Media Solutions, said: “We are excited to be partnering with DAX as they continue to innovate and evolve in the programmatic space, helping to optimise a more laser targeted approach to deliver a more meaningful and relevant ad experience to our brands and consumers.”
To reflect this new launch, DAX will rebrand from the Digital Audio Exchange to the Digital Ad Exchange sign-posting that advertisers can buy both digital audio and digital outdoor together.
Global first entered the outdoor advertising market in late 2018, adding 235,000 screens across its portfolio. Simultaneously, Global continues to grow commercial radio, reaching more than 25 million listeners every week and achieving a social media reach of 75m monthly engagements, with its market leading brands; Capital, Heart, Classic FM, Smooth, LBC, Radio X, Capital XTRA and Gold.
“We launched DAX back in 2014 to enable advertisers to reach their audience while they listen to the world’s most loved audio content. It’s growth since then has been down to advertisers using a variety of data sets and programmatic technology to accurately target audiences and measure the outcome.
Today we’re announcing that we’re bringing this innovation to digital outdoor. Our launch product will enable advertisers to buy through their DSP and we will introduce new and unique targeting and measurement products as the platform grows.”
Ollie Deane, Director of Commercial Digital at Global
Commenting on the unification of Global’s outdoor portfolio with its audio and entertainment business:
“When we entered the outdoor advertising market, we saw a sector which was full of exciting potential and also one that was in need of further investment and innovation. By uniting our business, Global is able to help brands harness the power of outdoor alongside other digital channels such as digital audio, helping them to create more moments that matter.
New technology will always create challenges, but the knowledge we have acquired of the programmatic landscape through our first six years of DAX, has given us a strong foundation for driving forward digital outdoor advertising. We’re looking forward to working closely with Admedia, Elonex and All City Media Solutions as well as the outdoor specialists, to shape the next chapter in advertising.”
Mike Gordon, Chief Commercial Officer at Global
Leading brands including eBay and TSB, commented in response to the latest proposition from Global and DAX.
Gareth Jones, CMO UK at eBay said: “DAX brought a different dimension to audio advertising. Whether we’re using the platform to target specific types of people or we’re using audio alongside other media for a wider campaign, DAX has always helped us to reach audiences creatively. It perfectly embodies our intent to use data to make all of our brand investments more personal – selling more through relevant recommendations in traditional programmatic brand channels and trying to be more brand accretive in our performance activity. Data is the glue. Prior to DAX we built one 30” radio spot for many millions of listeners. Now we’ll have up to 65,000 different radio spots running concurrently based on our gleaned listener intent. It was really interesting to see Global move into Outdoor and we were anticipating a big move from them. The development of DAX into digital outdoor is an exciting innovation and we’re looking forward to seeing how it will drive forward another medium with huge potential.”
Pete Markey, CMO of TSB, added: “DAX is pioneering technology. The platform is ahead of the game in that no other product in the market gives us access to such a large variety of audio content. The potential to fuse audio with outdoor in a programmatic, highly targeted, way is really compelling. I think we’ll now see media come together more as the formats are planned and bought around the customer experience.”
