Programmatic Transparency Isn't New—But It Is Important

In June, Roku announced that they will pass more data in the programmatic bidstream—including ad break length and break timing within a particular stream, as well as metadata about networks, channels, and genre. This news grabbed headlines and was relatively revolutionary in the CTV industry. Similarly, Netflix announced programmatic partnership with leading DSPs to make their inventory available programmatically. 

But here’s the thing… this is 2024, not 2010. We believe that programmatic buyers have the right to intimately understand our inventory and measure its efficacy through validated third parties. And that's our approach to programmatic audio.

Programmatic Transparency Is New to CTV, Not Audio

As one of the early stewards of the programmatic audio, building it from the ground up, it was really surprising that the industry has accepted opacity within the CTV space and that it has continued to boom despite a lack of programmatic transparency.

While we applaud Roku for making such transparency changes to empower buyers, this shouldn’t necessarily be a groundbreaking announcement. Instead, transparency should be table stakes in all forms of media.

What is Programmatic Bid Signal Transparency?

Let’s take a step back. Programmatic bid signal transparency tells advertisers everything they want to know about ad delivery, including when, where, and how their ads play. This information gives them insight into everything from brand safety to ad effectiveness. 

Here’s why that’s important: Brands care deeply about transparency, scale, premium content, brand suitability, measurement, and appropriate creative. If an ecosystem can get those things right, advertisers can feel confident in their media investments. 

How Does it Work with Audio?

We’ve long been at the forefront of programmatic audio. Our programmatic offering is built with transparency at its core. Across our programmatic inventory, our bid requests contain parameters that tell buyers impression type (e.g., desktop or mobile), where that impression took place (e.g., on Pandora or SoundCloud), the genre, etc. We pass IP, mobile advertising IDs (whenever users have opted in to tracking), and alternative IDs like UID2 where available. 

How is Programmatic Transparency Different with Podcasts?

Podcast inventory is similar in many ways to CTV: There are fewer audience identifiers, so media buyers rely on contextual information to reach highly engaged audiences. The more data points a publisher is able to send through a bid request, the better a DSP can understand and evaluate the inventory.

That’s why we take programmatic transparency a step further within our podcast inventory, passing not only genre, but also publisher, show, and episode in every bid request, ensuring our programmatic buyers know exactly what inventory their ads are running on. By providing this information, we make these data points available to DSPs for reporting, leading to greater transparency and the ability to make calculated performance and inventory-based optimizations.

Is Programmatic CTV Transparent Enough?

CTV has been a white-hot market in recent years. To date, this inventory has been bought without a lot of data signals around the specific content that ads appear on and a lack of identifiers. With this summer’s announcement, those transparency challenges appear to be improving for advertisers. However, Roku and the video industry will continue to face issues with The Video Privacy Protection Act, which makes it risky for Roku to pass identifiers in the bid stream that are tied to what shows someone is watching. Thankfully, audio does not have the same headwinds.

Want Programmatic Transparency? Go With Us.

Consumers are spending nearly five hours a day with digital audio, and streaming audio and podcasts are the fastest growing segments. The market is transparent, measurable, and brand safe. 

We’ve been sending transparent signals since the inception of our programmatic audio offering, with both streaming music and podcasts. Transparency, for us, provides our buying community with the data they need to buy, curate, and measure with peace of mind. Today, for podcasts specifically, that peace of mind comes in the form of post-campaign reports, providing brand suitability measurement through companies like Barometer. In the future, this transparency will allow for full pre-bid curation. 

We put our clients in the driver’s seat of discovering and leveraging the depth of the SiriusXM Streaming Network and the SiriusXM Podcast Network. That discovery starts with trust. And trust is built through transparency. Let’s talk.