Bell Media has officially launched Bell DSP, the new self-serve platform culminating from a strategic alliance with advanced adtech company Xandr announced earlier this year.
The new Bell DSP is now available to Canadian advertisers and agencies, and gives them direct access to Bell’s premium digital inventory, as well as to connected TV and digital audio formats on the open market.
But the biggest draw, according to Brandon Moonrei, director of DSP partnerships and client strategy at Bell Media, is the privacy-compliant access Bell DSP offers to the company’s data.
“What is exciting for us is we’re actually porting the power of our audience over to the hands of our customers for the first time,” he says. “They can actually look at Bell data, put in whatever variables they want and then go to the Bell DSP for activation.”
The audience data can also be combined with geographic and demographic segmentation data from Environics Analytics – which Bell acquired just under one year ago – as well as third party data advertisers and agencies bring themselves.
Moonrei adds that the inventory is growing, but the platform is launching first with digital inventory, with digital OOH coming soon and video inventory following next year.
The Bell DSP is accessed through the Bell Marketing Platform, along with its other data-enabled products such as Bell Analytics and SAM TV audience segmentation tool. The combined platform is meant to simplify the process for advertisers and agencies so they can identify, connect and measure their target audiences across all mediums from a single location.
“We’re in this for the long haul,” Moonrei says, adding that Bell is excited about the possibilities that come from an offering made in Canada and staffed locally, a rarity in the programmatic space that will help advertisers find tailored solutions, in addition to automated functions.
“We want people to keep investing in Canada and as the future of ad buying becomes more digitized, more programmatic with the combination of data, the platform, measurement, and inventory, we’re looking across the whole sphere for Canadian advertisers.”
