Sylvain Deffay is Country Manager, France at Infectious Media.

The growing involvement of publishers and technology partners has fuelled French programmatic buying progress. StickyAds Video Exchange’s recent integration with TubeMogul’s buying platform has allowed access to French premium video inventory. This is a very positive development for the French RTB market and it is becoming increasingly apparent France will play a key role in the development of programmatic buying across Europe in all digital advertising formats.

As a channel, online video will appeal most strongly to brand marketers and is the fastest growing segment in the French digital market (60% growth in H2 2012). As the Video Exchange only launched recently, I’m eagerly anticipating the next set of growth figures to see the impact that programmatic buying has on this growth. Personally, I am expecting to see stronger numbers than in other markets.

Indeed, such a private environment is the answer video publishers are looking for, with a recent study by AdMonsters and Adap.TV reporting 73% of EU publishers not offering video inventory on RTB due to their fear of pressure on CPMs in open exchanges. However, 30% of publishers surveyed said they will be running a private video ad marketplace within the next 12 months. The continued growth of video, predicted to be 55% of all consumer internet traffic by 2016, will ensure it remains top of the publisher agenda.

On the demand side, early market assumptions may have led advertisers to believe that only low-value or remnant video inventory was being traded programmatically. However, in our experience, this has definitely not been the case. We are currently running campaigns for our clients in the UK, and other European markets, on premium video inventory sources such as Fox, BBC Worldwide and MTV, to name a few, as well as taking advantage of the vast reach on YouTube. In addition, StickyXchange in France hosts inventory from premium publishers like TF1/Wat, Bolloré, Lagardère, Prisma, Microsoft/MSN and many more.

We have managed to get impressive early results from online video via RTB by using this inventory. Our campaigns have proven a cost effective way to reach a client’s target audience with a TV-style message, but at the right time and in the right context for the individual user and with minimal waste.

As promising as this is, few of these budgets are currently originating from TV plans, and a lot remains to be done to make these two channels work together. In terms of buying, a lot of development focus is going into bridging this gap. We can soon expect to have real-time TV schedule data available in DSPs or second-screen offers (applications in mobile devices interacting in real-time with TV schedules).

In terms of planning, online video campaign measurement tools such as comScore’s Validated Campaign Essentials and Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) tool will be critical. Their capacity to deliver comparable TV metrics such as GRPs and TRPs, reach and frequency, make online spend both relevant and accountable for TV advertisers. These metrics have been widely implemented in the UK and we are already seeing 20% of our client spend going through video, with great success.

There is little doubt that the integration of the StickyAds private video exchange into more DSPs is a stride forward for the French programmatic market and another unique feature in the European landscape. Along with the convergence of TV and online video planning metrics, this provides the perfect foundation for a successful year for online video in France.