Video advertising is radically transforming how and where brands connect with audiences.

It’s a transformation driven by consumer behaviour. People are now watching video, not just via the TV but on their tablets, smartphones as well as their computers, when they want, where they want.

We’ve moved beyond TV versus digital (and the argument of who is getting the most ad spend) into an era when TV and digital must work together to deliver a better impact for brands. The future of the digital advertising marketplace depends on this collaboration. In order to work, an effort must be made to seamlessly bring these two worlds together.

Technology platforms need to meet the new challenges faced by brands and agencies. They must be robust enough to cope with the demands of digital, whilst also fully meeting the needs of the TV community – especially in terms of metrics – if we’re to have any hope of an integrated future.

That’s why we’re so excited about Descartes, our new platform release. It’s the ultimate tool to manage the convergence of digital and TV video buying through a single integrated interface.

Critically, for the first time, our platform enables our customers to master the balancing act between guaranteed and real-time buying in a multi-screen and multi-channel environment. It provides buyers with an integrated picture that runs from campaign planning and delivery, to unified measurement and reporting.

At the heart of this new release, Descartes brings together the full spectrum of video buying and optimisation from upfront buys of premium inventory against guaranteed KPIs, to real-time bided impressions in a single interface.

This allows demand sources, be they agencies or advertisers, to completely optimise their video media plans by combining guaranteed premium inventory buys with the power of programmatic RTB to achieve optimised campaign performances against unified KPIs at the right price.

We’ve done this because video advertising is no longer a “trial and learn” format. Agencies and advertisers know how to optimise it to best address their marketing needs. They are no longer willing to assign their investment to black box solutions, and we’ve responded by giving them unparalleled transparency and the ability to plan in a controlled, guaranteed environment.

The Descartes platform, through its suite of self-service tools, responds to the demand from buyers for greater control and transparency over the way they select impressions on PC, tablet, mobile or connected TV. In addition to a single view for all campaign actions, the platform has more tools to allow buyers to take charge of their targeting and optimisation across audience selection and campaign performance metrics.

Descartes also makes the whole process of integrated video planning as easy as possible, allowing a buyer to access their audiences, regardless of the channel, be it VOD, digital video, tablet, connected TV or, increasingly, addressable TV.

The buying mechanisms and measurements vary by medium, of course, but ultimately we want to provide a single media buying platform that follows the consumer across all screens and through the marketing funnel, measured across a set of consistent metrics.

As TV and digital buying converge and amplify one another, the ability to provide a single platform across all video buying, whilst also providing integrated planning via Nielsen OCR and comScore vCE compliant demographics-based targeting, is vital.

Descartes puts Videology at the heart of the new video buying framework, working with demand sources, exchanges and supply partners to maximise the opportunities that are transforming the way brands make connections with consumers who are multi-device and multi-screen.

We are the first technology platform to truly make it easy for brands to reach consumers in real time and in an optimal fashion as their video viewing shifts seamlessly across devices.