• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, July 29, 2015

TubeMogul, a programmatic ad tech company that went public last year, is expanding its portfolio.

Starting Wednesday, TubeMogul is adding display advertising support to its platform, Real-Time Daily has learned. This means TubeMogul clients will now be able to run programmatic video and display ad campaigns from the same platform.

“We introduced these new formats at the request of customers that wanted to consolidate their pre-existing display campaigns onto a single platform, stated Brett Wilson, TubeMogul CEO and co-founder.

The request was first made by TubeMogul clients in October 2013, according to Keith Eadie, chief marketing officer at TubeMogul. “It really reached a crescendo when three or four major Fortune 500 advertisers who had such success using the TubeMogul platform [for video] said to us in as many words, ‘If you get display, we’d like to do that.’”

TubeMogul claims that over 40 brands and agencies have already signed up for the new display offering, including Clorox Canada, Quiznos, 3M, hello products, Klick, Skyscanner and Corby Spirit and Wine.

None of these brands or agencies have committed massive budgets to the new product yet, but Eadie claimed that beta testers have given TubeMogul positive feedback. By the sounds of it, the buyers will test the waters first -- a typical approach for new technologies.

Elaine Li, digital marketing manager at Clorox Canada, told Real-Time Daily that Clorox Canada was one of the brands asking TubeMogul about the inclusion of display ad support. Running display campaigns alongside video “just makes sense from a brand perspective,” she said to Real-Time Daily.

Clorox Canada doesn’t have a set budget it plans to dedicate to TubeMogul’s display offering. Li explained that the brand manages everything in-house, which makes it “quite easy and fluid to move budgets based on the performance of certain campaigns.”

With that in mind, Li said the amount of money Clorox Canada will pump into TubeMogul’s new offering is completely dependent on performance -- and will likely vary from campaign to campaign. She did say, however, that about 80% of the brands’ digital ad budget is currently going through programmatic channels.

TubeMogul stressed that the move to incorporate display does not mean the company is moving away from video. According to Wilson, it’s simply about adding another channel for its branding clients. “TubeMogul has always been -- and remains -- dedicated exclusively to brand advertisers,” he noted in an earlier statement.

While programmatic display ad buying grew up synonymous with remnant inventory, that’s not the type of supply TubeMogul intends to tap into. “It’ll still be 100% brand advertiser focused,” Eadie said, echoing Wilson.

TubeMogul’s actions from an operations perspective seem to corroborate this claim. The company is not creating a display-focused unit within its business, for example, so everything will still be run under one roof. Put simply: What TubeMogul currently offer for video will be offered for display as well, including viewability measurement, brand safety and fraud prevention tech, brand measurement tools and a programmatic direct platform.

“If you are a straight direct response client that just wants to apply algorithms … [then] we are not your platform,” Eadie said. “If you want to select the exact sites where your ads will run,” he said, and maintain relative control over fraud and viewability levels, “then we are your platform.”

The new initiative removes TubeMogul from the ad tech “purebred” stable, which is getting smaller and smaller. With Adap.tv and BrightRoll being acquired by AOL and Yahoo, respectively, and TubeMogul adding display to its stack, Videology is now one of the last remaining independent video-only DSPs that existed well before “programmatic” became the buzzword it is today.

“It’s understandable that many clients want to consolidate multiple channels,” Eadie said. “We have a laser focus on video … but at the same time, we have an even bigger focus on brand advertising, and our brand advertising clients were telling us that display was an integral part of their brand strategy. They wanted to plan and buy video and display in one platform.”