Pixability has launched a self-service platform for buying video ads across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. As Pixability’s CTO Andreas Goeldi and Chief Product Officer Alan Beiagi told me in a briefing, the move means that all of the company’s buying tools which have been available only as a managed service to date, will now be available for self-service.

Pixability believes this is the first time ad buyers have had self-service access to buying tools across these major social networks. The initiative comes in response to major agencies being under pressure to provide more value for clients and take more control over the video ad buying process. Pixability unifies buying and reporting across social networks that have their own disparate ways of targeting users.

Pixability’s clients have always had a self-service reporting dashboard to monitor campaign performance, but changes and optimizations to the campaign were executed by Pixability. Going forward, users can plan/buy/optimize campaigns themselves, with training and support from Pixability.

In the self-service model, clients will be charged a license fee based on a percentage of the campaign spend, thereby avoiding the traditional management fee. Alan noted that clients have a wide range of capabilities and interests, and while some will continue with the managed approach, many will shift to self-service over time.  

Also included in the self-service model are Pixability’s brand safety features, including those recently released that guarantee 100% of an advertiser’s campaign on YouTube will be in brand-safe placements. Pixability will also offer pre-defined audience segments and use its machine learning to enhance forecasting of campaigns based on the buyer’s unique performance goals.