• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, January 13, 2014

One of the oldest and largest British national daily newspapers -- The Guardian -- has already embraced programmatic trading, but it’s about to kick it up a notch.

The Guardian, which is nearing its 200th anniversary, is expected on Monday to announce a partnership with AOL Networks’ Adap.tv to create a private video ad marketplace for Guardian News & Media (GNM). The company will sell video ad inventory programmatically to select trading desks and agencies.

GNM has used programmatic trading for its display advertising over the past four years, but has yet to step into the video arena. The Guardian hopes creating a private marketplace will lead to higher advertising yields as it expands across international markets.

Brian Fitzpatrick, Adap.tv’s managing director of Europe, told RTM Daily that the private marketplace will initially be limited to The Guardian’s international traffic.

However, although it is based in the UK, that’s not much of a limitation. The Guardian’s U.S. audience is actually larger than its hometown audience. But while the private marketplace will start with international inventory, the door will remain open for the UK.

“Based on the requirements of UK buyers, the deal may be extended to cover the UK market,” Fitzpatrick said.

Tim Gentry, revenue director at GNM, stated that the company is “committed” to its advertising model. “We have always been fairly ‘brave’ around programmatic trading, adopting it from the early days in the belief that it offers advantages of ease and efficiency for buyers and sellers,” he added. He called “introducing a private marketplace for video” the “next logical step.”

Fitzpatrick noted that the adoption of private exchanges in the UK and U.S. have been moving at different speeds.

“If anything, the UK is more open to this way of trading media,” he remarked. “That said, both teams [U.S and UK] are learning from each other, and when we find something that works, it’s made best practice across all markets.”

Gentry is expected to share more information about the new private marketplace when he speaks on stage at the WWPC conference on Wednesday.