Fox said it will be introducing dynamic ad insertion for college football games it televises as part of an expanded relationship with FreeWheel, Comcast’s ad-tech company.

The new relationship makes FreeWheel Fox’s primary ad-serving partner and main monetization engine.

Dynamic ad insertion will enable advertisers to better target campaigns, while showing viewers more relevant commercials.

“The TV ad marketplace is very complex and when we thought about who is doing a great job helping advertisers to cut through that clutter and drive ROI, FreeWheel clearly stood out,” Darren Sherriff, senior VP, advertising technology solutions at Fox, said. “We’re thrilled to be able to offer our advertising partners a powerful way to reach engaged audiences across the entire Fox portfolio, including our premium live sports events, while prioritizing and protecting the viewer experience.” 

FreeWheel is also integrating with Fox’s AdRise technology platform enabling Fox to find contextually relevant content that will boost the performance of advertiser message. 

In football games, that means creating opportunities to mesh ads with information about players, teams or scores. 

“We are excited and proud to strengthen our relationship with Fox,” Katy Loria, chief revenue officer at FreeWheel, said. “Our antidote to today’s complicated ad landscape is to provide technology and solutions to help further accelerate the momentum, growth and innovation behind premium video. As Fox’s primary ad serving partner, we are looking forward to working with them — and advertisers — to drive better business results.”

Fox said it would be using AdRise as the tech platform for its newly launched OneFox audience network.

AdRise was acquired by Fox as part of its $440 million purchase of Tubi in 2020. AdRise processes both linear and CTV inventory across Fox Entertainment, Fox Sports, Fox News Media and Tubi.

“AdRise has a reputation as a first mover in CTV advertising and has pioneered and underpinned the growth of our Tubi streaming business from the very beginning. We’re now extending the team and technology platform to power our audience network and video inventory across all of Fox, unlocking unique value for our agency and advertising partners,” said Paul Cheesbrough, CEO of Tubi Media Group.

Fox announcement comes in the weeks leading up to an upfront in which a larger share of ad dollars will go to streaming as traditional TV viewership wanes. Media companies are investing heavily to be able to sell and management more types of digital inventory to their regular upfront customers.

“Our approach with AdRise breaks down the walls between media ecosystems, merging the scale of linear and the targeting of streaming into one centralized system,” said Jeff Collins, president of advertising sales, marketing and brand partnerships for Fox. “We’ve increased our focus and investment in ad tech to develop the tools brands need for today’s evolving environment. In doing so, we’re ensuring that transacting with the Fox Portfolio — no matter the mix of platforms — is easy, frictionless and, most importantly, effective.”

Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios and Lionsgate have made undisclosed equity investments in adRise, the company behind Tubi TV, a free, ad-based on-demand OTT offering that competes with services such as Sony-owned Crackle.

Tied in, MGM and Lionsgate will also license “library content” to Tubi TV, a free VOD service launched in April 2014 that runs on iOS and  Google mobile devices, the Amazon Fire TV, Roku players and Roku TVs, the  Xbox One and Xbox 360, Samsung connected devices  and Apple TV. They said the deal spans “hundreds” of titles, including Midnight Cowboy, Crash, Rain Man, and The Hurt Locker, Fargo, and American Psycho.

Tubi TV, which inked a movie and TV deal with Paramount Pictures earlier this year, said the Lionsgate and MGM titles will add to its current library of about 40,000 movies and TV shows.

Tubi TV said viewership on its platform have increased 400% over the past year.

In addition to the investment and content licensing deal, Sandy Grushow, former chairman of Fox Television Entertainment Group and CEO of Phase 2 Media, has joined the Tubi TV board. Cota Capital has also come on board as an investor.

"Consumers want more streaming premium content without subscribing to yet another app or paying for another channel. Tubi TV's mission is to make premium content accessible to everyone, everywhere, without having to pay more. Tubi TV will always be free,’ said Farhad Massoudi, founder and CEO of Tubi TV, in a statement.

"We're delighted to partner with Farhad and his team at Tubi TV as we continue to ensure that our content is being monetized across every platform, digital and linear, ad-supported and subscriber-based, domestically and internationally," added Jim Packer, Lionsgate’s president of Worldwide Television & Digital Distribution. "This agreement reflects our ongoing commitment to license our content across an expanding array of ad-supported digital platforms and serve next generation audiences around the world."

"MGM's investment and license agreements enable the studio to expand into OTT services, allowing consumers to find MGM films and series on multiple platforms,” said John Bryan, president, domestic television distribution at MGM.

Looking to bridge online ad models to the television, adRise TV, the company that operates the recently launched free VOD service TubiTV, said it has completed its first skippable ad campaign featuring ads for the Lexus LS.

The skippable ad-unit, consisting of both a 15-second and 30-second, ran on more than 15 connected TV platforms, including Roku, the Xbox 360, and the Amazon Fire TV box, adRise said, noting that it conducted the trial from June 2 through July 13.

adRise, which partnered with marketing communications agency Team One on the project, was paid only for ads that were not skipped. Despite the ad-skipping element, the Lexus ad still achieved a 73% completion rate, the company said.

adRise believes that the enablement of ad-skipping, already popular on online platforms such as YouTube, provides a powerful tool for advertisers because it helps them know if they are engaging with the right audience, and gives them assurance that they only pay for ads that perform. In exchange, adRise charges a premium price when an ad is not skipped.

“We’re bringing tools that online advertisers love to the traditional big screen medium,” Farhad Massoudi, CEO of adRise, said.

With the trial with Lexus completed, he said adRise is now introducing the option to all of its advertisers, hoping to kick off more campaigns with the skippable ad feature in the coming months.

adRise’s ad-supported Tubi TV service  launched in April, and currently supports Web browsers, iOS devices, the Roku platform (pictured above), Xbox 360 and Amazon Fire TV. The company expects to add Android devices and support for the Google Chromecast adapter soon.

The service, which competes with Crackle, currently offers about 4,000 hours of content, and is slated to expand to more than 20,000 titles by the end of this year or by early 2015.

Tubi TV will be going after Crackle’s market with the debut of a free, ad-supported VOD service that will initially be offered on Roku devices, the new Amazon Fire TV box, and the Xbox 360 and start with about 3,000 movies and TV titles.

Tubi TV, a product of adRise, a company that specializes in OTT content distribution and ad platforms that counts Starz Digital Media among its partners, plans to expand its VOD library and the number of devices supported in the weeks and months ahead.

The near term plan, company execs said, is to offer about 20,000 titles on its platform this year or sometime in 2015,  and to extend access in the coming months to Web browsers, Android- and iOS-powered tablets and smartphones, the Google Chromecast, Kindle Fire tablets, Samsung and Sony smart TVs, TiVo devices and the WD TV streaming player.

“We’re trying to elevate the amount of quality content that’s available for free” using a “no barrier to entry” model, adRise CEO Farhad Massoudi said, noting that the goal is to complement, rather than compete with,  subscription-based services like Hulu Plus and Netflix.

Tubi TV’s focus, he said, will be on free, high-quality content, including titles out of the U.K. and other parts of the world that will be new to U.S. audiences. Tubi TV’s business is based on a revenue sharing model.

Tubi TV said its library is made up of films, cartoons and other kids fare, comedy, cooking shows, documentaries, and fitness programs, among other themes. Specific shows include “British TV and Nordic Noir” such as Black Books, Father Ted, and The Sandhamn Murders.

AdRise, a company launched about three and half years ago, has a heritage of enabling branded VOD apps for companies such as Starz, Discovery Communications and Hasbro Studios, and estimates that about 30% of the VOD apps on the Samsung platform are managed by AdRise. It has also managed and built several apps for the new Amazon Fire TV box.

With Tubi TV, it’s now starting to leverage its historic relationships with programmers and studios, including ITV of the U.K. and South Korean major broadcaster MBC, and apply content distribution deals toward its new direct-to-consumer service.

Historically AdRise has implemented campaigns for more than 200 brands in the past year, including Lexus, said Thomas Ahn Hicks, head of business and development and strategy, noting that Tubi TV will offer a mix of direct sales and a more programmatic model that uses a real-time bidding system.

As for the ad load, Tubi TV expects to halve the seven or eight minutes per half hour seen on traditional TV, he said.

“We think all TV ads ultimately will be targeted, measurable and interactive,” Massoudi said.

San Francisco-based AdRise has raised $4 million and has about a dozen employees. Massoudi said the company has turned profits at times, but is now “investing heavily into Tubi TV right now.”