FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned ad-tech company that works with most big TV programmers, said it has launched new products that will make it easier for advertisers to buy commercials programmatically in live events on streaming channels.

The upcoming Paris Olympics — covered in the U.S. by Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit — are among the big events with ad inventory available via programmatic ad buying technology.

Live events remain popular with advertisers because the command the attention of audiences and more live events — once the province of traditional broadcast and cable — are being streamed.

“Streaming opened the path for publishers to transact programmatically within their highly valuable live inventory,“ FreeWheel general manager Mark McKee said. “But most programmers, understandably, took a walk, jog, run approach. Now, with advanced ad technologies, proven business models and unprecedented scale of streaming audiences, we’re at a new stage in the programmatic evolution.

“There are still different approaches for different events, but publishers interested in opening their premier inventory to automated trading, can do so with confidence. As they say, it’s only live once, which is what makes these events so special for advertisers,” McKee said.

Serving ads programmatically in live events can be tricky because of concurrent viewing spikes that make pacing ads and controlling latencies more difficult.

FreeWheel's new capabilities expedite programmatic buying with preapprovals for creative, by anticipating real-time surges in viewership and by adjusting campaign pricing to account for high viewership levels.

For publishers, the capabilities mean increased reliability that ads will run as planned, better fill rates, more personalized experiences for viewers and greater demand from new advertisers.

“As our industry shifts to an always on marketplace, we have been able to bring in advertisers of all sizes to our content across our entire ecosystem through programmatic, especially to the highly coveted sports and live events programming we air,” Mark Marshall, chairman, global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, said. “This allows for a greater diversity of marketers to access our premiere content, while also enhancing targeting and engagement with the right audiences. We are excited for the continued marriage of premiere programming and advanced ad technologies, as its impact will be unsurpassed.”

In a new report, It’s Only Live Once: How TV Advertisers Can Capture Audiences in the Moment … and How Streaming Is Changing the Game, FreeWheel said advertisers consider live TV important because it provides a large, simultaneous audience and high viewer engagement.

The report also lists concerns advertising have about live programming, with suggestion for how to minimize their risk.

For advertisers who worry about serving the same ad over and over, most live events include natural pauses for ad breaks and frequency-capping tools can help control repeated ads even in a live environment. 

If  incurring higher prices on major live events is a problems, advertisers should consider their effective costs per thousand (CPMs) and factor historical viewing, audience engagement, and co-viewing into the price tag.

And to ensure clients are reaching the right audiences, ad-selection tools are available.

“Today, as live events — as well as daily live programming such as news — begin to also make the move onto streaming platforms, the opportunity for advertisers grows,” McKee said in the report. “But challenges also present themselves, as advertisers work to have their message heard in an environment with little room for failure or mistakes.”

AMC Networks said advertisers will be able to buy commercials programmatically on three of its linear cable networks.

L’Oreal, working with its media agency Omnicom Media Group, was the first national advertiser to buy ads on AMC’s networks programmatically as part of a pilot program in September. AMC also tested its programmatic capabilities by running promo campaigns for shows including The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and its FearFest holiday programming stunt.

Beginning this month, programmatic buying is live and fully operational across all programming on AMC, WE tv and BBC America, AMC said.

Working with technology partners FreeWheel, The Trade Desk and Canoe Ventures, advertisers can purchase advertising in the kind of real-time biddable environment familiar to buyers of digital advertising, including over-the-top and connected TV advertising.

The innovation enables advertisers to purchase linear and digital ad inventory as a single campaign using their programmatic buying platforms, which might mean some digital advertisers will now be able to buy and reach linear audiences, AMC said.

It also allows advertisers to better manage reach and frequency across video channels.

“Programmatic buying offers enhanced targeting, greater efficiency and has been the preferred way to transact on digital platforms for years, but until now has never been possible for national linear television commercials,” Evan Adlman, executive VP of commercial sales and revenue operations for AMC Networks, said. “During this pilot, we were able to deliver seven distinct creative executions to viewers simultaneously as part of the same national linear commercial slot, through a real-time biddable process. This is a huge advance for us and for the industry and, like our pioneering efforts in addressable advertising, makes our inventory even more valuable.”

AMC sells commercial inventory on its streaming networks via programmatic technology and has been a leader in addressable advertising, selling addressable spots in every hour of its live linear and VOD inventory on AMC, WE tv and BBC America. 

Two years ago, AMC made some linear ad inventory available for programmatic sale by The Trade Desk and another big supply-side platform, Magnite. The inventory was limited to impressions delivered to Vizio sets as part of a test, the company said.

“We were excited to be the first brand to pilot this important advancement in how TV advertising is purchased, which aligns well with our interest in automation and efficiency and being able to buy all forms of inventory together as part of the same process. AMC Networks, The Trade Desk and FreeWheel were great partners and we look forward to being part of the continuing future of programmatic ad buying on linear television,” Shenan Reed, senior VP and head of media at L’Oréal USA, said.

As viewers cut the cord and turn to streaming, traditional programmers are looking for new ways to compete with digital advertising.

“This innovation brings together two extremely timely advertising technologies to help advertisers reach and engage with current and prospective audiences: programmatic ad buying and addressable TV advertising,”  Mark McKee, general manager of FreeWheel, said. “The first gives advertisers greater control, automation and efficiency in the overall TV ad-buying process, and when layering this with addressable TV advertising, the result is advertising that reaches the right target consumer within an enhanced and enriching viewer experience.”

“The business of buying TV ads is being rewritten, and right now is the moment the industry needs to fully embrace programmatic advertising,” Tim Sims, chief revenue officer at The Trade Desk, added. “This integration brings the power of data-driven decisioning to linear ad buys, while giving brands and agencies the insight to build even more sophisticated, omnichannel campaigns. It’s a major win for both publishers and buyers.”

Programmatic might take up the lion’s share of media sales, but it’s still not preferred by premium publishers. While Insider Intelligence reported that in 2022 more than 90% of all digital display advertising was transacted programmatically, numbers can be deceiving. Giant platforms like Amazon, Meta and Google drive most of that volume, mainly through small and local advertisers. A lot of premium advertising is still sold directly. PubMatic recently estimated that 57% of connected TV inventory is sold directly, for example. There’s a good reason: Publishers can get significantly better costs per thousand (CPMs). 

The sticking point for publishers is that there is continuous pressure from advertisers to transact programmatically because they are often focused on audience-based media buying and performance metrics that lend themselves to optimization via a demand-side platform (DSP). 

Publishers aren’t about to stop advertisers from audience targeting nor are they going to drop programmatic. But they do need to address the gaping chasm that exists between programmatic inventory and high-quality premium inventory. Prices for direct-sold inventory can become artificially inflated because they are’t available on the open market, while programmatic advertising can see depressed CPMs because it’s only being valued for the audience, not the context or content quality.  

Converged media sales can give publishers a new approach that can raise overall effective costs per thousand impressions (eCPMs) and close the gap between premium and programmatic.

The Lemonade Equation

I like to think about a publisher’s product catalog as a pitcher of lemonade at my daughter’s lemonade stand. If my daughter has one pitcher to sell, she needs to do some quick math and some good marketing in order to maximize her revenue and her profits. 

To stretch the lemonade out, she might decide to use smaller cups so she can sell to more people. Or she might pop an ice cube or two in the glass, which provides her with a bit more wiggle room. If she’s really clever, she’ll bundle the lemonade with a cookie for a price that is a little better than if she sold either one separately. 

Compare this to programmatically sold inventory. It’s equivalent to a pitcher of lemonade that’s  simply placed on the table with a floor price and a “help yourself” sign. Without the right cup, the well-placed ice cube or the option to add a cookie, that lemonade is not maximizing profits. 

Enter converged media sales, which helps sellers package their underpriced inventory more effectively to maximize the overall profit with a better average price. 

Bundling the Best of Both

Our benchmarking data shows that overall, CPMs are down this year. At the same time, we’ve seen private-market video CPMs hold strong against other transaction types. In June alone, they grew over 5%, while private CTV CPMs grew 10%.

CTV represents the current growth channel caught in the middle between direct-sold and programmatic channels. Advertisers want audience targeting while publishers want premium prices. The promise of converged sales should be able to deliver both. Publishers could create enticing offers across a number of channels, including CTV, helping to lift their overall CPMs while giving advertisers access to their audience at scale. In particular, private/preferred video ad revenue has been rising over the past year and is now about the same as open auction, which gives publishers an incentive to focus on private-market deals. 

One of the biggest barriers to this kind of converged selling is the siloed technology that publishers use across their disparate properties from local linear to CTV to digital, and so on. A good place to focus is on a unified product catalog that can create packaged or bundled offers for advertisers. With a single-product catalog, advertisers have the building blocks to respond to RFPs with better offers and manage ad operations and optimization more seamlessly. 

The future doesn’t have to be a “race to the bottom.” With a single view of their inventory, publishers can start to create a more robust yield optimization strategy. Rather than relying on the black box of programmatic, publishers can test different bundled offers that bring up the price of their display while maintaining the control and premium prices of their best inventory. With artificial intelligence adding to the quantity of content in the market for publishers, inventory management becomes more complex, especially across channels.  

Publishers need to understand how they're being sold and for what price to ensure they receive maximum value and the highest eCPMs possible. In other words, publishers can have their lemonade and drink it, too. 

Programmatic platform Teads said it is working with Adelaide Partners to create private marketplaces dedicated to inventory in high-attention generating content.

High attention, as measured by Adelaide’s Attention Unit metric, correlates to superior results for advertisers, the companies said. 

Advertisers will gain access to Teads’s high-attention marketplaces across major demand side platforms, including Google Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk and Yahoo, as well as the Teads Ad Manager on both a self-serve and managed solutions basis.

“In partnership with Adelaide, we intend to discover the relative impact of activating around high attention to drive outcomes and provide comparison to a standardized way of buying,” said Monique Pintarelli, president, North America for Teads. “We see this launch as a tremendous opportunity to correlate high attention PMPs [private marketplaces] with brand lift in a highly scalable, brand-safe, and premium environment that can seamlessly pair with creative optimized for attention.”

The placements offered through the high-attention PMPs have average attention scores 31% higher than Adelaide’s Teads AU benchmarks.

“We’ve consistently proven that Teads’s high-AU curated inventory drives better performance across a range of outcomes and verticals. Now, Teads’s high-attention PMPs enable advertisers to prioritize high-quality media right out of the gate and achieve better results with little to no friction,” said Marc Guldimann, CEO and founder of Adelaide.

“We’re thrilled to equip Teads clients with an outcome-based metric that directly translates to tangible, business impact and look forward to continuing to innovate with our partners at Teads,” Guldimann said.

Teads has been working with Adelaide since launching the Teads Attention program a year ago. Since then, Adelaide has measured 65 campaigns generating 93 billion impressions.

With attention as a factor, Teads said it saw a 41.6% increase in store visitation rate for a national clothing retailer, a 456% increase in site visits and 101% higher checkout actions for a streaming company and 8 times higher in-store visits and a 74% gain in conversion rate for a fast-food chain.

“We’re excited to put our learnings into action with Teads and Adelaide,” said MIke Bregman, chief activation officer at Havas Media Group. “These High Attention PMPs will create greater efficiencies for our client's campaigns allowing us to deliver more impactful experiences and business outcomes for brands.”

Direct Digital Holdings said it is working with FreeWheel’s Beeswax programmatic platform to give advertisers expanded access to ad inventory in multicultural programming on connected TV.

Direct Digital Holdings is a Black-owned tech company that is listed on NASDAQ and works with multicultural and general market publishers.

“The media and marketing landscape today is very nuanced – from fast-changing innovations to constant industry fragmentation to audiences that are becoming increasingly more diverse and harder to reach, across multiple screens,” said Mark Walker, CEO of Direct Digital Holdings. 

“Taking that into account, we sought a partner who brought a real-time, holistic understanding of the ecosystem, as well as a track record of creating simple and much needed, innovative solutions that remove friction and address and resolve the needs of marketers today,” Walker said. “FreeWheel, through its work with Beeswax, exemplifies and understands these key traits and we’re excited to be working with them.”

Under the deal, marketers and agencies that use Beeswax to buy CTV ads can reach a wider array of viewers through an integration with Direct Digital Holdings’ Colossus supply-side platform.

Also Read: FreeWheel’s Beeswax Using Comscore Data for CTV Contextual Targeting

The arrangement also incorporates two digital marketing companies owned by Direct Digital Holdings, Orange142 and Huddled Masses. They will work with Beeswax to serve CTV ad placements to marketers.

“We are humbled and thrilled to team up with a partner who not only understands this space, but also is minority owned,” said Tess O’Brien, VP, head of revenue at Beeswax. “We look forward to working with Direct Digital Holdings to drive innovation and growth in CTV, while helping to provide Beeswax's clients with an easier pathway to access multicultural content within the programmatic ecosystem.”

Analytics platform Upwave introduced Persuadability Score, designed to optimize programmatic campaigns based on desired outcomes including awareness, consideration and purchase intent.

The Persuadability Scores would replace inputs currently used when bidding for ads such as click and conversions with real time-brand outcome based signals designed to be fed to algorithmic buyers.

Upwave says the Persuadability Scorescalculate the expected brand impact of exposure, providing a response variable that algorithmic bid optimizers can optimize towards.

“Historically, brand lift only provided advertising decision-makers with proxies to optimize a live campaign to meet brand objectives. Click-through rates are a poor proxy, and down-funnel conversions aren’t relevant in predicting the likelihood of people becoming more aware of brands. This is inadequate in an era where a brand is held to performance standards,” said Chris Kelly, CEO of Upwave. “Now, with our industry-first Persuadability Scores, brand advertisers have access to real-time brand signal. As a result, they can now optimize brand campaigns to directly impact the end brand outcome.”

Ad tech company MadHive said it has teamed up with Medicx Health to create programmatic advertising software designed for the healthcare industry.

Medicx’s Micro-Neighborhood Targeting Platform uses anonymized medical and prescription claims data to create hyperlocal audience segments with patients who have specified conditions, take selected drugs or have undergone procedures.

MadHive’s software provides planning, forecasting, execution and measurement for over-the-top campaigns.

Also: MadHive To Spend $100 Million To Expand Google Cloud Usage

“The healthcare industry is ripe for innovation, yet it holds some of the strictest privacy and compliance standards in advertising. As cord cutting continues to accelerate, programmatic OTT allows advertisers to run targeted, precise campaigns to reach streaming viewers,” said MadHive CEO Adam Helfgott. “MadHive designed our industry-leading OTT product to simplify programmatic advertising while providing transparency and privacy protection at every step. We are excited to partner with Medicx to set a new standard in medical advertising.”

Also: MadHive Provides Shoppable TV Tech For Cannuka Luxe Skincare Line

In early campaigns using Madhive’s platform and Medicx’s data, marketers have achieved a 100% increase in patients reached through emerging OTT channels.

“We are excited to offer clients an integrated ability to plan, execute and measure their OTT campaigns, combining the strength of MadHive’s OTT programmatic software with Medicx’ industry leading high performing healthcare audience segments and cloud-based measurement and analytics platform,” said Frank Hicks, executive VP of product strategy and partnerships at Medicx. ■

Nine months after acquiring Beeswax, ad tech company FreeWheel said it is enabling publishers with strong sales forces to sell third-party inventory to generate extra revenue and extend the reach of their advertisers’ campaigns.

FreeWheel is rolling out a pilot version of the capability this quarter with a couple of programmers. The first is NBCUniversal, which like FreeWheel is part of Comcast, FreeWheel general manager Dave Clark told Broadcasting+Cable. 

The key to the new capability is the Beeswax bidder technology, which enables a sales manager to monitor pricing from direct sales and programmatic channels in a holistic manner allowing yields to be maximized.

Also: FreeWheel Wins Consolidated ViacomCBS Ad Tech Businesses

The technology, integrated into FreeWheel’s marketplace, also allows programmers to provide the extra reach advertisers need to make their campaigns effective in a fragmented media environment.

Also: FreeWheel Sees Beginnings of Programmatic Upfront

“That’s what advertisers are saying they want,” Clark said. “Help me run one campaign against all these fragmented audience pools. Deduplicate the delivery and give me a unified report on the other side.”

Clark said big media companies with strong sales organizations are looking for more ad inventory. “TV right now is really sold out,” he said. ”There’s more demand than supply and these companies can use that core asset to expand their business by helping others sell that inventory to major brands.” 

Also: AMC Networks Moves Ad Tech to FreeWheel

Big media companies like NBCU have relationships with the biggest advertisers and are intimately involved with ensuring that sophisticated campaigns reach their intended audiences and are effective at achieving business goals.

“Programmers have been doing it in fits and starts in other places, but it’s been very clunky, which prevented it from really scaling into a meaningful portion of their business,” Clark said.

Also: Redbox Using FreeWheel Technology To Build Streaming Ad Business

“When you integrate the workflows together so that you've got unified decisioning, frequency management, reporting, all of that stuff that matters in one place, then then this can really take off,” he said.

Once used for selling remnant inventory, programmatic channels are becoming increasingly important to traditional programmers. On the other hand, Clark noted that most of the newer ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) players are more reliant on programmatic sales than on direct sales. 

“Their direct sales forces are much lighter,” he said, making working with NBCU more attractive. “If you’re NBC and you have real market clout and a sophisticated sales force selling really sophisticated properties, you can leverage that on behalf of the programmatic-first players and everybody kind of wins.”

Magnite said it has been selected as the preferred supply-side platform for sports-focused streaming TV service fuboTV and that they will work together to offer addressable advertising in sports programming on connected TV.

Connected TV, or CTV, has been growing fast and Magnite said the amount of overall live sports impressions in CTV on Magnite’s platform has increased 26% in the first half of this year -- even before autumn, when football and other popular sports are being played.

FuboTV streams 50,000 live sports events each year, with 94% of its viewing hours taking place on the big screens advertisers prefer.

“Our OTT video tech stack and programmatic expertise allow us to deliver consistent results for today’s streaming leaders such as fuboTV. With more content than ever viewable through CTV, especially live sports and news, we’re in a great position to continue to grow alongside fuboTV and look forward to what we can accomplish together,” said Sean Buckley, chief revenue officer, CTV, at Magnite.

Also Read: Vizio Makes fuboTV Available Via App on SmartCast Platform

Advertisers can access fuboTV’s exclusive first-party addressable data to enable them to connect with an engaged, cord-cutting audience that can’t be reached through traditional television, the company said. Magnite’s programmatic  CTV platform delivers seamless ad experiences fit for CTV.

“Following years of highly successful collaboration with Magnite, we are thrilled to officially welcome them as our preferred SSP,” Diana Horowitz, senior VP, advertising sales at fuboTV, said. “Magnite’s commitment to creating a streamlined programmatic experience has made them a highly valued partner to fuboTV and a true pioneer in the space, and we look forward to innovating with them as CTV continues to shape the future of the industry.”  

AMC Networks said it will adopt Unified ID 2.0, a system for identifying viewers in a privacy-compliant manner while enabling targeted advertising. 

Unified ID 2.0 was initially developed by The Trade Desk and was designed to be interoperable with other ID systems.

Also Read: Xandr-OpenAP Alliance Lets Clients Build Data-Based Campaigns Across TV Programmers

Adopting Unified ID 2.0 will make it easier for buyers to access AMC’s digital advertising inventory. The company has signed up for a number of industry advertising initiatives and identity systems in order to monetize its content on whatever platform or device a viewer selects.

“As we continue our viewers first strategy, advertisers look to move their reach into streaming and it is our goal to make 100% of our digital inventory available to buy programmatically, joining the Unified ID 2.0 initiative made perfect sense,” said Evan Adlman, senior VP of advanced advertising and digital partnership for AMC Networks. “We want to connect all audiences – and advertisers – who want to take advantage of streaming TV, and adopting Unified ID 2.0 is a meaningful step in continuing to offer technologically advanced ways for advertisers to access coveted audiences around our great content.”

Also Read: Xandr Publishes Guide to the Future of Identity for the Ad Industry

Unified ID 2.0 is one of a number of identity systems that have been developed to third-party cookies. Cookies are in the process of being phased out. Publishers, buyers and tech companies are aiming to find ways to target viewers while providing consumer transparency, privacy and control.

Prebid.org, the independent organization designed to ensure and promote fair and transparent marketplaces across the industry, has agreed to serve as operator of Unified ID 2.0. Prebid will begin this role in the second half of this year.

“AMC Networks shows the importance of TV networks leaning in to programmatic and rethinking their business models, including how identity fits into their potential revenue streams,” said Tim Sims, chief revenue officer of The Trade Desk. “Through solutions like Unified ID 2.0, we are able to improve relevant advertising while upgrading consumer privacy controls. In an environment like CTV, this means networks can serve less yet more relevant ads, giving consumers more time to enjoy great content, which is a win for everyone.”

Viant stock jumped more than 90% after the programmatic software company made its initial public offering Wednesday. 

The company, which operates a self-serve demand-side-platform that has a growing CTV business, went public by selling 10 million shares--up from an original plan to offer 7.5 million shares--of common stock  at $25 a share, raising $250 million. The price climbed in morning trading before closing at $47.72.

Also Read:  Viant’s TV Spots Say It Makes Programmatic Easy

Viant trades under the symbol DSP--also the abbreviation for demand side platform.

The move comes at a time when the ad tech market is consolidating. Earlier this week, Magnite agreed to buy SpotX from RTL Group for $1.17 billion, forming the largest independent supply-side platform, or SSP. Magnite itself was the product of an earlier merger between Rubicon Project and Telaria.

Viant was founded in 1999. Time Inc. acquired a 60% interest in Viant in 2016. Viant bought Adelphic, which had a programmatic ad platform with self-service media planning and buying tools in 2017. Time was acquired by Meredith in 2017 and Viant’s co-founders, Tim and Chris Vanderhook bought back the 60% Viant stake in November 2019.

The company’s founders and employees still own an 80% stake in the company.

Viant is riding the hot CTV advertising market, but has been looking at the future digital video and advertising since it was founded, according to Chris Vanderhook, the company’s COO.

The Vanderhooks also co-founded Xumo, which was acquired by Comcast for $145 million in April of 2020.

“We really saw the future. On the Viant side we were looking at video-based advertising and we started to see that the future of video is not going to be YouTube playing on a desktop,” Vanderhook said. "The future was going to be streaming into a household. And so we invested in that early.”

Now the time is ripe because the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift of consumers moving from traditional TV to streaming. 

“Connected TV is a huge tailwind, especially in the programmatic space, which is where we are,” he said. “We started investing in 2010. We knew it would get here. Man did it take a while.”

He said he didn’t think CTV was a fad.

“Look at the big content companies. Look at Warner. Look at Disney ... They’re taking the best content in the world straight to streaming”, he said. “And marketers want to be along for the ride. And that’s why it’s not the flavor of the month. I’m telling you, it’s a wall of money.”

Vanderhook said that in 2019, Viant’s business was growing at a 52% rate, with 20% profit margins. The pandemic hurt the company in the second quarter of 2020, but business accelerated in the third and fourth quarter.

Viant’s CTV business grew 65% in 2020 and represented a third of its revenue. Three years ago, the company had no CTV revenue.

“Marketers want programmatic,” he said. “When the pandemic hit, another chunk of money came to programmatic. Why? They needed the flexibility to be able to start and stop spending in a given market,” he said. “It accelerated the amount of investment that’s moving into programmatic.”

Vanderhook said programmatic now represents about 40% of the ad market, but he predicts that eventually all ads will be bought via software. 

Viant’s technology is designed to let advertisers and buyers self direct how they spend money and build campaigns. “Your software has to stand on its own, it has to be easy to use. We’re the E*Trade for ads,” he said. 

Through Viant, advertisers can buy all different types of media from linear TV to audio to digital out of home. “The marketers want to control all buying in one piece of software. We think that’s a nice long arc that we’re going after,” he said.

Viant’s platform is also differentiated because it is people based, using real-world identifiers, not cookie based like many of its competitors. And cookies, which are used to track viewers, are being phased out.

Vanderhook said its people based platform makes it easier to connect advertising exposures to consumer behavior. “We tell them what they get for their money,” he said.

Some of the proceeds from the IPO will go towards improving the Adelphic programmatic platform. Viant will also invest in sales and marketing.

Magnite, the sell-side advertising platform said it has moved its Unified Decisioning system for connected TV and over-the-top video creators into an open beta test phase.

Unified Decisioning aims to help publishers maximize yield by being able to simultaneously manage inventory sold directly by their sales teams with sales made via programmatic channels.

Magnite said the system is already being used by global media companies. It named Australia's Seven West Media as one of those users.

Also Read: Magnite Gives Ad Buyers Metadata for Crackle Plus

"The early results we've seen using Magnite's Unified Decisioning to ensure optimal delivery of direct and programmatic demand have been promising," said Luke Smith, head of programmatic sales at Seven West Media. 

"We've set ourselves the goal of improving the value for advertisers and audiences and are so far pleased with the ability to apply complex business rules and see the valuable data and analytics in real-time,” Smith said. 

Unified Decisioning works alongside all major ad servers and is designed to enforce the publishers’ business rules, including frequency capping and competitive separation.

“We’ve designed and built Unified Decisioning to address the barriers between unifying direct sold and programmatic demand with the specific needs of CTV publishers in mind,” said Paige Bilins, VP of video product management at Magnite. “Publishers are eager to tap into the efficiencies that programmatic provides without relinquishing the control they are used to when selling directly to buyers. Unified Decisioning enables them to do both.”

Magnite said that Unified Decisioning benefits the demand side as well. Programmatic buyers and brands will have greater insight into available inventory and have an equal opportunity to compete for premium video content. Unified Decisioning is ad server agnostic and has no conflicting demand agenda, the company said. 

“As Connected TV becomes a more significant part of advertisers’ media plans, we applaud Magnite for instituting Unified Decisioning that unlocks more premium video inventory and deeper insights into available supply,” said Jon Tabak, general manager, strategic partnerships at The Trade Desk. “The industry continues to grow together to make the TV marketplace more transparent and efficient for buyers and sellers amidst the generational shift of consumers from linear TV to CTV.”

Programmatic platform Tremor Video said that business has skyrocketed on its self-service platform.

The company said that self-service ad spending has increased by 650% since the third quarter of 2019 and that the number of clients choosing to use the self-serve option has more than doubled.

“Tremor Video’s self-service DSP allows us to be an even stronger partner for our brand clients by ensuring their ad campaigns reach the most highly-targeted audience possible,” said Tim Lathrop, digital director at Mediassociates. “It affords us a greater sense of ownership over these campaigns, while helping us execute more efficiently and providing key insights we can use to optimize performance, all in an easy-to-use platform.”

Digital video has been growing as consumers turn increasingly to streaming for entertainment. Tremor Video said its self-service platform gives buyers easy activation, flexibility, access to audience data and access to high-quality supply. 

Tremor Video said it has seen an increase in retailer and direct-to-consumer brands using the platform to take advantage of the popularity of online commerce as the pandemic discourages in-store shopping.

“The growth of our self-service DSP is the direct result of our ongoing strategy to expand our video advertising capabilities in the areas that will most benefit our clients including CTV and private marketplaces (PMPs),” said Karim Rayes, chief product officer, Tremor Video. “Advertisers are increasingly seeking control and transparency -- a trend that the anxiety brought on by the pandemic is only spurring on more. Tremor Video continues to invest in our self-service DSP to allow advertisers to keep responsibility for their businesses in their hands.”

Advertising technology company Beachfront, working with Canoe Ventures, is enabling automated, real-time audience-based buying of video-on-demand inventory delivered by Canoe’s owners, Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Media.

Like streaming, traditional cable VOD usage has grown during the pandemic. Cable VOD also offers advertisers familiar brand-safe premium programming. 

Related: Canoe, AMC Go Addressable Across Comcast, Charter Homes

“Sophisticated, digital-oriented ad buyers understand impressions are way up across the convergent TV ecosystem in 2020, but they’ve historically lacked easy pathways to accessing TV Network’s ad inventory on MVPD’s VOD platforms,” said Beachfront CEO Chris Maccaro. “We’ve spent the last several years tackling the technological hurdles to make it easy for any ad buyer to access these premium video impressions, while also laying the groundwork for future addressable-enabled solutions.”

Opening the door to programmatic buyers will help cable networks’ VOD inventory compete for ad dollars against streaming video and connected TV, whose technology was developed to provide targeted and addressable ad campaigns.

“We’re constantly seeking innovative ways to help complement our TV networks’ customers’ ad sales teams with new solutions to monetize the long-tail of their premium VOD inventory,” said Canoe CRO Ed Knudson. “Unlocking VOD inventory to a new class of ad buyers helps ensure networks get the most value out of their programming, which is particularly helpful at a time when on-demand viewing is on the rise.” 

Agencies, brands and demand-side platforms that utilize Beachfront can purchase VOD inventory from networks that can reach as many as 38 million VOD households. 

“Traditional TV inventory is still a big piece of the pie that many modern digital-oriented ad buyers don’t have access to,” said Adam Helfgott, CEO at MadHive, an enterprise software platform building tools to help buyers purchase digital TV inventory. “We’re excited to leverage our relationship with Beachfront to offer this unique set-top box VOD inventory to our ad buying partners.” 

Programmatic video ad platforms Unruly and Publica said they are working together to give connected TV sellers more control and better monetization over their inventory.

The companies said the combination of their technologies will make CTV more like traditional linear TV for both consumers and advertisers and make the auction process both simpler and more efficient.

As viewing shifts from traditional TV to streaming, “buyers and brands really need to update and make sure they’re up to speed on how they can reach that audience,” said Kenneth Suh, chief strategy officer at Unruly. “We’re right there to work with both the traditional broadcaster who is looking to distribution their content on some of these platforms and also working with these virtual MVPDs.

Publica’s technology is used to price and place ads as part of private market deals negotiated between buyers and Unruly’s sellers and allows buyers to bid for specific positions within commercial breaks. For sellers, that means they’ll get the highest price for premium positions, such as the first ad in a pod, known as the “A” position.

“The advertiser that returns the highest price is going to win the most premium slot within the pod,” said Ben Antier, co-founder and chief product officer of Publica. The higher bidder will also get priority within streamed show, with their ads showing up early in the programs

Advertisers will be able to make sure that the terms they can negotiate when they buy TV ads, such as pod exclusivity, will be executed in programmatic deals.

“One thing we can’t forget is that in connected TV, just like in traditional TV, there’s a lot of business rules associated with monetizing your inventory,” Antier said. “When we combine that AI model of optimizing for price with business rules, publishers can really own their inventory and decide how they want to sell it.”

The combination also will create unified reporting on deals through a single source, streamline workflow for publishers and allow first-party data for deal targeting.

Unruly provides analytics that give publishers the ability to access all of their auction information in one place and be able to see very quickly which deals are performing, which advertisers are buying what kind of inventory. “What publishers have been asking for is the ability to visualize how their inventory is monetized in a single place,” Suh said.

Antier and Suh said their two companies provide different parts of the value chain and by working together, both should increase the volume of business they do.

Going forward, the two companies are looking ahead to creating automated IDs to make it easier and more secure for buyers who might be hesitant about buying on the open marketplace because of concerns about fraud. “They’d rather have a relationship with a specific publisher, but to log in, they have to send a lot of emails,” Antier said. “It’s the old adage that programmatic should be easier than getting a job done by picking up the phone.”

Demand-side ad platform PubMatic has enhanced its relationship with Source, the programmatic supply chain developed by MediaMath, resulting in increased return on investment for PubMatic’s clients.

The enhancement involves passing MediaMath optimization data to PubMatic’s platform so better performing inventory can be directed back to the DSP. The connection with PubMatic’s ROI Sync is secure and aligns outcomes between buyers and sellers, optimizing for value, rather than price alone.

“MediaMath launched Source to align industry leaders in redesigning the foundation of programmatic advertising to achieve radical transparency and improved performance,” said Joe Zawadzki, chief executive officer and founder of MediaMath. “This has resulted in partnerships with like-minded advertising technology platforms such as PubMatic that not only share the vision, but that are actually implementing the code required to bring an aligned ecosystem to life in a way that benefits all players.”

Related: MediaMath's Source Scorecard Grades SSP's on Transparency

In one campaign for a major computer technology brand, the collaboration resulted in a 35% increase in advertiser ROI. Viewability increased by 30%, effective cost on an eCPM basis decreased by 30%, publish yield increased by 48% and the fraud rate dropped to 0.16%.

“Together with MediaMath, PubMatic is enhancing results for buyers and increasing revenue and opportunities for publishers,” said Rajeev Goel, co-founder and CEO at PubMatic. “We believe that by harnessing our massive data assets and leveraging our sophisticated machine learning algorithms, we can make ad spend and content investment work smarter and harder.”

Ad-tech specialist Cadent has tapped Eoin Townsend to the post of chief product officer.

He comes on board soon after the company consolidated its brands – Cross MediaWorks, Cadent Network, Cadent Technology, and one2oneMedia – under a single brand – Cadent. That followed a move in 2016 to merge the teams of BlackArrow and Cadent Network.

Cadent says it now has relationships with more than 200 MVPDs and broadcast station groups, and a national addressable TV platform that spans 65 million homes.

RELATED: Cadent Adding Addressable Linear to TV Ad Dashboard

Townsend most recently was with Collective, leading the product technology and marketing teams in support of the multiscreen ad company’s programmatic advertising offering.

Before that he was the chief strategy officer at MediaMath, and is also late of DoubleVerify, Google’s DoubleClick, and FloNetwork.

“The evolution of TV promises a more data-driven future, and it’s going to take a combination of technology services and experience to do it right,” Townsend said in a statement. “Cadent’s offering of advanced TV, data-driven linear, indexed and a platform that ties it all together is unique in the industry.”

RELATED: Cadent Technology Joins RDK

Beachfront Media, a programmatic video ad-tech company, said Growth Catalyst Partners (GCP) and PSP Capital have acquired a majority stake.

Financial terms were not announced, but Beachfront Media says it handles billions of video ad requests a day worldwide across mobile, connected TV and desktop platforms.

Beachfront said GCP and PSP will provide the company will resources to expand its capabilities for its multi-platform advertising business.

In tandem with the deal, Beachfront also announced Bill Jennings as CEO and Rich O’Connor as CFO. They previously served in the same roles at PageScience, an ad targeting company acquired by Accent Health in 2016.

Beachfront Media co-founder Frank Sinton will remain president, and he and co-founder, Lisa Connell, will also retain stakes in the company.

“The future of content consumption is increasingly mobile, social and arrayed across a diverse set of screens of all shapes and sizes,” Penny Pritzker, PSP’s founder and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, said in a statement. “Beachfront’s platform-agnostic business model and world class management team will play a pivotal role in the dynamic and fast-changing media industry landscape for years to come.”

Dickinson Wright LLP served as legal counsel to Growth Catalyst Partners. Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP represented PSP Capital, and Greenberg Traurig LLP acted as legal counsel to Beachfront Media.

NBCUniversal said it is selling some of its national TV commercial inventory using a self-serve programmatic platform and that retail chain Target has made the initial buy.

The programmatic platform uses technology and data from 4C to target audiences for ad campaigns.

NBCU also makes some of its inventory available via programmatic to buyers using AOL, TubeMogul and Videology.

“This is a watershed moment for advertisers, who have been looking for a way to unlock the power of first-party data in television,” said Kristi Argyilan, senior vice president of marketing for Target. “Through programmatic ad buying, NBCUniversal is giving us the opportunity to apply better data to our TV decisions and choose the programming that resonates most strongly with our guests.

NBCU is the first to use 4C to create a private marketplace within linear TV.

Read more at B&C.

Videa, the supply-side programmatic TV company owned by Cox Media Group, has hired Oscar Rondon to the post of VP of product.

Prior to Videa, Rondon was the senior director of TV strategy at TubeMogul, the programmatic TV firm recently acquired by Adobe late last year. Prior to that, he held exec slots at AOL’s Adap.tv unit, WideOrbit, Viacom/BET, Invision, Fox and Discovery Communications.

RELATED: Cox’s Videa Launches Programmatic Platform

“Oscar’s skills and experience align nicely with the direction we are moving toward at Videa,”  Shereta Williams, president of Videa, said in a statement.  “We are excited to have him as part of our team, and we look forward to his contributions in helping Videa remain at the forefront of our industry.”

Rodon has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Miami and holds a Master of Arts in Communications from Baruch College.

Tremor Video said Hulu has selected its sell-side platform to power an advanced TV advertising system that will span PCs as well as mobile and TV-connected OTT devices.

Tremor said the deal will enable Hulu to provide advertisers with a library of premium, long-form video inventory using a private, and automated marketplace.

RELATED: Hulu to Launch Programmatic Ad Buying

Hulu currently offers an SVOD service with limited ads for $7.99 per month, as well as an ad-free version that runs $11.99 per month. Hulu’s also nearing the debut of a live TV service that will include the ad-supported SVOD offering.

“After a thorough marketplace review, we selected Tremor Video to help Hulu bring digital automation across screens. Tremor Video not only understood our Advanced TV vision, but customized their supply-side technology to meet our specific marketplace requirements,” Doug Fleming, head of advanced TV at Hulu, said in a statement. “Tremor Video is an important component of Hulu’s Advanced TV offering, providing advertisers with the choice to leverage more automation to deliver the ad experience viewers prefer."

In a move that signals bigger video-facing ambitions, Spotify this week announced it has acquired MightyTV, a startup that has developed a content recommendation system.

As a result, Brian Adams, founder and CEO of MightyTV, is joining Spotify as VP of technology, where he’ll focus on advertising and marketing technology platforms. Spotify reasoned that Adams’s expertise in programmatic advertising and personalized recommendations will help Spotify further develop its own ad products and its marketing technology platform.

“The content recommendation system MightyTV has built is incredibly aligned with how we think about advertising technology and marketing personalization,” Jason Richman, VP of product at Spotify, said in a statement. “Brian and his team will help us continue to innovate on free monetization and extend our leadership position in programmatic audio.”

RELATED: Starz Connects With Spotify

Spotify launched programmatic audio advertising on a global basis last year, with partners such as AppNexus, Rubicon Project and The Trade Desk, that lets advertisers target audiences by age, gender, genres and playlists.

Adams also founded Admeld, a publisher monetization platform that was created in 2007 and sold to Google in 2011. He ran the DoubleClick Publisher Platform at Google before starting up MightyTV in 2015.

Spotify said the MightyTV team will be based in Spotify’s New York City, Toronto and Stockholm offices.

After the deal was announced, MightyTV noted on its web site that its app will no longer be updated or available, but that the company is “excited about the road ahead.”

Spotify didn’t disclose the financial terms of the acquisition. MightyTV had raised over $4 million, according to CrunchBase.

Though Spotify’s business centers on subscription and free, ad-based music services, the company should be viewed through the lens of a “platform” that can support multiple media types, according to BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield.

“Platforms have direct relationships with consumers, put the consumer first as they built their businesses and continuously utilize robust amounts of data to improve/adjust their strategy,” Greenfield wrote in a recent blog post (registration required) about why Spotify should make for an attractive acquisition target for media companies. “Stop thinking about Spotify as a music service and start thinking about it as a media platform that simply started with music, but has the potential to be so much more.”

Spotify started to delve deeper into the video world in 2015 when it announced an expansion into video, initially by offering clips and other short-form video from partners such as ESPN, ABC, NBC and Turner.

TiVo has hired Walt Horstman as senior vice president and general manager, analytics and advertising, where he’ll lead a team tasked with improving ad targeting and effectiveness across devices and platforms.

Horstman joins TiVo from AudienceXpress, the programmatic TV ad subsidiary of Visible World, the ad-tech company acquired last year by Comcast.  Horstman, who previously served as SVP of media solutions at Visible World, is also late of Cablevision Systems (now part of Altice USA) and Accenture.

RELATED: Visible World Joins Comcast's Ad Orbit

Horstman will be based out of the TiVo’s New York office and report to Pete Thompson, the company’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

RELATED: Rovi Seals Deal for TiVo

“As an accomplished executive with a proven track record of leading cross-functional teams, Walt brings renewed perspective and deeply relevant experience to TiVo’s analytics and advertising offerings,” Thompson said, in a statement. “His diverse background and industry knowledge surrounding data-driven insights and advanced TV advertising make him especially well-suited for this role and we’re thrilled to have him on-board to further our analytics strategy.”

Horstman holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and German literature from Amherst College and a masters of business administration, marketing and technology management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also spent time studying German language and literature at Freie Universitat in Berlin.

Digital video ad spend will reach $9.59 billion by the end of 2016, showing unprecedented growth over the last year. We’re watching more video than ever – thanks to the proliferation of new platforms, but the smart money is betting on mobile. However, there is no shortage of innovation in the category. 

With that in mind, here are four predictions for digital video advertising in 2017. 

VR’s embrace – and the inevitable growing pains.

Consumer interest in virtual reality and 360-degree video has soared with sales of virtual reality devices expected to hit $1.1 billion in 2016 and $2.7 billion by 2020. VR global search interest, for example, grew four-fold year-over-year. And the world’s top technology companies – from Facebook to Google – have all made major investments in VR, fueling its adoption. With these developments, brands are finally beginning to consider VR and 360-degree video for advertising. They know that these types of immersive experiences can drive engagement unlike any other form of content. 

But as branded VR and 360-degree video scale in 2017, there will be serious barriers to success – particularly on the creative side. VR requires a completely new approach to branded storytelling, which means a new production infrastructure to manage content development, including advanced hardware and software. As a result, the video advertising workflow fundamentally changes – it becomes even more complicated and expensive. For branded VR and 360-degree video to stick, it will need to drive greater engagement to offset the additional investment. 

Vertical video adoption will drive up costs.

Snapchat exploded this year, threatening Facebook and YouTube with more than 10 billion daily video views. Its user base in the U.S. also grew by nearly 30%. That adoption, along with other platforms like Periscope, has conditioned consumers to accept vertical video at a scale never seen before. This has forced the advertising industry to rethink everything about mobile video – from formats to content. 

More publishers and platforms – such as Hearst and YouTube – are now offering vertical video support. And advertisers need to change how they think about content for video ads. After all, beyond adoption, vertical video ads are more engaging – with up to nine times more completed views, than horizontal video ads. But having to ideate and develop new content with completely new aspect ratios across many channels – social, mobile, OTT, VOD, web and more – only drives up costs. As mobile video spend increases in 2017, expect a large chunk of those dollars to go towards vertical video.

Managing video creative will be much harder.

Today, there is no such thing as a single-channel strategy, and there hasn’t been for roughly a decade. The customer journey spans multiple screens, formats and platforms. But with multi-channel campaigns now dominant, video has become the go-to asset for driving campaign engagement. In fact, advertisers’ video spend grew by 85% over the last two years. In addition to surging consumer viewership, video advertising simply performs better than most other ad formats.  

On the demand side, video ad content is at an all-time high, driven by advancements in programmatic buying, which have improved targeting for video-driven campaigns. Programmatic has also enabled ease across transacting video inventory. 

While this is great news, the explosion in growth raises a host of challenges for those managing creative assets. Video file types differ by channel – think linear TV versus YouTube versus OTT or on-demand – and regardless of format are usually large and unwieldy. Additionally, each of these files must be adapted to the specifications required at its destination. Logistically speaking, managing video assets and related metadata will only grow more difficult in 2017, as video advertising continues to expand.  

No surprise – viewability will be critical for ROI.  

As video advertising has ballooned, viewability has become one of the biggest measurement challenges for brands and marketers. Next year, this will play out most significantly in the mobile space. Confusion still exists around how viewable ad formats are across mobile web and in-app. 

Earlier this year, the MRC rolled out a first pass at guidelines around mobile viewability measurement, offering directions for both web and in-app environments. But those guidelines were largely based off of desktop approaches. Mobile is a different animal, with its own strengths and weaknesses. For instance, in-app ads are typically more viewable than desktop given how scrolling works across mobile screens. Next year, mobile viewability standards must evolve further to provide advertisers with even more reassurance – especially as spend on mobile video continues to skyrocket. More dollars means a demand for better insight and more transparency.   

As more advertisers recognize the importance and impact of reaching customers through digital video, switching over from traditional formats like TV, 2017 will be a critical year for the future of the channel.

--Ian Wheal is the global strategy director at Adstream 

Image source: Wikipedia 

Adode said it agreed to buy programmatic TV advertising platform TubeMogul for $540 million.

Adobe said the acquisition of TubeMogul will create the first end-to-end independent advertising and data management solution that spans TV and digital formats, simplifying what has been a complex and fragmented process for the world’s biggest brands.

The acquisition of TubeMogul further strengthens Adobe’s digital marketing and advertising technology.

“Whether it’s episodic TV, indie films or Hollywood blockbusters, video consumption is exploding across every device and brands are following those eyeballs,” said Brad Rencher, executive VP and general manager, digital marketing, Adobe. “With the acquisition of TubeMogul, Adobe will give customers a ‘one-stop shop’ for video advertising, providing even more strategic value for our Adobe Marketing Cloud customers.”

Read more at B&C.

Spending on advanced advertising and programmatic TV campaigns has nearly doubled, growing by 92% since the first quarter, according to a new report by TV advertising software company Videology.

Videology, in its third-quarter U.S. Video At-A-Glance report, defines advanced TV campaigns as those that target audience using data that goes beyond traditional age and sex to select appropriate linear TV programs networks and dayparts.

The amount of TV inventory available to be bought and sold programmatically has also shot up, rising more than 500% since the first quarer.

“We’re seeing two big shifts in linear TV advertising: marketers want to use more data to further segment their audiences beyond age/gender and suppliers want to increase yield by packaging data with inventory,” said Scott Ferber, founder and CEO of Videology, in a statement. “As both of these objectives become more common, we’re seeing more and more linear inventory come into the ‘advanced’ TV marketplace. There remains a fine balance between the ability to achieve scalable reach and precision targeting, but both advertisers and media companies are seeing the value in bringing data into the equation.” 

Read more at B&C.

Extending a bridge to the over-the-top world for local and regional advertisers, Tegna has launched Premion, a new division of Tegna Media.

Premion, Tegna said, supplies a platform that enables local and regional advertisers to buy inventory on premium long-form content, and gets there by aggregating advertising inventory from more than 80 sources. Possible candidates include Roku, which has seen advertising become a significant contributor to its revenue mix, as well as Sling TV, Xumo, and major TV programmers that support OTT and authenticated video apps such as NBC Sports, FX and Discovery.

Ads supported by the platform will be either 15- or 30-seconds in length, are fast-forward disabled, and placed in pre-roll and mid-roll pods. Premion said its national rollout is underpinned by a sales force of more than 700, and can connect more than 14,000 local and regional advertising clients to the new platform. 

RELATED: Record Olympics Spend Drives Tegna Media Revenue Up 23% in 3Q

“The OTT market is growing rapidly and channels are proliferating,” Jim Wilson, president of Premion, said, calling the offering a “great addition to our broadcasting and digital portfolio.”  “There’s an opportunity for Tegna [because] consumers are spending an increasing amount of their time watching OTT.”

He said the Premion will bring scale and a one-stop-shop for partners that are seeking opportunities to tap the regional and local ad market.

RELATED: Hulu, Strata Make an Ad Connection

Early on Premion is working with partners such as WideOrbit and Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) to enable its OTT platform, but will also seek out opportunities work with partners using a direct connection.

“Automation and programmatic is absolutely where we’re headed,” Wilson said, calling Premion’s target a “white space opportunity.”

Premion’s commercial launch follows trials and pilots conducted in July in Dallas and Houston.

Wilson said the new platform can get campaigns up and running between three and five days, or as little as 48 hours, if need be. 

TVSquared said it has wrapped up a $3 million investment round from a group of new and existing investors that includes private equity fund West Coast Capital.

TVSquared, a supplier of same-day TV ad campaign measurement and optimization services founded in 2012, said it has raised more than $5.5 million.

TVSquared also announced the appointment of Chris van der Kuyl as board chairman, joining a board that includes Calum Smeaton (founder and CEO, TVSquared), Paul Davidson (West Coast Capital), Peter Kern (InterMedia Partners) and Joan Saywood (CFO, TVSquared).

TVSquared, which teamed with iSpot.tv last year to link TV ad airings to sales, said technology has been deployed by 350 brands in 46 countries, claiming it has improved TV campaign efficiency by 20% to 80%. Per a case study page posted online, brands that have used TVSquared’s platform include GoodRx, Diet Chef, Match.com, Budget Direct, Home Run Media, and PayAsUGym.com.

“Data analytics is a space we understand extremely well and, in assessing TVSquared, we saw a compelling analytics technology capable of making significant ROI for clients. Compelling technology, an experienced team and a global play made this an exciting investment,” van der Kuyl said, in a statement.

Wurl said more than 50 operators have signed on to distribute a handful of ad-supported, over-the-top streaming channels that will appear in set-top guides alongside traditional, linear TV services. 

Wurl, a Palo Alto-based company that specializes in streaming video services for pay TV operators, said it’s booting up the offering with a mix of its own aggregated/curated streaming channels -- The Alt Channel (“millennial-targeted” content), Streaming News Network, and The Sports Feed -- as well as two offerings sourced from programming partners: the Popcornflix Channel and Baeble Music TV.

All five are designed to appear in a set-top’s on-screen guide like regular linear channels. In addition to accessing those channels as a linear-style feed, viewers will also have the option to access on-demand programming from those OTT channels. 

Content from those channels have typically been accessible via digital platforms (such as the Web, mobile devices and streaming media players), but, with Wurl’s cloud-based platform, are now being made available on set-tops from MVPDs, Sean Doherty, Wurl’s CEO and co-founder, explained.

“This is a very cable-friendly way to let pay TV subscribers access streaming content,” he said.

As for technical requirements, set-tops must have an IP connection to pipe in Wurl’s streaming channels. Wurl has also been integrating its platform with middleware and set-top software partners to get its content stitched into guides alongside more traditional programming.

Wurl said more than 50 operators representing 13.5 million subscribers have agreed to carry its streaming channels. Doherty said most of its initial partners use the Arris Whole Home Solution or a TiVo-powered platform.

The first and only announced distribution partner announced is Fidelity Communications, an independent operator that serves parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Fidelity offers the Arris Whole Home Solution (WHS), an IP-capable platform, under the “Fido” brand. Wurl and Arris, which recently sold the WHS assets to Espial,  announced an OTT integration deal in July 2014.

“We now have a new source of programming and new interactive viewing features that will give us a competitive edge,” Loren King, product manager at Fidelity, said in a statement.

Doherty said it’s offering its OTT channels at no cost to the operator, and that it drives revenues from a programmatic, cloud-based ad management and insertion system called AdSpring. Wurl uses that platforms to sell ads, but also enables its programmers and operator partners to sell inventory on its platform as well.

Wurl timed the announcement with this week’s The Independent Show in Orlando. 

Programmatic advertising specialist clypd has introduced the Optimize Private Marketplace (PMP), a suite of new and enhanced ad sales tools tailored for TV’s upfront market.

The company said its new offering builds on clypd’s existing linear TV private marketplace platform, and includes elements and features such as data onboarding, yield-optimized and audience-focused scheduling, and proposal generation.

Clypd said several media companies, including Discovery Communications, ESPN and Fox Networks Group, have been using its platform with brand and agency partners. Also cited was Volpi Foods, which worked with its agency, Zero Point Zero Production, to execute an advanced ad campaign across Fox Networks during the Copa America tournament.

“clypd’s main mission has always been to help media companies navigate the changing TV advertising landscape,” Jason Burke, VP of product at clypd, said in a statement. “Optimize PMP brings major enhancements to the $74 billion market through software solutions that provide data-focused tools and yield optimization innovations for upfront and scatter negotiations.” 

Multiscreen ad firm YuMe has forged a programmatic advertising partnership with StickyADS.tv that will integrate YuMe’s demand side platform (DSP) with StickyADS.tv’s supply side platform (SSP). 

The combo, YuMe said, will give advertisers and agencies access to premium video inventory online and on mobile across the globe, including access to more than 105 billion monthly bid requests, 150-plus private exchanges in 150 locations worldwide, and 20 “leading” TV broadcasters. 

Paris-based StickyADS.tv was recently acquired by FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned advanced ad-tech company. 

“After successfully launching our end-to-end programmatic video advertising platform last year, we’re pleased to announce such a pivotal strategic partnership for YFA in Europe,” Jayant Kadambi, chairman and CEO of YuMe, said in a statement. “This partnership expands the ability for our clients to purchase StickyADS.tv’s premium inventory across our major markets in Europe in a number of different formats, including Outstream and mobile, to deliver video campaigns in a seamless manner across multiple screens and devices. 

“We are delighted to enter into this formal agreement with YuMe that will contribute to widening our demand partner pool - more than 90 server-to-server demand integrations are live today,” added Gilles Chetelat, COO and co-founder at StickyADS.tv. “Through this new addition, we can now provide another premium direct demand source to our clients across the globe. YuMe’s strategic relationships with premium advertisers, especially in the US, will drive rapid growth for our clients.”

FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned advanced ad-tech firm, said it is strengthening its programmatic video capabilities via the acquisition of StickyADS.tv, a supply side platform (SSP) that helps publishers build, run and operate their own private exchange.

The deal, FreeWheel said, will give the company an automated system that will help its clients manage video inventory across multiple screens, while also providing a “TV compliant experience.”

Paris-based StickyADS.tv supports several major broadcasters in Europe, including TF1, France Télévisions and M6, as well as premium publishers such as Spiegel, Corriere della Sera, The Economist, and La Place Media. StickyADS.tv was founded in 2009.

“We are very excited to make this announcement. We are bringing together two companies who deeply understand the opportunities for the ‘New TV’ ecosystem on both sides of the Atlantic,” Doug Knopper, co-founder and co-CEO of FreeWheel, said in a statement. “StickyADS.tv has been a preferred SSP partner since September 2015 and in that short time we have been thoroughly impressed by both the quality of their platform and the knowledge of their team.”

“Our clients’ need to support automated sales has drastically accelerated over the last 18 months. We believe StickyADS.tv brings best-in-class SSP technology, specifically their focus on private exchange capabilities that put the publisher in control,” added James Rooke, FreeWheel’s chief revenue officer.

Comcast acquired FreeWheel in 2014. Its clients include AOL, DirecTV, Turner, Europe’s Sky  Channel 4, as well as corporate cousin NBCUniversal, which recently launched a linear programmatic sales initiative.

Cox Media’s Videa programmatic TV unit said it has made a series of deals that will increase the scale and scope of the business it does.

Videa said its supply-side platform reached agreements to get ad inventory from the Raycom and E.W. Scripps stations group. It will work with the demand-side platforms TubeMogul, the Trade Desk and VideoAmp. It also  made a deal with media tech company and data provider 4C.

“The new deals with our sell- and buy-side partners enable us to create scale with both breadth and depth of inventory in local markets, while also providing the highest programmatic demand to our broadcast clients,” said Shereta Williams, president of Videa. “We are excited to expand our automated sales solution and make it easier to buy local audiences at scale.”

Read more at B&C.

Timed ahead of the 2016 Upfronts, AOL is pushing deeper into the programmatic TV sector with a “self-serve” buying platform.

AOL, acquired by Verizon last June, said the new self-serve module extends its ONE by AOL: TV managed module that was launched in 2014 and is part of its “unified” programmatic platform, ONE by AOL, introduced about a year ago.

The new self-serve platform, which adds reporting and analytics on the backend, will take aim at a piece of the total U.S. TV ad spending pie, which generated about $74 billion in 2015, Dan Ackerman, SVP of programmatic TV at AOL, said.

TV continues to represent the bulk of the ad marketplace, given its immense reach, and TV ad spending continues to rise, he added, noting that programmatic advertising models are now primed to handle this large-scale arena and to deliver on the same methods and techniques that have made programmatic such a hit in the digital domain.

“There hasn’t been inventory available at scale with TV like there is in the digital space,” Ackerman said.

The new TV-focused, self-serve platform is designed to bring a new level of automation that connects buyers and sellers, while also adding efficiencies and enabling more data-driven targeting and decisioning into ad campaigns that extend beyond age, gender and household income.

AOL, Ackerman said, is in talks with multiple national broadcast and cable TV networks about tapping into its self-serve module, with more than a dozen that have been integrated ahead of the fall TV season.

Omnicom Media Group has been named as the ONE by AOL: TV self-serve module exclusive agency launch partner, and will begin testing on the new platform on behalf of its clients.

“This provides our clients the opportunity to begin to realize the benefits of advanced targeting in linear TV,” John Swift, CEO, North America Investment at Omnicom Media Group, said in a statement. “It is a critical first step in our journey towards programmatic and, ultimately, household level addressability at scale in TV.”

AOL’s product launch arrives amid a flurry of activity around programmatic TV. Last month, AT&T hooked up with Videology on an automated, self-service private marketplace for linear TV advertising. NBCU, meanwhile, launched a linear programmatic sales initiative in February that will be part of its upfront sales.

Synacor’s technology now authenticates more than 75 million pay TV homes in the U.S., an indication that the company’s Cloud ID single sign-on product is making strides, CEO Himesh Bhise said Wednesday on the company’s Q4 2015 earnings call.

He added that Synacor, which has been on a buying binge as it shores up a strategy that factors in advanced advertising and over-the-top services, has also won another deal to support in-home and out-of-home advanced video services for a still-unnamed broadband service provider. That follows last November’s disclosure that Synacor had won a deal to provide the backend platform for an OTT service coming from “regional full service communications” provider.

Synacor has not identified those OTT partners, but its known customers include Armstrong, Atlantic Broadband, Burlington Telecom, Cable One, Blue Ridge Communications, Charter, Cincinnati Bell, Grande Communications, EPB Fiber Optics, Consolidated Communications, Suddenlink Communications, WideOpenWest, Verizon, Windstream, GVTC Communications, and CenturyLink Communications, which recently detailed new OTT products that it will offer in and out of its Prism TV footprint for managed IPTV services.

Synacor’s recent OTT focus comes after it acquired NimbleTV,  formed a partnership with Siemensand executed an integration with thePlatform, the Comcast-owned online video company.

On the financial end, Synacor posted Q4 revenues of $32.4 million, up 5% from $30.9 million in the year-ago quarter, alongside a net loss of $400,000, narrowed from a loss of $6.4 million.

However, search and advertising revenue dropped 22%, to $19.3 million. Synacor is looking to drive more ad revenue for its service provider customers via its recent $3 million acquisition of Technorati.

Synacor ended 2015 with $15.7 million in cash and cash equivalents. 

Time Warner Cable Media, the ad sales arm of Time Warner Cable, said its Ads Everywhere platform now offers addressable campaigns for linear TV and VOD that can be targeted to the household level.

That capability, supported across the MSO’s 10.8 million digital video households, also give marketers the ability to dynamically insert targeted ads on its authenticated TWC TV app,  which supports several platforms, including iOS and Android mobile devices, Roku players, Samsung smart TVs, and Xbox One and Xbox 360 consoles.

Update: For those keeping score, AT&T AdWorks noted in a statement that it already offers a linear TV addressable advertising solution in its live and playback modes in approximately 13 million households nationwide.

TWCM Ads Everywhere, a service introduced in 2014, lets marketers target consumers with specialized ads using demographic data such as household income, lifestyle, and purchasing preferences, the company said.

Notably, TWCM recently completed the rollout of KernelConnect, a campaign performance measurement tool that integrates anonymous aggregated linear TV data as well as digital advertising and third party data.

“We continue to develop better ad solutions for marketers as they strive to connect with consumers who have more control over their viewing experiences,” said Joan Gillman, Time Warner Cable’s EVP and COO, Media Services. “What sets TWCM apart is the greater ability for marketers to accurately target specific segments of audiences at the household level during live programming on TWC TV and VOD. As consumer usage of the TWC TV app and VOD offerings continue to grow and become more personalized, our addressable advances allow advertisers to capitalize across every screen in cable during television programming.”

TWC is in the process of being acquired by Charter Communications, which has developed a next-gen advanced ad platform called Spectrum Reach, and recently hired former Comcast exec Rob Klippel to SVP, advanced advertising products and strategy.

In a deal clearly aimed at driving revenue growth for its current crop of service provider partners while also expanding into new markets, Synacor said it is acquiring digital advertising technology company Technorati.

Synacor, a company that makes Web portals, TV Everywhere authentication systems and provides email services, currently represents about 20 million “uniques” through partnerships with MVPDs and ISPs such as Mediacom Communications, CenturyLink, WideOpenWest, and Suddenlink Communications. Technorati adds to that another 100 million uniques via its network of about 1,000 publishers.

“Advertising is an important growth engine for the company,” Synacor CEO Himesh Bhise said, noting that the acquisition of Technorati gives it “tremendous reach across the U.S.” and help its existing operator partners further monetize their ad inventory.

Advertising represented 45% of Synacor’s revenues in Q3 2015, up 17% year-over-year (Synacor is scheduled to announce Q4 results on March 16).

Synacor didn't announce the financial terms of the acquisition, but expects it to be accretive to its 2016 earnings. Privately held Technorati generated about $7 million in revenue in 2015, according to Synacor.

Update: Per an 8K filed today, Synacor will acquire “substantially all of the assets” of Technorati for $3 million in cash.

Bhise said San Francisco-based Technorati has been focused on developing an ad software product focused on header bidding, a new development that allows website publishers to net the highest price for ad inventory using real-time auctions. That technology, called SmartWrapper, pings ad networks, identifies the highest price, while providing the tools required to manage the complexity. SmartWrapper is part of Technorati’s Contango ad-tech platform.

Synacor, which has already been testing the vendor’s header bidding technology, believes Technorati’s products will enable it to build ad scale and provide targeting across desktop and mobile platforms, while also enabling it to expand its overall ad inventory.

Technorati will also give Synacor a programmatic ad platform to add to its software-as-a-service-based portfolio, which includes Zimbra (email), cloud ID authentication and multiscreen video.

About ten Technorati employees will be joining Synacor and remain based in the San Francisco area, where Buffalo, N.Y,-based Synacor already has a presence.

“For Technorati, becoming part of Synacor is a logical next step to grow our ad network and our digital advertising solution, SmartWrapper,” Technorati CEO Shani Higgins said in a statement. “All of us at Technorati are excited to be joining Synacor and bringing our programmatic advertising platforms to a much broader audience of customers and partners.

Technorati is the latest in a string of recent acquisitions by Synacor, which last year bought certain assets of Zimbra and cloud video specialist NimbleTV.

AOL, acquired by Verizon Communications last year, has made an acquisition of its own.

AOL this week announced it has snapped up AlephD, a Paris-based programmatic platform company “specializing in publisher analytics and price floor optimization” that will be tied into own, grander programmatic offering -- ONE by AOL for Publishers.

AOL said AlephD will help it drive more data into its platform and drive yield for its publishing partners. Adding price floor optimization, it added, will help publishers squeeze more value from visits to web sites and apps and calculate the “best price for each impression in real time.”

“AlephD will be a key part of ONE by AOL for Publishers, enhancing publishers’ ability to understand, control and optimize pricing and packaging of their inventory and drive greater revenue in an increasingly complex ecosystem trending towards mobile,” the company said.

In tandem with the acquisition, AOL announced the launch of ONE by AOL: Publishers, which supports multiple platforms, including desktops, mobile and over-the-top devices.

“Publishers face many obstacles and challenges in navigating the complexities of today’s media environment, and the walled garden technology solutions available to them today is underservicing their needs to capitalize on the consumer shift to mobile and video,” said Tim Mahlman, president of Publisher Platforms, AOL. “With ONE by AOL: Publishers, AOL is drawing on world-class, publisher-minded teams and technology solutions to redefine monetization and empower publishers to capture the maximum value of their content.”

Sky Plc is getting more involved in the programmatic ad tech game via a $10 million strategic investment in Boston-based DataXu, a maker of marketing analytics, data management and media activation software.

Founded in 2009, DataXu specializes in “programmatic marketing” -- automated, data-based planning and trading of ads across multiple devices and formats. Its customers include well-known brands such as Bose, Lexus, Ford , 3M, Mercedes-Benz, Vodafone and UnityMedia, the German cable operator that’s part of the Liberty Global empire. DataXu claims that its platform can analyze and optimize buying decisions on over 100 billion digital advertising opportunities daily.

With the latest funding, DataXu has raised $76 million so far, per TechCrunch.

Sky said its ad sales division, Sky Media, will also collaborate with DataXu to “explore a number of new opportunities,” including extending the reach of its new cross-screen Sky AdVance product. In 2014, Sky Media launched Sky AdSmart, a product tailored for niche/smaller brands.

"This investment will help us develop a deeper understanding of programmatic advertising, and play our part in shaping the market as it progresses," said Jamie West, Deputy MD at Sky Media, in a statement. "Combining Sky's knowledge, experience and innovation in advertising with DataXu's programmatic marketing expertise will provide exciting opportunities for both businesses, and most importantly, for Sky's advertising partners."

Sky has also made recent investments in OTT and streaming companies such as TV4 Entertainment, Pluto TV, Roku, Whistle Sports, and VR content startup Jaunt.

Looking to broaden its mobile-focused programmatic ad platform, AOL said it has inked a deal to acquire mobile advertising specialist Millennial Media.

AOL said the deal, for $1.75 per share of Millennial Media common stock, will give it a supply-side platform for app monetization and add more than 65,000 apps to its suite of publisher offerings, and bring more mobile ad scale to the ONE by AOL, its unified multiscreen digital ad platform.

The deal, valued at almost $250 million, represents a 31% premium, as Millennial shares closed Wednesday at $1.34 per share. Shares of Millennial Media were up 39 cents (29.10%), to $1.73 per share in pre-market trading Thursday.

Via the acquisition, AOL said it will also have access to roughly 1 billion active unique users globally and expand its cross-screen targeting capabilities and broaden its reach to international markets such as Singapore, Japan, the U.K., France and Germany.

The deal also comes on the heels of Verizon’s acquisition of AOL, giving the carrier a slate of online video content and programmatic ad systems that are expected to play a big role in go90, Verizon’s coming “mobile-first” video offering.

 “As we continue to invest in our platforms and technology, the acquisition of Millennial Media accelerates our competitive mobile offering in ONE by AOL and enhances our current publisher offering with an ‘all in’ monetization platform for app developers,” AOL president Bob Lord said, in a statement.

"By joining AOL, we will be adding additional mobile expertise to AOL's growing technology assets,” added Michael Barrett, president and CEO of Millennial Media.

Founded in 2006, Millennial Media is headquartered in Baltimore, Md., with U.S. offices in Atlanta, Boston, New York and San Francisco, and international offices in Hamburg, London, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo. Millennial Media has built up its own portfolio through acquisitions spanning of TapMetrics, Condaptive, Metaresolver, Jumptap and Nexage.

Millennial Media will become a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL when the deal is closed sometime this fall. 

Visible World, the Comcast-owned maker of targeted and programmatic advertising technology company, has appointed industry vet David Kline to the post of president and chief operating officer.

Kline joins Visible World more than a month after Comcast acquired the company, which counts Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Suddenlink and Time Warner Cable among its clients.

Kline most recently was COO at Ensequence, which introduced a distributor-agnostic interactive advertising platform for MVPDs, programmers and smart TV manufacturers in 2013. Prior to that, Kline was a long-time exec of Cablevision Media Sales, where he oversaw operations for Cablevision's advertising businesses, including local cable, interconnects, regional news channels, national cable networks, newspapers and introduced industry leading advanced advertising products and services.

Before going full-time with Visible World, Kline had been serving as a director of the company and consulted on several initiatives supporting MVPDs and their programmatic inventory sales, the company said. New York-based Visible World offers a programmatic TV platform via its AudienceXpress subsidiary.

"We are delighted that David has officially joined our team," Visible World CEO Seth Haberman said, in a statement. "Because of our shared forward-looking take on the space and his leadership, he has been a critical advisor to Visible World for some time. He joins us now, as we take the company to new heights in increasing the performance of TV ad inventory. Visible World has been a frontrunner in our industry -- and now we are taking the next step in our suite of products."

Comcast’s acquisition for Visible World came about a year after the operator  acquired online advertising specialist FreeWheel.

Adelphic, a mobile and cross-channel demand-side platform that counts Google Ventures among its backers, said it has inked a deal with LiveRail (now part of Facebook) to bring connected TV ad inventory to programmatic buyers.

Adelphic said the linkage will enable its clients, which include trading desks, to buy ads programmatically to consumers who use connected TVs and integrate that inventory into their multi-channel campaigns. About 138.8 million U.S. consumers will tap into a connected TV at least once per month this year, according to eMarketer.

Matching programmatic buying to connected TV platforms will give media buyers greater transparency into consumer preferences and purchase behavior, while giving programmatic buyers the ability to modify their bid prices for different consumer groups in real-time.

“By working with LiveRail and incorporating CTV inventory into our platform, our clients will have an unprecedented ability to influence consumer behaviors throughout the path to purchase, starting in living rooms and continuing to, and through, retail environments,” said Michael Collins, CEO of Adelphic.    

Founded in 2011, Adelphic is funded by Matrix Partners, Blue Chip Venture Company and Google Ventures. It has raised about $23 million, according to CrunchBase. 

Bringing more advanced advertising capabilities in-house, Comcast has struck a deal to acquire Visible World, the New York-based maker of targeted ad systems and a programmatic TV platform via its AudienceXpress subsidiary.

The announcement, made Thursday in this blog post by Visible World CEO Seth Haberman, comes more than three months after The Wall Street Journalreported that Comcast and the vendor were in M&A talks.

Visible World’s partners include Comcast, Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Suddenlink and Time Warner Cable, among others. Cox Media and Suddenlink are among the known customers of AudienceXpress.

Comcast’s proposed acquisition for Visible World also comes about a year after Comcast  acquired online advertising specialist FreeWheel.

Financial terms of the Comcast-Visible World deal were not announced, but the MSO plans for Visible World to operate as an independent business.

Haberman said the deal will help to take the ad tech firm to the “next level.”

“As the industry continues to evolve and expand, we’ve also looked for new opportunities to change, expand, strengthen and position our business for future success,” Haberman wrote. “So today, I am thrilled to announce that we have found the perfect partner to help us achieve our goals and help us take our business and services to the next level: Visible World has signed an agreement to be acquired by Comcast.”

“Visible World is a dynamic company and a real complement to our existing advanced advertising initiatives,” added John Schanz, executive vice president and chief network officer for Comcast Cable. “Visible World offers a diverse spectrum of services that serve a variety of needs across the television advertising landscape. This partnership reflects the business and technology trends we are seeing in the television industry today. We look forward to helping the talented Visible World team expand and accelerate their business and create more value for distributors, advertisers, agencies, programmers and affiliates.”

Founded in 2000, Visible World has raised about $33 million, including a $25 million "C" round, according to CrunchBase.