Looking to expand its advertising sales, streaming TV service Philo is working with a number of ad tech and sales companies to reach advertisers looking to reach over-the-top viewers.
Philo continues to use Comcast’s FreeWheel for ad management, ad serving and decisioning.
The virtual multichannel video programming distributor has worked with FreeWheel since it launched. It has also built its own server-side ad insertion and ad transcoding technology, which has been integrated with FreeWheel, according to Reed Barker, head of advertising at Philo. Philo began dynamically inserting ads into programming last March.
VOD ad inventory through supply side platforms including FreeWheel, SpotX, Telaria and Verizon Media, as well as via Premion, Roku and Xandr.
Philo is selling ads via programmatic, resellers and some direct ad sales. Most of its connected TV commercial inventory is sold programmatically now, some with private marketplace deals and some through real time bidding.
Philo said it wants to make it easy for advertising to tape into the growing over-the top market and target specific audiences.
“At Philo, we built our TV streaming platform from the ground up to appeal to a new generation of TV lovers, and we have kept that same philosophy as we’ve built our ad platform: to appeal to brands looking for a frictionless advertising experience in a vMVPD world,” said Barker. “We’re partnering with best-in-class SSPs and DSPs, and we’ve aligned with content partners to provide a consistent, brand-safe programming environment. As a result, we’re able to offer an elegant, sophisticated advertising solution to agencies and brands to accompany a TV experience consumers love.”
Correction: A prior version of this story gave an incorrect number for Philo subscribers. That number, provided by Philo, was for the entire virtual MVPD market.
