Comcast’s FreeWheel unit on Wednesday announced a new unified yield set of capabilities for publishers, that in part enables them to automate prioritization of programmatic demand and boost access to premium video inventory that’s normally inaccessible because of guaranteed deals.
Unified yield automates optimization across guaranteed, direct IO and non-guaranteed, programmatic demand. The ultimate aim of the new tools, according to FreeWheel, is for a publisher to have complete fluidity across all sales channels to maximize the value of their inventory without sacrificing guaranteed deals.
As programmatic (a technology-based method that automates and speeds up the process and transactions for buying and delivering ads) continues to garner interest, FreeWheel is looking to reduce some of the friction and inefficiencies in the TV ad buying process so publishers can better incorporate non-guaranteed, programmatic demand into monetization strategies. According to a Comcast Advertising study, programmatic ad views have grown 80% year over year (as of June 2022), with sellers working with an average of 13 different programmatic partners.
Traditionally, non-guaranteed programmatic deals may be locked out of the high-value premium video inventory that’s reserved for guaranteed deals. One of the key enhancements of the FreeWheel offering is that it gives non-guaranteed programmatic deals a so-called “priority boost” to compete with direct-sold guaranteed deals – thus providing access to previously unreachable inventory and helping to maximize revenue with more opportunity to target audiences at scale. It also automates prioritization, a feature meant to alleviant the manual process of balancing yield management across guaranteed and programmatic demand channels.
“We developed this new, improved industry solution to help solve for and reduce some of the friction and inefficiencies in the TV ad buying process across sales channels,” said Katy Loria, chief revenue officer at FreeWheel, in a statement. “FreeWheel’s new unified yield capability provides smarter demand decisioning so that we can help deliver better results for marketers and publishers, while honoring guaranteed commitments.”
A+E Networks is one publisher tapping FreeWheel’s unified yield capabilities. According to the company, A+E saw a more than 35% increase in CPM (cost per thousand) across replaced impressions (ie: impressions that had been reserved for direct/IO deals, but were replaced with non-guaranteed programmatic demand). All guaranteed deals were still delivered in full during the period, FreeWheel noted.
Delivering on guaranteed advertising commitments is one of the key aspects that A+E Network’s Tyler Denicola highlighted in the announcement.
“One of the beneficial features about FreeWheel’s new unified yield offering is the technology’s ability to balance an increasing demand for non-guaranteed, programmatic while fully delivering on our commitments to our advertiser partners,” said Denicola, VP of Programmatic Revenue & Partnerships at A+E Networks, in a statement. “In doing so, we’ve been able to create more flexible opportunities for our advertisers to unlock new audiences across our premium video portfolio.”
In other recent developments on the programmatic front, the media company-owned OpenAP consortium disclosed it is working with vendors – including FreeWheel, as well as Magnite and Xandr – to expand programmatic selling abilities across linear and CTV via the group’s OpenID product. Ad agency GroupM is the first to partake in the program.
TVREV co-founder and analyst Alan Wolk, in a recent column on Fierce Video, called programmatic ad buying “the future of TV” and noted that in a hybrid viewing world it's vital for brands to be able to buy TV on a cross-platform, meaning both linear and streaming, basis.
“Now that a critical mass of people have figured out that ‘programmatic’ is not a euphemism for ‘race to the bottom’, and as programmatic buying platforms become better adapted for TV with its household (versus individual) viewing patterns, the more widely accepted it will become,” wrote Wolk. “While there are many pluses to programmatic, the overriding benefit is that it’s just far more efficient.”
Dish, meanwhile, announced last month that it will enable real-time programmatic buying for advertisers across all 7 million-plus households reached by the provider’s satellite and streaming services. Dish tapped SeaChange International and Beachfront to provide sell-side and ad-insertion tools for the service.