Comcast’s FreeWheel unit is launching new identity capabilities that look to bring a more cohesive picture to premium TV advertisers and publishers as they connect data to IDs from a variety of platforms and endpoints.
The capabilities hope to address the challenge of fragmentation by supporting and providing interoperability with ID solutions from a range of companies and some of the most commonly used IDs in the TV advertising industry. The goal is for advertisers to easily connect first and third-party data to IDs from different sources, providing increased scale, optimal reach and frequency for TV ads.
FreeWheel is piloting the new solution now and expects to release advanced privacy-centric ID capabilities later this year.
Mark McKee, general manager at FreeWheel, said in a statement that the industry is growing more complex from data points to end points.
“We are doing this to simplify workflows and create scale by driving interoperability across many of today’s leading ID solutions,” McKee stated. “As an ecosystem connector, we hope to make the premium video space more seamless, efficient, and ultimately, more effective for both media buyers and sellers alike.”
The effort supports ID solutions with interoperability across publisher, operator and carrier data assets, connecting household data with Blockgraph, Experian, LiveRamp, OpenAP and TransUnion, and directly with proprietary agency datasets like Merkle, along with device identifiers including cookies, mobile IDs and CTV IDs.
Jon Whitticom, chief product officer at FreeWheel, said in the announcement that the highly fragmented identity landscape has been a result of companies leaning into first-party data often built on proprietary identifiers in the face of cookie deprecations and quickly evolving privacy regulation.
“FreeWheel helps solve for this by creating interoperability across various industry ID solutions, as well as traditional device IDs, utilizing advanced privacy methodologies and minimizing data leakage,” Whitticom commented. “This enables a buyer or seller to build a segment in nearly any ID space and execute using FreeWheel technology to provide the connective tissue across the television industry enabling them to better reach their audience accurately, and at scale.”
In other recent capability enhancements, FreeWheel earlier this month partnered with AMC Networks to introduce a fully self-service linear addressable solution, making it easier to manage multi-screen campaigns.