Fox has inked a partnership with Comcast’s FreeWheel to better manage direct sold advertising campaigns via the OneFox advertising platform.
The companies said they aim to offer a solution that addresses current industry needs, including creating unified video inventory and more efficiently finding target audiences.
To that end, FreeWheel will help run and aggregate direct sold campaigns across Fox’s linear and streaming portfolio, including Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox Entertainment and free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service Tubi.
Tubi recorded nearly 30% ad revenue growth for the third quarter, marking the first time its revenue has surpassed Fox Entertainment’s ad revenue “in a meaningful way,” according to Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch.
Fox has made some progress enhancing its advertising options. The company last month tapped Magnite to serve as Fox’s sell-side partner for OneFox. That deal, however, only encompasses Fox’s programmatic ad inventory.
“Across Fox, we continue to work with our advertising partners to create the optimal environment for brand messages to efficiently reach the right audiences across the company’s industry-leading portfolio of brands and platforms,” stated Dan Callahan, SVP of data strategy and sales innovation at Fox.
Fox also recently formed a partnership with Innovid, leveraging the company’s cross-platform measurement technology.
Mark McKee, general manager at FreeWheel, added that Fox and FreeWheel want to address “the need to unify supply across different inventory pools in an increasingly fragmented marketplace, reduce waste, optimize efficiency and reach the right audiences.”
FreeWheel is also making moves on the programmatic front. The company in October announced a new unified yield set of capabilities for publishers. The tools are designed to boost prioritization of programmatic demand, allowing programmatic campaigns to better compete with direct-sold guaranteed deals.
Fox, along with Paramount, NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery, are media stakeholders in OpenAP, another ad tech company that’s trying to simplify the ad buying process. OpenAP aims to help brands and publishers improve targeted campaigns while ensuring consumer data remains secure.