After yesterday's announcement it was selling its Whole Home Solution (WHS) to Canada's Espial, Arris today said it will sell its Media Analysis Framework (MAF) to Watchwith, a digital advertising platform for programmers and video distributers.
In addition to gaining Arris' MAF cloud-based machine learning and automated metadata generation platform, Watchwith will bring on broad a team of Arris engineers that invented the technology and will open a Watchwith R&D office in Chicago.
The companies did not disclose terms of the deal.
"Our teams have worked closely together on this shared vision for years," said Watchwith CEO Zane Vella in a statement. "And the result is the highly scalable, native digital video advertising solution the TV industry needs to compete with Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and other native digital video distribution platforms."
"Watchwith is the optimal go-to market path for this valuable R&D, and our dedicated MAF team will play a new, highly strategic role within the Watchwith organization," said Arris MAF leader Faisal Ishtiaq in a statement. "We understand temporal metadata is the fuel of the emerging video economy. Our teams are committed to creating new revenue opportunities for broadcasters and exciting new user experiences for their viewers."
MAF technology automatically analyzes, tags and describes video in order to help eliminate the need for manual tagging, thereby ultimately reducing providers' expenses. The solution uses artificial intelligence in ad inventories, which the companies said allows for automated determination of the best timing and location for ads within both live and pre-recorded content.
Watchwith plans to integrate the MAF technology into its data-driven advanced advertising products, which it promises will allow TV networks and premium video publishers to generate new ad inventory.
Watchwith already provides its platform to networks including FOX, NBCUniversal and Viacom.
The announcement of the MAF sale to Watchwith comes just one day after Arris sold WHS to Espial, a move that also shifted a team of Arris employees to another company.
For more:
- read this press release
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A previous version of this article incorrectly stated no anticipated closing date was provided. The deal has closed.