NDS has pumped $20 million--or at least led a round funding that pumped the money--into BlackArrow, a privately held firm with a new set of advanced TV advertising solutions for cable MSOs and programmers. In exchange for the money, NDS has received a say in how BlackArrow operates and a seat on the company's board of directors.
Buying into an existing technology was easier for NDS, a leading provider of pay TV enablement platforms, than developing it themselves, said Todd Narwid, vice president of new media for the company.
"When you do something yourself there's a trial-and-error process. We are a world class company that can compete with anyone and in a lot of cases do better than anyone," he said. "BlackArrow brings in the advertising ecosystem and understanding and deploying services into the customers specifically (so) we're better off partnering with them than building it ourselves."
The BlackArrow platform allows programmers to develop and insert advertising across a variety of platforms including cable TV, video-on-demand and the Internet to keep up with consumers who are continually shifting their viewing habits. "You have a lot of people with a lot of ad inventory who need to move that inventory in an effective way as the consumer continues to shift. BlackArrow creates the connection between the programmers who have the inventory and the operators who distribute the content and create a marketplace where one never existed before," said BlackArrow CEO Dean Denhart.
For more:
- see this news release
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