Fox with partnering with Comcast’s FreeWheel to enable programmatic sales of addressable VOD advertising on set-top boxes.
The partnership, which the companies called a first for a television network, means Fox can offer advertisers addressable household-level campaigns on any of its content viewed on demand within the Comcast Xfinity footprint. This adds to Fox’s current programmatic trading capabilities on Tubi, its ad-supported streaming service available on Xfinity X1, Flex and Cox Contour devices.
“Advertisers continue to recognize that television remains the best platform for reaching a mass audience in a premium environment and to drive greater brand awareness,” said Dan Callahan, senior vice president of data strategy and sales innovation for Fox, in a statement. “As audience viewing patterns increase across more platforms, FOX continues to focus on expanding our addressable capabilities and offering advertising partners multiple solutions for their media plans. Our partnership with FreeWheel enables us to deliver targeted advertising to Comcast households who are watching FOX’s popular series on their VOD platform.”
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The Trade Desk is the first demand side platform (DSP) to complete the integration.
“Advertisers continue to crave more inventory from TV networks and their supply side partners, which is why this combined solution from FOX and Freewheel hits the mark,” said Jon Tabak, general manager of strategic partnerships at The Trade Desk, in a statement. “Historically, TV has been somewhat of a blind spot from a digital advertising perspective. By further expanding our platform’s reach in the TV ecosystem, our clients have a clearer picture of their advertising investment and total impact across screens and devices, especially the biggest screen in the room.”
“At FreeWheel, we believe in the power of Premium Programmatic, which must extend across all platforms where premium content is being viewed. FOX and The Trade Desk have been tremendous Page 2 of 2 partners in working on this important VOD development that brings data and automation to such an important, and still untapped, growth area for television advertising,” said Dave Clark, general manager at FreeWheel, in a statement. “It truly illustrates that technology can help programmers and advertisers work together in a way that elevates the opportunities for both.”
Fox and FreeWheel expect more integrations with demand partners in the coming months.