In an effort to expand cross-platform consumer reach, Viacom and Comcast have signed a multi-year agreement to partner on advanced advertising and data.
Per the deal, Viacom’s targeted advertising expertise and national reach will be integrated with Comcast-owned FreeWheel’s next-generation TV and premium video advertising technology.
“Today’s announcement reflects Viacom’s commitment to developing more expansive relationships with our distributors. This new partnership with Comcast and FreeWheel builds on Viacom’s connections with valuable, diverse audiences and Comcast’s reach and data leadership, to create an advanced advertising platform with scale and sophistication,” said Kern Schireson, executive vice president and chief data officer at Viacom, in a statement. “Marketers increasingly demand the ability to reach the right customers at the right time in a premium, trusted environment, and this transformative partnership furthers our ability to unlock greater value for our brand partners and accelerate the future of television advertising.”
Viacom will using FreeWheel’s unified operating platform for premium video, and will deploy features including Holistic Advertising Management to monetize across all screens, according to a news release.
“Viacom and FreeWheel have a shared goal of enhancing the value of the entire TV ecosystem,” said David Clark, executive vice president and general manager of FreeWheel, in a statement. “To do so, we believe in a shared vision of a TV and premium video unification roadmap that will accelerate the integration of TV’s broad reach and quality content with advanced cross-platform targeting, measurement and optimization capabilities.
RELATED: NBCU joins Fox, Turner and Viacom in OpenAP advertising group
Viacom’s partnership with Comcast’s Freewheel arrives shortly after Comcast-owned NBCUniversal joined OpenAP, a cross-audience platform for selling targeted TV advertising formed in 2017 by Fox, Turner and Viacom. In addition to joining the group, NBCU is also licensing to OpenAP its Audience Graph, a proprietary enterprise data asset that provides a single centralized store of audience attributes.