Viacom and Comcast announce advanced advertising partnership

New products and solutions will be powered by the combined expertise of FreeWheel, Comcast’s Advanced Advertising Group, and Viacom’s Data Strategy and Advanced Advertising Groups

Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB) and Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ: CMCSA) today announced a multi-year agreement to partner on advanced advertising and data. This partnership will integrate Viacom’s targeted advertising expertise and national reach with FreeWheel’s next-generation TV and premium video advertising technology informed by Comcast’s anonymized audience data, to offer marketers greater precision and efficiency in reaching consumers across all platforms.

“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, Chief Data Officer at Viacom. “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.”

Under the new partnership, Viacom and Comcast will collaborate to monetize premium inventory in a more efficient, targeted/addressable manner. Viacom will use FreeWheel’s unified operating platform for premium video, and will deploy features including Holistic Advertising Management to monetize across all screens, FreeWheel’s Unified Monetization Platform and other powerful technologies pioneered by Comcast.

“Viacom and FreeWheel have a shared goal of enhancing the value of the entire TV ecosystem,” said David Clark, EVP and General Manager, FreeWheel. “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.