FOX, FreeWheel offer programmatic advertising on Comcast STB VOD

FOX and FreeWheel Partner to Bring Programmatic Addressable Capabilities to Set-Top Box Video on Demand Across Comcast Footprint

NEW YORK — Today, Fox Corporation (Nasdaq: FOXA, FOX) announced that it has partnered with FreeWheel, a Comcast Company, to enable programmatic trading of addressable set-top box (STB) Video on Demand (VOD), marking an industry first for a television network. Through this partnership, FOX offers advertisers a path to execute addressable household-level campaigns on any of its content viewed On Demand within the Comcast Xfinity footprint. This adds to the programmatic trading capabilities for the FOX portfolio, including Tubi, the company’s free AVOD platform available on Xfinity X1, Xfinity 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, SVP of Data Strategy and Sales Innovation for FOX. “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.”

The Trade Desk is the first demand side platform (DSP) to complete the integration, enabling advertisers to execute addressable guaranteed campaigns on FOX VOD inventory. VOD viewing represents an increasing portion of most programmers’ total viewing hours, enhancing the importance of bringing greater data-enablement and automation to this segment of the viewing population.

“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, GM, Strategic Partnerships, The Trade Desk. “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.”

The partnership with FOX is part of FreeWheel’s overall effort to build programmatic capabilities for addressable television. These capabilities will allow demand partners to target audiences against a programmer’s VOD inventory on a guaranteed, fixed price, fixed volume basis. The goal is to allow advertisers to transact on television and premium video inventory in new ways that continue to meet their buying objectives, while opening up additional scale and increasing demand for media companies’ valuable audiences.

“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 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, FreeWheel. “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 additional integrations with demand partners in the coming months.