FreeWheel to bring Roku ad technologies to its customers

Roku and FreeWheel Announce Strategic Partnership to Bring Roku’s Leading Ad Tech to FreeWheel Customers

NEW YORK — Today, Roku (Nasdaq: ROKU), the #1 TV streaming platform in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico*, and FreeWheel announced a new partnership that will bring forth a suite of industry solutions to unlock the full value of streaming TV for advertisers and publishers.

As part of this collaboration, the two companies will be launching new technological offerings that aim to simplify, optimize and enhance TV streaming. The effort is especially timely and noteworthy as the industry approaches a critical time in TV streaming’s evolution. Per Nielsen, time spent with streaming TV surpassed broadcast and cable for the first time in 2022. Additionally, eMarketer projects 57% of U.S. digital video users will stream an advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) service this year.

Having solutions aimed at driving greater interoperability and automation will help accelerate this growth.

Key highlights of this collaboration include:

• Streamlined Integration: Roku has now integrated its demand application programming interface (dAPI) with FreeWheel’s TV platform. Roku’s demand API gives publishers direct, automatic, real-time access to more advertiser demand. This enhanced integration allows for streamlined ad operations workflows and better inventory quality control, both of which will improve publisher yield and revenue.
• Seamless Data Targeting: Publishers can now use Roku platform signals to enable advertisers to target audiences and measure campaign performance without relying on cookies. Additionally, FreeWheel and Roku will rely on data clean room technology to enable the activation of additional data sets providing better measurement and monetization to publishers and agencies.
• Inventory Quality: FreeWheel will leverage Roku’s Watermark solution to prevent sophisticated invalid traffic (IVT)/fraud in TV streaming in partnership with cybersecurity company HUMAN Security, through its robust MediaGuard solution that ensures ad inventory is reaching real humans. Roku’s Advertising Watermark is the industry’s first authentication solution built for TV streaming and gives marketers the confidence that their advertising spend is reaching real streamers. The technology helps marketers and publishers prevent device spoofing and app spoofing by validating ad measurement signals.

“Our goal is to create a better TV experience for our partners and consumers,” said Youssef Ben-Youssef, Senior Director, Technology Partnerships, Roku. “This new collaboration brings together an industry-leading blend of data, tech and reporting to accelerate the shift from traditional TV to streaming TV.”

“There is a lot of synergy, energy and a shared sense of purpose behind our work with Roku,” said FreeWheel Chief Strategy Officer Soo Jin Oh. “At FreeWheel, we believe that the industry is stronger and better when we collectively help solve today’s problems while creating future innovation. And so, it’s our hope that this new initiative will help pave the way for greater simplicity, optimization, and an even more improved experience for the TV advertising ecosystem.”

* based on hours streamed, Dec 2022, Hypothesis Group