FreeWheel and OrkaTV bring FAST channel access to advertisers

FreeWheel and OrkaTV Introduce a New Industry Solution for Advertisers to Reach Target Audiences on FAST Channels

NEW YORK — FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television advertising industry, and OrkaTV, the leading marketplace for streaming TV, today announced that they have partnered to provide marketers with a new way to buy advertising in today’s fast-growing, free-ad supported streaming television (FAST) sector.

Per this partnership, advertisers working with FreeWheel now have access to more than 3,500 FAST channels available through OrkaTV’s streaming TV marketplace. The end result is access to a more diverse pool of FAST ad inventory. This, in turn, will help drive up demand for such ad inventory.

Another key feature is more accurate contextual advertising targeting abilities.

Currently, metadata capabilities allow advertisers bidding on inventory to ensure ads are properly placed. In some instances, however, the metadata is missing or inconsistent. The two companies are addressing this issue through OrkaTV’s value-added tech layer.

The latter ensures consistent video contextual data is available to the ad buyer and can be mapped to corresponding audience segments. As such, advertisers can then enable buying through FreeWheel to target consistent channel names to reach their clearly defined demographics.

FreeWheel and OrkaTV are launching these new capabilities as a way to provide marketers with more scale and reach when it comes to finding and discovering new audiences in today’s rapidly growing FAST space. Per a recent Xumo and Comcast Advertising report, 84% of advertisers will increase spending in this sector in 2024, and 3 in 5 FAST buyers are currently using the medium’s niche programming to target specific audiences. This last element is critical for advertisers and yet has become increasingly harder to accomplish as viewership habits continue to shift in a fragmented and complex media landscape.

“Improving the viewer experience is a top industry priority for us and this new partnership with OrkaTV will help pave the way for that,” said Emily Bromley, VP, Growth, FreeWheel. “With this new integration, advertisers can better reach target audiences at a granular level, while engaging and capturing their interest with a new array of premium FAST channels.”

“It’s an exciting time to be in the FAST space,” said Mike Woods, Founder and CEO, OrkaTV. “With new channels and a growing stream of audiences tuning into this sector, we wanted to create a new way to give advertisers what they need to maximize the impact of their campaigns, while bringing the scale, reach and efficiency of TV to FAST.”