Viacom has spent years finding better ways to match advertisements with audience. Last March, the company was a founding member of the OpenAP advanced audience platform. Its 2017 renewals with Charter and Altice USA included advanced advertising components. And CEO Bob Bakish has consistently emphasized the importance of continuing to develop these capabilities.
“….on the advanced advertising space, Viacom is clearly the market leader,” Bakish said at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in December. “…So I think that is a very exciting road ahead.”
Indeed. Especially since Viacom has now signed a multi-year agreement with Comcast that will further boost its advanced advertising and data capabilities.
The mutual advantages are clear. Viacom has a nationwide reach and deep advanced advertising expertise. Comcast, through anonymized data mined from set-top boxes in subscribers homes, knows who is watching which shows and can match that audience to ads using powerful tools developed through its FreeWheel unit. Together, they can better monetize ad inventory across premium video-on-demand and linear content.
“Today’s announcement reflects Viacom’s commitment to developing more expansive relationships with our distributors,” said Viacom Executive Vice President and Chief Data Officer Kern Schireson. “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. 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 and FreeWheel have a shared goal of enhancing the value of the entire TV ecosystem,” said FreeWheel Executive Vice President and General Manager David Clark. “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.”
NBCU, which is a part of Comcast, also aligned with the OpenAP consortium last week.
