NEW YORK—In a major change for the ad industry, Comcast Advertising will unveil technology that enables agencies and brands to buy targetable, biddable ads on linear TV for the first time.
The change gives buyers access to traditional TV inventory within the Programmatic Private Marketplace (PMP), allowing them to bid on and target linear TV ad campaigns alongside digital inventory. The rollout is powered by FreeWheel, Comcast’s ad technology platform.
The program is currently in the beta phase with Comcast inventory. When completed, FreeWheel publisher clients will have the ability to enable their own inventory, giving advertisers greater campaign flexibility, targeting and reach, it said.
“One of the key pillars the advertising industry needs to deliver is simplicity for the marketer, and introducing biddable ads on traditional TV is a major step toward that goal, bringing ease, efficiency, and scale to programmatic campaign delivery,” Comcast Advertising President James Rooke said. “Buyers no longer need to patch together media plans. Now there’s a seamless way to buy, target, and optimize traditional TV alongside streaming media to hit what’s at the heart of advertising: reaching customers and driving outcomes.”
Key features include:
- Biddable, targetable linear inventory, making linear TV available via traditional PMP for what is believed to be the first time, making it biddable for buyers rather than executed on a spot basis. This inventory is also targetable on the buyer’s end, so buyers can bid based off the same segments they are buying on digital.
- Choice and control that enables buyers to set the mark on how they want to access inventory and audiences, whether through a managed IO (insertion order), PMP or PG (Programmatic Guaranteed) deal. Agencies and advertisers can also optimize their media buys.
- Simplicity and efficiency, allowing brands to purchase linear and digital inventory together in a straightforward way. Research shows that when TV is added to a digital campaign, overall performance dramatically improves.
- Incremental reach, with more than 11 billion impressions a month on premium linear inventory available. This creates a new, vast supply of content for advertisers that typically purchase programmatically.
- FreeWheel Buyer Cloud, the customizable buying stack, is leveraged for optimal campaign execution and management to add access to audiences beyond the traditional programmatic execution.
Comcast Advertising’s programmatic linear advertising solution is currently available to advertisers using FreeWheel’s Buyer Cloud.
More information is available on the company’s website.
