NEW YORK—Comcast’s FreeWheel ad tech platform and OrkaTV, a leading ad marketplace for streaming TV, are partnering on a new solution that will make it easier for marketers to buy advertising in the fast-growing, free-ad supported streaming television (FAST) sector.
The partnership will provide advertisers working with FreeWheel 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 that will, in turn, will help drive up demand for such ad inventory, the two companies reported.
The launch of the partnership comes at a time when interest in FAST advertising has seen significant growth. A recent Xumo and Comcast Advertising report found that 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.
“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, vice president of growth at 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.”
Another key feature is more accurate contextual advertising targeting abilities.
Currently, metadata capabilities allow advertisers bidding on inventory to ensure ads are properly placed but in some instances the metadata is missing or inconsistent.
The two companies are addressing this issue through OrkaTV’s value-added tech layer.
This 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, the companies said.
“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.”
