Hearst Television taps FreeWheel
April 9, 2019
Hearst Television, a subsidiary of Hearst, and FreeWheel, A Comcast Company, announced that they have partnered to offer a scalable, premium OTT video solution to advertisers. Hearst Anyscreen, Hearst Television’s OTT advertising product, will use FreeWheel’s Monetization and Revenue Management (MRM) platform to enhance and expand access to premium OTT video inventory. This will allow Hearst Television to improve the scale and transparency of the inventory available on its owned properties and to augment OTT advertising campaigns with additional inventory sources within the FreeWheel marketplace.
“Keeping pace with the expectations of the marketplace, we are constantly evolving and improving Hearst Anyscreen to the highest standards of inventory quality and reporting transparency,” said Adam Noble, Hearst Television’s Director of Ad Products. “Our integration with FreeWheel enables an improved connection to premium inventory from natural partners such as A+E Networks, and opens up additional supply from preferred partners while maintaining the same high standard of quality and compliance that we have always offered our clients.”
“Consumers have unlimited options when consuming content. Consequently, for advertisers, ensuring that their marketing projects are adjacent to content that delivers high-level engagement has grown in importance,” said Jason DeMarco, Vice President, Programmatic & Audience Solutions at A+E Networks. “A+E Networks, together with Hearst Television and Freewheel, are offering an advertising experience that combines best-in-class content, white glove sales and top-quality technology to create a premium advertising opportunity.”
FreeWheel has been a leading voice for the development of a unified TV platform, focused on developing technologies that facilitate unification within the industry across a number of different fronts spanning data, measurement, cross-screen audience delivery and linear enablement.
“Our work with Hearst fits perfectly with our overall objective of allowing television to operate with the ease of a platform, while delivering targeted audiences at scale,” said James Rooke, General Manager, FreeWheel Publishers. “In this case, we’re thrilled to be helping to ensure that local advertisers can use TV and video to meet their specific marketing objectives.”
Rooke also noted that this is the first step designed to enhance the value of local broadcast inventory. Next stages will focus on the co-development of initiatives to further the unification of digital video and linear TV inventory, an area of focus for both companies.