FreeWheel introduces programmatic ad buying
March 1, 2024
FreeWheel, a technology platform for the television advertising industry, has announced the launch of a new solution it says will change the way marketers plan and execute their programmatic TV ad buying.
FreeWheel’s Allocation Module provides publishers with a holistic view of spending against upfront commitments, and offers demand side platforms a better way to gauge whether or not they are bidding enough, in real time, to meet their clients’ ad spend commitments. This new industry solution provides another key benefit: Marketers now have a way to better manage their committed ad spend across various ad channels.
FreeWheel is utilszing its buy-side platform, Beeswax, to enable the offering in time for execution during the 2024-25 industry upfront season, with plans to expand to additional DSPs in the future.
Allocation Module provides three core benefits, including:
- helping buyers and sellers holistically manage and pace their committed ad spend budgets across all transaction types, spanning direct, programmatic guaranteed and now biddable.
- expediting the shifting of premium, connected television ad dollars from direct to biddable ad transactions while maintaining dual sided guarantees
- empowering buyers via a DSP-agnostic application programming interface to streamline reporting and fulfillment of upfront ad spend.
FreeWheel is launching this new solution in response to several current industry challenges, including the need for a simpler and more direct and efficient path to access TV ad inventory, and the operational burden of managing complex upfront agreements across multiple transaction types.
With this launch, advertisers and publishers now have a new method to manage the totality of their upfront video ad spend commitments across various transaction types, including, for the first time, biddable programmatic deals.
“Existing systems have been holding back the modern day upfront. There has been an inherent conflict between the concept of upfront commitments and programmatic bidding, which happens in real time,” said David Dworin, Chief Product Officer, FreeWheel. “This new solution bridges that gap and has the potential to turbocharge the shift to programmatic as part of the next upfront.”
“As a content company that shifted years ago to a programmatic-first approach to buying across our digital inventory, and now our linear networks as well, a solution like this will allow us to better manage upfront deals and offer more flexibility and cross-platform reach to our clients,” said Evan Adlman, EVP of commercial sales and revenue operations, AMC Networks. “Since so much viewership is now on connected devices within streaming platforms, programmatic buying has never been more important. FreeWheel has been a great partner in driving technological advances in our industry, and Allocation Module will now make it easier for advertisers to reach audiences programmatically across all environments, at scale.”
“Programmatic trading plays an important role in our advertising partners’ TV strategies, particularly as viewers are spending more time with streaming content and platforms,” added Jon Steinlauf, Chief US Ad Sales Officer, Warner Bros. Discovery. “We need to make sure that no matter how our inventory is purchased, it is managed in a holistic manner that extracts the most value for the advertiser and provides the best experience for viewers. We look forward to working with FreeWheel to take holistic inventory management to the next level in time for this year’s TV upfronts rollout.”
AMC Networks, NBCUniversal and Warner Bros Discovery have signed on as an initial development partners and will begin testing this new solution ahead of the 2024-25 TV upfront season.