Ad Networks, Ad Tech and Martech
Business Wire | July 14, 2023
Roku (Nasdaq: ROKU), the No. 1 TV streaming platform in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico*, and FreeWheel today announced a new partnership that will bring forth a suite of industry solutions to unlock the full value of streaming TV for advertisers and publishers.
As part of this collaboration, the two companies will be launching new technological offerings that aim to simplify, optimize and enhance TV streaming. The effort is especially timely and noteworthy as the industry approaches a critical time in TV streaming’s evolution. Per Nielsen, time spent with streaming TV surpassed broadcast and cable for the first time since 2022. Additionally, eMarketer projects 57% of U.S. digital video users will stream an advertising-based video on demand (AVOD) service this year.
Having solutions aimed at driving greater interoperability and automation will help accelerate this growth.
Key highlights of this collaboration include:
Streamlined Integration: Roku has now integrated its demand application programming interface (dAPI) with FreeWheel’s TV platform. Roku’s demand API gives publishers direct, automatic and real-time access to more advertiser demand. This enhanced integration allows for streamlined ad operation workflows and better inventory quality control, both of which will improve publisher yield and revenue.
Seamless Data Targeting: Publishers can now use Roku platform signals to enable advertisers to target audiences and measure campaign performance without relying on cookies. Additionally, FreeWheel and Roku will rely on data clean room technology to enable the activation of additional data sets providing better measurement and monetization to publishers and agencies.
Inventory Quality: FreeWheel will leverage Roku’s Watermark solution to prevent sophisticated invalid traffic (IVT)/fraud in TV streaming in partnership with cybersecurity company HUMAN Security, through its robust MediaGuard solution that ensures ad inventory is reaching real humans. Roku’s Advertising Watermark is the industry’s first authentication solution built for TV streaming and gives marketers the confidence that their advertising spend is reaching real streamers. The technology helps marketers and publishers prevent device spoofing and app spoofing by validating ad measurement signals.
“Our goal is to create a better TV experience for our partners and consumers,” said Youssef Ben-Youssef, Senior Director, Technology Partnerships, Roku. “This new collaboration brings together an industry-leading blend of data, tech and reporting to accelerate the shift from traditional TV to streaming TV.”
“There is a lot of synergy, energy and a shared sense of purpose behind our work with Roku,” said FreeWheel Chief Strategy Officer Soo Jin Oh. “At FreeWheel, we believe the industry is stronger and better when we collectively help solve today’s problems while creating future innovation. And so, it’s our hope that this new initiative will help pave the way for greater simplicity, optimization and an even more improved experience for the TV advertising ecosystem.”
About FreeWheel
FreeWheel empowers all segments of The New TV Ecosystem. We are structured to provide the full breadth of solutions the advertising industry needs to achieve their goals. We provide the technology, data enablement and convergent marketplaces required to ensure buyers and sellers can transact across all screens, across all data types, and all sales channels, in order to ensure the ultimate goal – results for marketers. With offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Paris, Beijing, and across the globe, FreeWheel, A Comcast Company, stands to advocate for the entire industry through the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video. For more information, please visit freewheel.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Roku, Inc.
Roku pioneered streaming on TV. We connect users to the content they love, enable content publishers to build and monetize large audiences, and provide advertisers with unique capabilities to engage consumers. Roku TV™ models, Roku streaming players, and TV-related audio devices are available in various countries around the world through direct retail sales and/or licensing arrangements with TV OEM brands. Roku-branded TVs and Roku Smart Home products are sold exclusively in the United States. Roku also operates The Roku Channel, the home of free and premium entertainment with exclusive access to Roku Originals. The Roku Channel is available in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Roku is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., U.S.A.
Read More
Ad Networks, Ad Tech and Martech
Business Wire | July 26, 2023
LoopMe, a leading technology company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve brand advertising performance, today announced that it has joined Ad Net Zero, the climate action programme to help advertising tackle the climate emergency by decarbonizing ad operations and accurately promote sustainable products and services. LoopMe will be a “Supporter” alongside a diverse range of companies, including tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Meta; agencies such as dentsu, Publicis Groupe, and Omnicom Group; adtech companies like PubMatic; and industry associations, such as ANA and IAB; and more.
“We are delighted to have LoopMe amongst our supporters, especially given their recent stated contributions to advertising sustainability, both within their own business operations by achieving carbon neutrality and by enabling more sustainable practices industry-wide with their marketplace that reduces carbon emissions for partners,” said John Osborn, Ad Net Zero US Director. “LoopMe embodies the Ad Net Zero mission of modeling and empowering advertising sustainability practices through decarbonisation.”
By joining Ad Net Zero, LoopMe is committing to following the group’s five-step plan:
Reduce emissions from advertising business operations
Reduce emissions from advertising production
Reduce emissions from media planning and buying
Reduce advertising emissions through awards and from events
Harness advertising’s power to support behavior change
“We have worked arduously to prioritize sustainability as a tenet of our business and to offer more sustainable technology options to our advertising industry partners,” said Stephen Upstone, CEO and founder of LoopMe. “We are thrilled to have achieved significant momentum with our advertising sustainability initiatives, and are looking forward to leveraging Ad Net Zero’s guidance to further elevate our impact as an evangelist for doing right by our planet.”
LoopMe’s dedication to Ad Net Zero comes on the heels of another sustainability milestone announced in May 2023 in which the company achieved carbon neutrality seven years ahead of schedule. This was accomplished through a combination of internal carbon footprint reduction efforts, such as maximizing cloud efficiencies through migration of data centers to renewable-powered sites, including Google Cloud; reducing electricity consumption; establishing environmentally-geared HR policies; and investing in high-quality carbon removal projects.
LoopMe also recently launched its sustainable Intelligent Marketplace, delivering a fully certified, green-by-design supply path for its global partners. The sustainable marketplace personalizes demand-side traffic shaping, thereby dynamically filtering out 98% of supply that won’t receive a bid. This creates a 40x increase in DSP buying efficiency and dramatically reduces carbon emissions for partners.
As the business community prepares for the rollout of global business sustainability disclosure standards in 2024, LoopMe will continue to enable the advertising ecosystem to meet objectives through a sustainable lens with additional sustainability initiatives to be announced throughout 2023. For more information, please visit https://loopme.com/sustainability/.
About LoopMe
LoopMe is a technology company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to improve brand advertising performance and outcomes. LoopMe was the first to apply AI to brand advertising and its Intelligent Marketplace, finding solutions to industry challenges that haven’t previously been solved. With consumer insights and AI at its core, LoopMe makes brand advertising better, outperforming industry benchmarks for leading global brands. Our vision is to change advertising for the better, by building technology that will redefine brand advertising. LoopMe was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in London with global offices across New York, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Dnipro, Hong Kong, Kansas City, Krakow, Los Angeles, Nashville, Manchester, Miami, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Toronto. For more information, please visit www.loopme.com.
About Ad Net Zero
Ad Net Zero is a climate action programme to help the advertising industry tackle the climate emergency by decarbonizing ad operations and supporting every industry to accurately promote sustainable products and services. Originally founded by the UK Advertising Association in partnership with the IPA and ISBA, Ad Net Zero launched its 5-point action plan in the UK in November 2020 and has since gained over 100 UK supporters. The action plan aims to achieve net zero emissions in ad development, production, and media placement, as well as use advertising’s positive influence to help shift consumers towards more sustainable behavior. Its first non-UK territory launched in Ireland in June 2022, followed by a global roll-out at Cannes LIONS 2022. In February 2023, Ad Net Zero launched in the US, supported by the 4A’s, ANA and IAB, where it now counts over 70 supporters. Ad Net Zero has widespread backing from across the industry and proudly counts support from the world’s six biggest agency holding groups, media owners, tech companies, advertisers, and independent creative and production agencies. For more information, please visit www.adnetzero.com.
Read More
Ad Tech and Martech
prnewswire | August 21, 2023
Today, Direct Digital Holdings, Inc. a leading advertising and marketing technology platform operating through its companies Colossus Media, LLC ("Colossus SSP"), Huddled Masses LLC ("Huddled Masses") and Orange142, LLC ("Orange142"), announced that it has partnered with Beeswax, a FreeWheel-owned programmatic buying platform.
The ad tech group, which is the ninth Black-owned company on the NASDAQ U.S. stock exchange, will collaborate with Beeswax to expand access to, as well as simplify the path for, buying multicultural – alongside general market – connected TV ad inventory.
The integration works like this: Colossus SSP, a Direct Digital Holdings-owned supply-side platform, works with both multicultural and general market publishers, giving its users access to a more diverse range of CTV ad inventory. As such, marketers and agencies that use FreeWheel's Beeswax to buy CTV ads can now reach a wider array of viewers.
This partnership and its accompanying capabilities are noteworthy as they provide a much needed and timely solve for many of the issues that marketers and agencies are facing today, including a dynamic, complex and fragmented TV ad ecosystem and a consumer landscape that is becoming increasingly more multicultural and diverse.
On a more technical note, this partnership includes integrations on both the buy and sell sides of CTV ad buying. On the buy side, Direct Digital Holdings' two digital marketing companies, Orange142 and Huddled Masses, will work with Beeswax to serve CTV ad placements for marketers. On the sell side, as outlined above, Direct Digital Holdings will work with Beeswax on simplifying and expanding access to both multicultural and general market CTV ad inventory via the group's supply-side platform, Colossus SSP.
"The media and marketing landscape today is very nuanced – from fast-changing innovations to constant industry fragmentation to audiences that are becoming increasingly more diverse and harder to reach, across multiple screens," said Mark Walker, CEO, Direct Digital Holdings. "Taking that into account, we sought a partner who brought a real-time, holistic understanding of the ecosystem, as well as a track record of creating simple and much needed, innovative solutions that remove friction and address and resolve the needs of marketers today. FreeWheel, through its work with Beeswax, exemplifies and understands these key traits and we're excited to be working with them."
"We are humbled and thrilled to team up with a partner who not only understands this space, but also is minority owned," said Tess O'Brien, VP, Head of Revenue, Beeswax. "We look forward to working with Direct Digital Holdings to drive innovation and growth in CTV, while helping to provide Beeswax's clients with an easier pathway to access multicultural content within the programmatic ecosystem."
About Direct Digital Holdings
Direct Digital Holdings (Nasdaq: DRCT), owner of operating companies Colossus SSP, Huddled Masses, and Orange 142, brings state-of-the-art sell- and buy-side advertising platforms together under one umbrella company. Direct Digital Holdings' sell-side platform, Colossus SSP, offers advertisers of all sizes extensive reach within general market and multicultural media properties. The company's subsidiaries Huddled Masses and Orange142 deliver significant ROI for middle market advertisers by providing data-optimized programmatic solutions at scale for businesses in sectors that range from energy to healthcare to travel to financial services. Direct Digital Holdings' sell- and buy-side solutions manage approximately 136,000 clients monthly, generating over 250 billion impressions per month across display, CTV, in-app and other media channels.
About FreeWheel
FreeWheel empowers all segments of The New TV Ecosystem. We are structured to provide the full breadth of solutions the advertising industry needs to achieve their goals. We provide the technology, data enablement and convergent marketplaces required to ensure buyers and sellers can transact across all screens, across all data types, and all sales channels, in order to ensure the ultimate goal – results for marketers. With offices in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Paris, Beijing, and across the globe, FreeWheel, A Comcast Company, stands to advocate for the entire industry through the FreeWheel Council for Premium Video.
About Beeswax
Founded in 2014 by a team of former Google executives, Beeswax is the programmatic buying platform that gives media buyers ownership and total control. Its Bidder-as-a-Service™ platform gives brands, media companies, and advertising technology firms greater control, flexibility, and transparency over their programmatic advertising. Beeswax customers include Uber, DraftKings and Nexstar. Beeswax is headquartered in New York City and has raised $28 million in funding from leading investors including Foundry Group, RRE, You & Mr. Jones, and Amasia.vc.
Read More