FreeWheel Launches First of its Kind Contextual Marketplace, Informed by Research from the FreeWheel Viewer Experience Lab’s New Report, which Found Viewers are 2X More Engaged When Ads are Relevant

KERV.ai is announced as an inaugural member of the Contextual Marketplace, joining Proximic by Comscore, which will expand targeting solutions across premium video at scale for advertisers, and unlock more value for publishers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television advertising industry, announced its new Contextual Marketplace that enables publishers to activate precise, contextual classification insights within streaming inventory so advertisers can target their media buys based on advanced, video-level insights. With this launch, KERV.ai, a leader in video analysis, performance and monetization, joins the Contextual Marketplace, alongside Proximic by Comscore, a division of Comscore Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) and a leading provider of audience and content targeting solutions for programmatic activation.

The Contextual Marketplace stems from the latest findings in the FreeWheel Viewer Experience Lab report, “Making the Ad Experience More Relevant,” which also comes out today. The report illustrates the importance of contextual solutions for advertisers today and lays out steps for buyers and sellers to consider when developing more relevant ad experiences.

“In the age of identity challenges, we believe contextual signals can be a new constant that unlocks additional value for publishers and new, premium opportunities for advertisers,” says Mark McKee, General Manager, FreeWheel. “We’ve seen from the Freewheel Viewer Experience Lab research that viewers are twice as engaged when ads are relevant, illustrating the power contextual has to drive increased engagement and higher ad recall that all advertisers desire.”

Importance of Tailored Ads
As streaming changes the way viewers consume their favorite programs, the FreeWheel Viewer Experience lab was launched in 2023 to help inform and improve ad environments for viewers across multiscreen devices. In this latest report, they set out to understand how relevancy impacts the viewer experience. Key findings from the report “Making the Ad Experience More Relevant” include:

• Viewers like ads twice as much, and are twice as engaged, when the ads are relevant
• There is 2X higher unaided recall for relevant ads
• Relevant ads result in 5.2X higher brand purchase intent

Delivering Ads in the Right Context
FreeWheel’s first of its kind Contextual Marketplace enables publishers to easily automate and scale new monetization opportunities across their premium, multiscreen inventory, while giving advertisers a sophisticated way to reach the right audiences without identity signals in a more granular way than ever before. For instance, an advertiser such as an airline can deliver a commercial within holiday travel content while avoiding any news programming about travel delays.

With KERV’s advanced, scene-level metadata informing pod-level ad adjacency, available via FreeWheel, along with Proximic by Comscore’s integration, and the IAB Tech Lab Content Taxonomy and publisher proprietary signaling, buyers and publishers have a direct and transparent connection to bring the benefits of contextual targeting to premium CTV inventory.

“Contextually targeted advertising has been around for decades in display and linear, but it is now an increasingly sought-after capability across streaming inventory,” said Bradford Quinn, SVP Enterprise Partnerships, KERV. “Our integration with FreeWheel makes it easier than ever before for brands to deliver more personal and relevant ad experiences to help them drive outcomes such as increased engagement, purchase intent, and brand sentiment.”

KERV’s patented AI technology captures metadata across every video frame at the pixel edge to identify, analyze and match context and objects to their immersive and shoppable ad products.

Download the full findings from the latest Viewer Experience Lab report Making the Ad Experience More Relevant, here.

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 X and LinkedIn.

About KERV.ai
KERV Interactive is the leader in AI-powered video analysis, performance and monetization. Using patented recognition and correlation technology, our pixel-edge technology captures metadata across every frame in any video, allowing us to identify, analyze and match objects with contextually relevant advertising experiences. These immersive and shoppable solutions empower consumers to learn, explore, and transact through dynamic video, creating deeper relationships and real business outcomes for the world’s leading brands and publishers.