Comcast Advertising Makes Traditional TV Biddable for the First Time

New programmatic linear solution, available with FreeWheel’s Buyer Cloud, gives advertisers the opportunity to buy and optimize premium traditional TV inventory alongside their digital media spend.

Dentsu and Stitch Head run first campaign.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Comcast Advertising, the advertising division of Comcast, today announced a step change for the advertising industry: agencies and brands can buy targetable, biddable ads on linear TV for the first time. This means media buyers now have seamless access to traditional TV inventory within the Programmatic Private Marketplace (PMP), enabling them to bid and target on linear TV right alongside digital inventory, ushering in a new era of unified media buying powered by FreeWheel. Post beta phase, which is currently underway with Comcast’s inventory, FreeWheel publisher clients will be able to enable their inventory, giving advertisers even greater campaign flexibility, targeting, and reach.

“We’re proud to partner with Comcast Advertising to open up traditional TV to a new generation of buyers, giving brands unprecedented access to premium audiences,” said Kevin Weigand, VP, Partnerships – Video & Audio Lead at dentsu. “Through the promotion of the movie, Stitch Head, opening in theaters on October 29, in partnership with Rabbits Black and on behalf of Briarcliff Entertainment, we delivered true incremental reach via our scaled Modern Video approach, demonstrating the power of unified, audience-based buying across linear and digital channels for our clients.”

Dentsu worked with Comcast Advertising and Rabbits Black to promote the movie Stitch Head, on behalf of Briarcliff Entertainment, utilizing a PMP campaign that includes CTV, and, for the first time in advertising history, biddable linear. This first-to-market collaboration unlocks the largest opportunity yet to complement CTV with incremental reach into linear households in a programmatic buying platform, made possible by dentsu’s Modern Video and proprietary data and identity solutions, integrated with FreeWheel’s Buyer Cloud.

Comcast Advertising’s new programmatic linear TV ad offering is the culmination of years of investment and development across the company to build a scalable, dynamic solution. Key features include:

• Biddable, Targetable Linear Inventory: For the first time, linear TV is available via traditional PMP, making it biddable for buyers rather than executed on a spot basis. This inventory is also targetable on the buyer’s end, so they can bid based off of the same segments they are buying on digital.
• Choice & Control: Buyers are now able to set the mark on how they want to access inventory and audiences, whether through a managed IO, PMP, or PG deal. Additionally, agencies and advertisers have the ability to optimize their media buys.
• Simplicity & Efficiency: Brands can easily purchase linear and digital inventory together, effectively reaching their audiences-- as research shows that when TV is added to a digital campaign, overall performance dramatically improves. For instance, there was a lift in purchase intent of +15% when ads aired on TV plus digital compared to digital alone.
• Incremental Reach: More than 11 billion impressions a month on premium linear inventory are available, creating a new, vast supply of content for advertisers who typically purchase programmatically.
• FreeWheel Buyer Cloud: FreeWheel’s powerful and customizable buying stack is leveraged for optimal campaign execution and management to add access to audiences above and beyond the traditional programmatic execution.

“One of the key pillars the advertising industry needs to deliver is simplicity for the marketer, and introducing biddable ads on traditional TV is a major step toward that goal, bringing ease, efficiency, and scale to programmatic campaign delivery,” said James Rooke, President of Comcast Advertising. “Buyers no longer need to patch together media plans. Now there’s a seamless way to buy, target, and optimize traditional TV alongside streaming media to hit what’s at the heart of advertising: reaching customers and driving outcomes.”

Comcast Advertising’s programmatic linear advertising solution is currently available to advertisers using FreeWheel’s Buyer Cloud. To learn more about purchasing linear programmatic, visit https://comcastadvertising.com/contact-us/.

About Comcast Advertising
Comcast Advertising is the advertising division of Comcast. As a global leader in media, technology and advertising, the company fosters powerful connections between brands and their audiences as well as among publishers, distributors, MVPDs, agencies and other industry players. Comcast Advertising's Media Solutions team provides a streamlined way for advertisers to build brand relevancy and sustainable business outcomes through multiscreen TV advertising campaigns--powered by the media, data and technology assets of Comcast. FreeWheel, its media and technology arm, provides the technology, data enablement and convergent marketplaces required to ensure buyers and sellers can transact across all screens, data types and sales channels, in order to ensure the ultimate goal – results for marketers. And Comcast Advertising’s Universal Ads enables brands of any size to seamlessly create, buy, and measure ads across premium video directly from top publishers with no fees. Comcast Advertising, along with NBCUniversal and Sky, is part of the Comcast Corporation.