Comcast’s advertising technology business FreeWheel announced the launch of its new Contextual Marketplace, a first-of-a-kind offering that gives publishers the ability to “activate precise, contextual classification insights within streaming inventory,” the company said on Thursday.
The launch of the marketplace will allow for more-targeted media buys based on advanced, video-level insights. KERV.ai and Proximic by Comscore have joined the Contextual Marketplace upon its launch, FreeWheel said.
“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,” Mark McKee, the General Manager at Freewheel, said on Thursday. “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.”
The announcement coincides with the release of a new report, “Making the Ad Experience Relevant,” which highlights the need for solutions that help bring the right advertising spots and brand messaging to audiences across different platforms. According to insights released by FreeWheel, viewers are pleased and more-engaged with ads that are relevant to their own experiences or the content they’re watching at any given time, and unaided recall is twice as high for relevant ads compared to other campaigns. Relevant ads are also five times more likely to result in a purchase intent, FreeWheel said.
“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,” a Freewheel spokesperson said in a statement.
The company used the example of an airliner who wants to target consumers with messaging about holiday travel, while avoiding negative news coverage about travel delays that might dissuade interest.
“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, the Senior Vice President of Enterprise Partnerships at 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.”
