AMC Networks to bring new ad inventory to addressable TV with FreeWheel

FreeWheel and AMC Networks are introducing a new addressable TV offering that’s designed to open up new ad inventory to the marketplace and automate the process. The goal is to simplify how addressable advertising is bought and sold—which has often been cumbersome and expensive—and increase scale. 

Working with Canoe, an industry partnership between Charter, Comcast and Cox, FreeWheel’s new offering will help programmers open ad inventory across digital, set-top box video-on-demand and linear TV to be sold in an addressable fashion. This will allow advertisers to manage these multi-screen campaigns with a self-service tool and optimize campaigns in real-time, according to the Comcast-owned company. 

AMC Networks has been steadily building its addressable ad business and has previously worked with brands such as Volkswagen and Amazon on addressable ad campaigns to reach more targeted audiences. Addressable TV refers to the ability for an advertiser to target ads to specific households rather than sending the same ad to everyone watching. 

The new offering connects multichannel video programming distributors beyond Canoe members, with whom AMC Networks has an existing distribution agreement, such as distributors like DirecTV or Roku. The new offering makes it easier for programmers to move inventory across a larger footprint, said Evan Adlman, senior VP of advanced advertising and digital partnerships at AMC Networks.

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“The only way that we believe it can work for us, as well as the industry as a whole, is to make sure every time we add somebody, they get added through this self-serve tool,” Adlman said.

In working with FreeWheel on the the product, AMC Networks asked the Comcast-owned ad platform company to help create a centralized environment within its platform that would allow the programmer to manage addressable ad campaigns through a single source. The idea was to be able to deliver those campaigns to multiple distribution partners rather than having to do so one by one, Adlman said.

Typically, brands have to manage separate campaigns across different systems to reach targeted audiences through addressables on digital, set-top box video-on-demand, and traditional linear. That system can be highly inefficient and burdensome both on the buy and sell sides, FreeWheel and AMC executives said.

FreeWheel emphasized the new self-service element as well, noting that it can give programmers direct control over their linear schedules and unified ad delivery.

The new offering also has the potential to further extend the national availability of addressable. The benefit to an advertiser, such as Amazon, for example, partnering with AMC Networks on addressables is that “they can segment households and audiences that they want to reach and ensure that their message gets delivered nationally across our schedule, but can deliver a different message to different households based on the composition of that target, or that household,” said Adlman.

This year, AMC Networks will sell three national addressable ad slots for each hour of premium original programming on AMC and We TV. Amazon is currently working with AMC Networks as an addressable advertising partner. FreeWheel said it will be working with additional programmers beyond AMC Networks later this year.