FreeWheel Media Offers Unified Solution for TV and OTT Ad Buying
Video monetization company FreeWheel formally announced a new division today at its FreeWheel NowFront event in New York City. Called FreeWheel Media, it's there to connect ad buyers and ad sellers, helping media buyers plan unified video campaigns across TV and over-the-top (OTT) platforms.
The FreeWheel Media division is the result of reorganizing and rebranding, explains Brian Wallach, the division's senior vice president and chief revenue officer. Customers previously saw FreeWheel as an ad-serving marketplace, but not a media vendor. It didn't help that FreeWheel, which is owned by Comcast, is a collection of five separate companies itself. Those internal silos made it difficult for ad buyers to understand how each piece fit together, and created obstacles to running cross-platform campaigns.
When Wallach took over the TV and digital programmatic areas last year, he saw the benefits of grouping them together. The result is a more agile division that can help ad buyers solve their problems.
"We spent the last year putting these things together, going to TV buyers and allowing them the opportunity to buy linear TV and OTT, which is something they've been wanting to do. We just didn't give them the tools to do it," Wallach says. "That meant we needed to converge our offerings on our side, because we were siloed."
Ad buyers can now buy video inventory across any screen from one person, he explains.
Photo: Brian Wallach, SVP and CRO, FreeWheel Media, at the FreeWheel NowFront in New York City.
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