NEW YORK—Roku and FreeWheel have announced that they will be working together to offer a suite of ad tech solutions for streaming TV that they said will help publishers and advertisers achieve better results.
The strategic partnership brings together Roku, the nation’s largest streaming platform, with the Comcast-owned ad platform.
“Our goal is to create a better TV experience for our partners and consumers,” said Youssef Ben-Youssef, senior director, technology partnerships, Roku. “This new collaboration brings together an industry-leading blend of data, tech and reporting to accelerate the shift from traditional TV to streaming TV.”
“There is a lot of synergy, energy and a shared sense of purpose behind our work with Roku,” added FreeWheel chief strategy officer Soo Jin Oh. “At FreeWheel, we believe that the industry is stronger and better when we collectively help solve today’s problems while creating future innovation. And so, it’s our hope that this new initiative will help pave the way for greater simplicity, optimization, and an even more improved experience for the TV advertising ecosystem.”
Key highlights of this collaboration include:
- Streamlined Integration: Roku has now integrated its demand application programming interface (dAPI) with FreeWheel’s TV platform. Roku’s demand API gives publishers direct, automatic, real-time access to more advertiser demand. This enhanced integration allows for streamlined ad operations workflows and better inventory quality control, both of which will improve publisher yield and revenue.
- Seamless Data Targeting: Publishers can now use Roku platform signals to enable advertisers to target audiences and measure campaign performance without relying on cookies. Additionally, FreeWheel and Roku will rely on data clean room technology to enable the activation of additional data sets providing better measurement and monetization to publishers and agencies.
- Inventory Quality: FreeWheel will leverage Roku’s Watermark solution to prevent sophisticated invalid traffic (IVT)/fraud in TV streaming in partnership with cybersecurity company HUMAN Security, through its robust MediaGuard solution that ensures ad inventory is reaching real humans. Roku’s Advertising Watermark is the industry’s first authentication solution built for TV streaming and gives marketers the confidence that their advertising spend is reaching real streamers. The technology helps marketers and publishers prevent device spoofing and app spoofing by validating ad measurement signals.
