Earlier this month, FAST software developer Frequency and data-driven solutions provider Wurl announced a new partnership — yes, a “strategic” one. Wurl will be Frequency’s preferred advertising monetization source, while Frequency will be Wurl’s go-to supplier of advanced FAST channel creation.
Customers will now be able to utilize Frequency’s scheduling and playing services while simultaneously taking advantage of Wurl’s monetization capabilities.
Looking to dive a little deeper into the technologists driving change in the video industry, Next TV had a phone conversation with Frequency CEO Blair Harrison on Monday, June 26 to discuss the new collaboration.
Here’s how that went:
Next TV: Tell us a bit more about the Frequency-Wurl partnership. Why Wurl? Why now?
Blair Harrison: We here at Frequency consider ourselves a product service. We don't participate in the advertising. We don't provide any monetization in terms of ad sales or backfill anything for our customers who are the content providers, nor do we do the same on the distribution side of things. So we have been singularly focused on the heart of actually creating and distributing and managing very complex distribution of channels and not on monetization. Wurl has almost sort of the inverse of that model. They have long been focused on monetizing their customers’ channels, and doing that very well. And since they are now part of a company that is pure advertising in its DNA, the shift towards monetization for them has accelerated.
NTV: What’s the motivation behind this partnership?
BH: We certainly consider ourselves to be by far the best platform out there for creating channels to do that, because ultimately what we're trying to do is get the best possible experience on screen and do that for the viewer in a way that is as efficient for our customers as possible. Our partners, Wurl, are extremely good at monetization. So increasingly customers want both of those things and they don't always want them under one roof. They want to be able to buy the best channel creation platform and the best monetization services. And the better we work together, the better the integrations are between our services, the better opportunity we have of providing the best possible solution collaboratively to customers. Together we have a combined solution that is more valuable than the sum of the parts.
NTV: What does this agreement look like? Is there exclusivity?
BH: The fact that this partnership exists means that we both believe that life is better when we work with each other. There are other competitors in the industry, and we believe that our alliance is going to provide a better solution for customers than the additive offerings. But there is no implied or actual exclusivity. We are now doing something that we hadn't previously done, which is that we are very explicitly introducing Wurl as our partner — before we would do some version of telling our customers, Hey, there’s loads of places you can go for monetization services — what we're now doing is explicitly involving Wurl in our deal process.
NTV: Tell me a bit more about the content Discovery service available to Frequency customers.
BH: There are now thousands of channels and billions and billions of dollars flowing through the veins of the FAST industry. And increasingly for customers who are the content owners getting their stuff discovered, acquiring viewers one way or another was increasingly important. So, the approach to this through content discovery is that by working with the content owners, by working with the distributors, they can effectively drive viewers to that content discovery entry point, get them to watch a channel, download an app, etc.
NTV: What would you like to tell consumers?
BH: If you want the most powerful channel creation platform with the best functionality and the lowest total cost of operation, we’ve got you. And if you want monetization services, we’ve got you too. And in an ideal world, regardless of whether that customer comes to Wurl or Frequency first, we have a collaborative approach to pursuing that. We don't have any joint marketing materials live today, but that's going to change very, very quickly.
