FreeWheel's Digital-Like Way of Buying TV Is Ready for Prime Time

NBCUniversal, The Trade Desk and FreeWheel are partnering to bring a digital-like ad-buying approach to over-the-top (OTT) television.

FreeWheel introduced its unified decision capability, which allows direct-sold and programmatic inventory to compete against each other in the same marketplace, last April with A+E Networks as a test partner. Now, Freewheel’s product is widely available, with a major publisher and a major DSP activating OTT campaigns using that technology.

“The idea is if a publisher like NBC has available supply that they want to transact in the most intelligent way, how are they engaging all of their demand partners to make sure they’re plugging that demand into the marketplace where it can access the supply pool as frictionlessly as possible?” said Geoff Wolinetz, head of sell-side revenue at FreeWheel.

Julia Beizerr, the chief product officer at Bloomberg Media, oversees a team that shapes the company’s digital experiences and cuts through a variety of platforms and services.

“I like working with people and I miss that a lot,” Beizer said during an early April chat. Beizer set up shop by a window in her Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone, putting her in a position to juggle, as many do these days, work and kids. Her 6-year-old and 8-year-old (and Jack, her Weimaraner mutt) romp through the apartment during the conversation. “There are some silver linings. It’s been great getting to spend time with my kids. They’re awesome. We have a lot of fun around here.”

As part of our How I Keep Myself Balanced series, Beizer allowed us into her home—via a Zoom chat—to talk about how she’s managing her team, and herself, during these times. If you’re a media executive and would like to participate, drop us a line.

Under normal circumstances, Axios is still weeks away from releasing its app. The more time to beta test, the better. But with COVID-19 striking across the U.S., the political and news media company pushed up the timeline, and today the app—for both Android and iOS users—goes live.

“We saw a real need in the market for this. We didn’t want to wait. People need it now,” Axios chief product officer Mike Berkley told Adweek.

Building a publisher app in 2020 looks very different than the early days, when media companies hired consultants to determine which path—mobile website or app—paved the way to riches. For Axios, building an app gives it yet another chance for a revenue stream, serving as a way for additional advertisers to get on board beyond the email newsletter sponsorships that have been the anchor of its business.

Beeswax has snatched up ad-tech startup MediaGamma, continuing a round of industry consolidation that comes amid a period of contraction in the ad-tech world. Financial details of the transaction were not publicly disclosed.

Beeswax made the purchase to bolster its engineering capabilities, as well as broaden its international footprint. MediaGamma was a UK-based operation.

Beeswax, itself a startup, is a demand-side platform that effectively lets media buyers improve the targeting capabilities of their preexisting trading algorithms, and has sought to service those advertisers that want to in-house automated ad buying.

Facebook shared guidelines on how advertisers on its platform should adjust their measurement strategies to account for the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

The social network wrote in a blog post Tuesday, “Across the world, communities are experiencing the impact of Covid-19. As a key part of communities, businesses are faced with a challenging climate and an even greater need to make careful, impactful business decisions. By evaluating your measurement strategy, you can consider the costs and benefits of different testing strategies and better understand which marketing activities are currently most worthwhile to your business. This kind of evaluation also allows you to identify tests that are most applicable to the current climate, as well as the tests that shouldn’t be used to guide longer-term strategic decisions.”

In normal times, Reddit can be a tough place for brands. Its users are notoriously tough to please, brutally honest and unrelentingly skeptical of corporate attempts at fitting in. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when companies in every industry are reevaluating how they market themselves, Reddit is trying to assure brands that—if they follow the right playbook—they can succeed on the platform.

Reddit’s pitch today to brands echoes its pitch over the last decade: Listen before making any sudden moves.