Amid the growing complexity of advanced television, FreeWheel’s clients have two elemental desires. One is for FreeWheel to explain to buyers in the U.S. and Europe what’s available and what’s possible, the other is accessing more demand from advertisers.
“You sit across all of it and see it all and are close to the technology because you’re building the technology. Help us sort of translate that over to the buy side,” is how FreeWheel GM Dave Clark explains the first part.
“The second big shift we’ve seen in our business is a growing number of our publisher clients are now asking us to bring demand to the table, because providing world class software to manage their monetization is not enough” Clark, who is General Manager, FreeWheel, A Comcast Company, adds in this Beet.TV interview at the recent FreeWheel NOWFRONT event in Manhattan.
Not that long ago, the company’s clients were quite content with FreeWheel being a technology provider. “But now there are other software players in the ecosystem who are trying to disrupt the ecosystem by bringing demand to the table, so they’re asking us to do the same.”
Clark says a key differentiator for the new FreeWheel Media is that it has designed solutions, business rules and swim lanes “together with our publishers, so it’s complementary to their business and can enhance their business, which is really important to them.”
The backdrop against which the TV industry is trying to harmonize and unify targeting, measurement and attribution is the reality that media buyers know how easy these things can be done on digital platforms, according to Clark.
FreeWheel’s intended takeaway for attendees of its NOWFRONT event is that while “there’s a lot of complexity in doing this, but we’re working hard at it. Here’s where we are, therefore here’s what you can buy today, here’s what we need to solve next and please work with us on that.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of The FreeWheel NOWFRONT: Media Reimagined. For more coverage from the series, please visit this page.
