Comcast (CMCSA) Consolidates Advertising Technology Wing
Zacks Investment Research | Jun 19, 2017 09:24PM ET
Leading cable multi-service operator and media giant, Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ:CMCSA) recently brought together its various advertising technologies under a new division - Advanced Advertising Group. This division will include all ad-related technologies that it has acquired in last 12 years, along with its local cable ad sales business - Comcast Spotlight. The company has hired former Weather Channel executive, David Clark, to run the division.
In Aug 2015, Comcast acquired This Technology LLC., a video delivery and advertisement technology specialist. The core business area of This Technology is dynamic ad insertion. The company provides solutions for metadata management and integration of diversified video infrastructures with a wide range of ad server platforms. It also offers solutions for new content substitution into an existing video stream. In 2015, This Technology was awarded a patent in the field of ad inventory attributes identification.
Comcast acquired the New York-based Visible World, a leading provider of targeted-advertisement for TV programs in Jun 2015. With this, the company has established a solid foothold in the thriving data-driven TV advertisement market.
Visible World’s innovative product platform allows advertisers to reach targeted audience and households based on zip codes. This data is mainly fetched from cable set top boxes. Using Visible World’s technology, advertisers can customise their TV commercials (readjust content) to cater to the taste of different viewers in a cost effective manner. Notably, Visible World’s subsidiary- AudianceXpress - allows TV broadcasters to sell advertisements through a web-based (online) interface.
In 2014, Comcast acquired online video ad-serving company, FreeWheel Inc. The takeover enabled Comcast to place advertisements on its own content through several platforms, including TVs and handheld devices. FreeWheel has a very strong clientele including Fox broadcasting Co., Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Discovery Communications Inc. (NYSE:DIS) , Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB) , The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) to name a few.
The company purchased privately held Strata Marketing Inc., a Chicago-based software company connecting media buyers and sellers in 2005. Strata enables its clients to sell and purchase all media types, including cable, broadcast, newspaper, radio, outdoor and digital advertising mediums.
Meanwhile, cable TV operators are gradually adopting the data-driven advertising technique which is already popular in the web-based advertisement arena. To derive the maximum synergy from the combined video content and video distribution platform, Comcast is extensively penetrating into the advertising technology market. Inclusion of dynamic ad-insertion, targeted audience advertising and data-driven TV advertisements is a step toward the same objective.
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Year to date, the stock price of Comcast returned 21.07%, outperforming the Zacks categorized Original post
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