LONDON — Leading UK satcaster, telco and channel operator Sky has used FreeWheel for the last few years, to manage its digital video ad inventory. Now it will deploy the company’s platforms more widely, as it begins to consolidate its operations across Europe.
The former BSkyB of the UK completed a £7bn merger with its sister companies in Germany and Italy in November. That means FreeWheel’s tools will be used at the continental level.
“We’re starting with Germany,” FreeWheel Europe MD Thomas Bremond tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“We are the ad decisioning platform for Sky Media, managing its digital inventory across a slew of platforms from desktop all the way to set-top boxes, and enable dynamic insertion on all these devices.. We’ll do the same thing in Germany.”
Specifically, Sky took on FreeWheel to better manage ad orders, sales rights and yield optimization. But it’s not just these functions the company is looking for help with.
“One of the big questions that Sky, but also other operators around Europe, are asking us is, ‘Can you help us in trying to facilitate us to become more involved in the operator-broadcaster landscape?’,” Bremond adds.
There is something of a UK TV programmatic arms race kicking off. ITV recently opened up programmatic video capability with RadiumOne, Sky has also tapped Videology to run its programmatic capability, while Channel 4 is using FreeWheel to power its new programamtic ad exchange.
This video was produced at the Future Of TV Advertising Forum. Beet.TV’s coverage is sponsored by Xaxis. You can find more Beet videos from the conference on this page.