TV Advertising Archives — MarTech Series https://martechseries.com/category/tv-advertising/ Marketing Technology Insights Wed, 13 May 2026 08:24:44 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.5 https://martechseries.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/cropped-martech_series_logo-1-4-32x32.png TV Advertising Archives — MarTech Series https://martechseries.com/category/tv-advertising/ 32 32 The B2B Marketing Stack Has a Blind Spot. It’s the TV Screen. https://martechseries.com/mts-insights/guest-authors/the-b2b-marketing-stack-has-a-blind-spot-its-the-tv-screen/ Wed, 13 May 2026 07:25:40 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=400065 Modern B2B marketing is remarkably sophisticated. Account-based programs identify and prioritize the right buyers. Intent data surfaces who’s in-market this week. LinkedIn targets by title, seniority, and company size. Data enrichment tools fill in the gaps. AI tools are making this stack smarter by the month: deeper personalization, faster automation, sharper audience segmentation.

But the surfaces are noisy. Your prospect can scroll past the ad in their feed, filter the email, skip the pre-roll, or fast-forward through the podcast break. During my time at Meta, we told marketers they had three seconds before the scroll. That pressure hasn’t gotten easier. It’s compounded.

This is the gap TV fills. Not instead of the stack you’ve already built, but alongside it.

The Buyer Is Already Watching

The people approving vendor budgets and signing software contracts are the same people watching TV after work. Reaching them there isn’t a departure from B2B marketing logic. It’s an extension of it.

Streaming or CTV ads have made this practical in ways that weren’t possible five years ago. Audience-based buying, geo tests, frequency controls, survey attribution — the measurement mechanics B2B performance marketers already know map directly onto CTV. Relay, the fintech platform for small businesses, started on CTV because it offered tighter targeting and faster feedback loops than TV, with measurement they could actually explain to a CFO. Early results showed a direct lift in branded search and site traffic. That’s not a brand metric. That’s demand generation.

IAB data put CTV ad spend at $23.6 billion in 2024, up 16% year over year. The channel is no longer experimental. Most B2B marketers just haven’t caught up to that yet.

What TV Does That Digital Can’t

Search ads get six words. LinkedIn posts compete with every other hot take and humblebrag in the feed. A 30-second TV spot is unskippable. It gets the full screen and the viewer’s attention in a way that no digital format can guarantee. Your prospect can keep scrolling past your social ad. They can skip your pre-roll. They cannot skip the TV spot.

For B2B brands with complex products, that guaranteed attention is valuable. Gusto, the payroll and HR platform, builds its TV strategy around live tentpole moments, major sporting events and cultural moments, because that’s when their customers are most engaged and most likely to be thinking about the problems Gusto solves. It’s awareness-building timed to purchase intent.

One tactic that connects TV directly to the performance stack: CTV retargeting. Someone visits your pricing page on Tuesday. By Thursday, they’re seeing your ad in their living room, on a full screen, in an environment that carries more weight than another banner in a crowded feed. It closes the loop between your ABM motion and a channel your competitors almost certainly aren’t using against the same accounts.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview With Jay H. Lee, Chief Marketing and Growth Officer @ Five9

TV Raises the Bar (and Maybe Your Next Round)

There’s a credibility effect to TV that doesn’t get discussed honestly enough in B2B circles. It isn’t just about awareness scores. It’s about what showing up on TV signals to the people evaluating you.

Consider the AI SDR space. Dozens of companies competing for the same accounts with near-identical pitches. If your brand has been on TV and your competitors haven’t, your prospect takes the call. You’re no longer one of many vendors in an inbox. You’re a company that operates at a different scale. That perception change happens before your sales team says a word, and it makes everything downstream more efficient.

The CMO is certainly focused on building brand awareness among their ICP, but corporate marketing is another area they own, one focused on raising the company’s profile within its industry and ultimately increasing its perceived value.

When a founder or board member sees their company’s ad during a live sporting event, their phone lights up. Fellow founders text. Investors notice. Raising a round is a different conversation when your brand has been on TV. Acquisition discussions go differently when the other side’s partners recognize your name. This rarely gets framed as marketing’s job. It is.

The Stack Is Good. It’s Just Missing a Layer.

The B2B marketers seeing the biggest results from TV aren’t treating it as a replacement for their performance programs. They’re using it as the layer those programs can’t provide: broad, credible, high-attention reach that introduces the brand to future buyers before they’re searching, and reinforces it with buyers already in your funnel.

Otter, the AI-powered meeting intelligence platform, found that well-crafted TV spots drive immediate engagement even for a complex multi-platform product. Viewers, particularly on mobile, check out the product right away. Top-of-funnel reach converting to bottom-of-funnel action. That’s the full motion.

Your ABM programs, your intent tools, your LinkedIn campaigns are all more effective when the buyer has already seen your brand somewhere that commanded their full attention. TV is that somewhere. The stack you’ve built is good. This is the layer it’s missing.

About Tatari

Tatari is building the infrastructure to modernize TV advertising for Brands, Agencies, and Publishers.

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Rakuten TV Becomes Latest Streaming Platform To Be Tracked By Barb https://martechseries.com/tv-advertising/rakuten-tv-becomes-latest-streaming-platform-to-be-tracked-by-barb/ Tue, 12 May 2026 11:36:19 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=400001 European streamer strengthens position in UK AV ecosystem with verified reach and incremental audiences

Rakuten TV Enterprise, the B2B arm of Rakuten TV, has signed up with the official UK audience measurement JIC, becoming the latest streaming platform to be tracked by Barb. The move, effective immediately, marks a significant step in validating its audience and reinforces its commitment to transparency and measurable performance in an increasingly fragmented TV landscape.

Owned by Rakuten Group, the European streamer will now have its audiences independently measured using Barb’s methodology – the same standard applied to broadcasters and major SVOD and BVOD streaming platforms such as Netflix and ITVX.

This enables advertisers to assess Rakuten TV’s audiences using a well-recognised and established data measurement, providing greater consistency and confidence in media investment and a clearer view of incremental reach – particularly among younger and harder-to-reach audiences.

Rakuten TV operates primarily in the ad-supported space, with a strong focus on FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV), which is one of the fastest-growing segments in the European market.

Initial Barb data (W2–5 2026) shows Rakuten TV reaching approximately 2 million individuals in the UK, positioning them as one of the most popularly viewed hybrid platforms in the UK.

Rakuten TV’s move to join Barb reflects a broader industry shift, as ad-supported streaming platforms seek standardised measurement to compete more effectively for brand budgets, reinforcing FAST’s role as a bridge between linear TV and on-demand streaming.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Haley Trost, Group Product Marketing Manager @ Braze

A Transparent, Digital-First Approach to Measurement

By opting into Barb measurement, Rakuten TV, which operates in over 43 European territories reaching more than 150M households, joins a group of platforms that have chosen independent verification to provide advertisers with consistent, comparable data. This proactive decision reinforces Rakuten TV’s position as a transparent, digital-first platform bridging the gap between traditional TV and programmatic advertising, while setting a new benchmark for measurement within the FAST ecosystem.

Stuart Keith, VP Global Ad Strategy & Partnerships at Rakuten TV Enterprise said: “Partnering with Barb is an active choice to be fully transparent with the market. In an increasingly fragmented TV environment, advertisers require clarity and consistency. By aligning with Barb, we’re speaking the same measurement language as the wider industry while clearly demonstrating the unique value we can bring through incremental audience reach. This is about more than measurement. It’s about trust, giving advertisers confidence in both the scale of our audiences and our ability to reach viewers that other platforms aren’t”

He added: “As FAST continues to grow within the mainstream TV ecosystem, standardised measurement is key to unlocking its full value for advertisers. We’re proud to be a leading player among FAST/hybrid platforms in adopting Barb, as it complements our existing audience analytics and enables partners to make smarter, more effective media investment decisions.”

Incremental Reach Highlights

Barb data shows Rakuten TV delivers meaningful incremental audiences across the TV and streaming landscape- unlocking audiences that are otherwise inaccessible:

  • 54.6% of Rakuten TV viewers are not present on any other FAST platform[1]
  • Reaching cord-cutters at scale: 11% of viewers did not watch content from BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4 or Channel 5 during the same four-week period, making them entirely unreachable via these linear TV channels, representing a crucial opportunity for advertisers on connected TV platforms. Among younger audiences, this rises to 27% of 16–24s and 17% of 25–34s

For advertisers, this positions Rakuten TV as a complementary, and truly valuable, platform delivering net-new audiences rather than duplicated impressions.

Marketing Technology News: Cross-Department Collaboration with Marketing Workflow Automation: Enhancing Alignment Between Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing Teams

A Unique Audience in a Fragmented Landscape

Rakuten TV attracts a distinct mix of light linear viewers, cord-cutters, and “cord-nevers” – audiences increasingly absent from traditional broadcast strategies. Barb data highlights its ability to deliver a unique and incremental audience segment that cannot easily be replicated elsewhere.

As a leading FAST/hybrid platform, Rakuten TV combines a free, accessible viewing environment with digital-first, programmatic capabilities, playing a key role in the evolution of TV. Its integration with Barb reinforces a commitment to transparent, standardised measurement, positioning the platform to help advertisers navigate the ongoing shift of TV budgets into digital channels.

By aligning with a Joint Industry Currency (JIC), Rakuten TV is contributing to more consistent, standardised measurement in a fragmented streaming landscape.

Source: Barb · W2–5 2026 · Panel 750 Online Multiple Screens Network · 3-minute threshold

[1] FAST defined as Barb-measured viewing of Samsung TV Plus, Pluto, Tubi and LG Channels.

Rakuten TV, a Rakuten Group Company, is a leading streaming platform in Europe offering a combination of TVOD, AVOD and FAST curated in partnership with over 500 European and International media companies.  Rakuten TV is accessible in 43 European territories across mobile, web and TV and reaches more than 150 million households via its branded remote-control button and pre-installed app in connected TVs.

Through its B2B brand ‘Rakuten TV Enterprise’, it leverages 15+ years of experience to simplify CTV and Streaming for its partners, including building FAST channels and multi-screen apps, enabling TVOD, AVOD & FAST streaming services, or delivering a scalable Pan-European CTV advertising solution.

Barb is the industry’s standard for understanding what people watch.

Previously known as the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, Barb changed its name in 2023 to Barb Audiences to reflect a strategy that has extended the industry’s standard measurement across TV companies, VOD streamers and video-sharing platforms.

Our hybrid approach integrates people-based panel data with census-level online viewing data. Our methodology enables us to deliver inclusive measurement of total viewing across all broadcast, VOD and video-sharing platforms, delivered onto and consumed via multiple platforms and devices.

Barb is a joint-industry measurement system that forms part of the collective evidence structure that supports a healthy media market. Our data enables:

‣        advertisers to trade fairly,

‣        investors and commissioners to make informed content decisions,

‣        regulators to assess markets using comparable data, and

‣        policymakers to evaluate media sustainability and plurality.

Write in to psen@itechseries.com to learn more about our exclusive editorial packages and programs.

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Locality Adds Sales Leaders to Scale National Access to Local TV Advertising Through Collective Ahead of Upfronts https://martechseries.com/tv-advertising/locality-adds-sales-leaders-to-scale-national-access-to-local-tv-advertising-through-collective-ahead-of-upfronts/ Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:01:59 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=399516 Senior hires support growing demand for simplified, audience-based access to local television at national scale

Locality, the leading local TV advertising platform connecting brands to local audiences across broadcast and streaming, announced the appointment of Steve Fish and Adam Quinn as vice presidents of sales to support the continued expansion of its national go-to-market strategy for Collective, Locality’s data‑driven broadcast solution that enables national advertisers to plan and activate local television inventory at scale.

Collective gives national advertisers a unified, audience-based way to access and activate local broadcast with the ability to extend campaigns into streaming for incremental reach.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Stephen Howard-Sarin, MD of Retail Media, Americas @ Criteo

Fish and Quinn bring deep expertise in data-driven advertising and national sales leadership. They will play a critical role in scaling adoption of Locality’s Collective solution among national advertisers and agencies. Their appointments reflect Locality’s focus on making audience-based buying across local television easier to plan, activate, and measure at national scale, particularly as Upfront dynamics continue to shift.

“Local television is one of the most powerful advertising platforms, and also one of the most complex to execute at scale,” said Michael Collins, CEO of Locality. “As demand grows for more efficient, data-driven ways to reach audiences wherever they’re watching content, we’re investing in the people and infrastructure required to simplify that process. Steve and Adam bring the experience and leadership to help more advertisers unlock the full value of local television.”

Together, Fish and Quinn bring decades of combined experience in the advertising industry. Fish’s background includes roles at ITN Networks, DirecTV Ad Sales, and most recently Ampersand, while Quinn’s spans ESPN, National Geographic Partners, and most recently Simulmedia. With deep expertise in national sales and advanced advertising solutions, they will focus on accelerating adoption of Collective among national advertisers and agencies, working in close partnership with Brian Morse, vice president and head of Collective, to scale the solution across the market.

Marketing Technology News: From MarTech Stack to MarTech Fabric: Weaving Brand, Content, and Conversion Into One Thread

Their appointments come at a pivotal moment as Upfront negotiations evolve within an increasingly converged TV landscape. As buying shifts toward audience-first planning, advertisers are seeking more coordinated ways to execute across markets and channels. Bringing data and flexibility into broadcast buying allows local markets to play an intentional, integrated role within national upfront strategies. This approach supports more effective delivery in underserved markets and expands access to high-demand inventory, including live sports and tentpole events, even as national supply becomes constrained.

This investment in go-to-market leadership builds on a series of recent innovations from Locality designed to modernize how audiences are reached across local broadcast and streaming. Recent announcements include the acquisition of Deben, advancements in audience and planning capabilities, new measurement solution with Nielsen, and the appointment of a new CTO. Together, these efforts reinforce Locality’s commitment to making local TV easier to buy, improving measurement consistency, and aligning how audiences watch today.

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The Trade Desk, Pacvue, and Skai Unlock Unified Activation and Measurement Across 250+ Commerce Media Partners https://martechseries.com/sales-marketing/programmatic-buying/the-trade-desk-pacvue-and-skai-unlock-unified-activation-and-measurement-across-250-commerce-media-partners/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:50:04 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=399346

The Trade Desk Logo

By eliminating silos across channels, the integration enables advertisers to better connect, measure, and optimize full-funnel campaigns

The Trade Desk, a leading global advertising technology company, announced a new integration with Pacvue and Skai that allows mutual clients to use Pacvue and Skai services to streamline enterprise activation of programmatic advertising campaigns alongside retail media investments.

The integration enables brands and agencies to manage, automate, and optimize campaigns executed on The Trade Desk within Pacvue’s and Skai’s enterprise commerce media platforms, helping marketers coordinate campaign workflows, reporting, and performance insights across channels while breaking down operational silos across teams and platforms.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Max Groth, CEO at Decentriq

As advertisers increasingly adopt full-funnel strategies that span awareness through conversion, managing programmatic and retail media investments across fragmented platforms has become more complex. The integration with the services offered by Pacvue and Skai addresses that challenge by bringing together upper-funnel programmatic channels, such as connected TV (CTV) and digital audio, with lower-funnel commerce media investments, including retail media and search, in a centralized environment. This enables advertisers to better understand and drive true incrementality across the customer journey, rather than relying solely on last-click attribution.

“Advertisers today are looking for more seamless ways to connect their media investments and drive measurable outcomes across the entire customer journey,” said Matthew Fantazier, VP of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk. “Our integrations with Pacvue and Skai make it easier for brands to coordinate and activate upper-funnel channels like CTV and digital audio with lower-funnel retail media and search – helping them drive more meaningful business outcomes beyond last-click attribution.”

Through the integrations with Pacvue and Skai services, advertisers can execute campaigns on The Trade Desk alongside their broader commerce media strategies within Pacvue and Skai, unlocking a more coordinated and efficient approach to full-funnel marketing.

“Brands are under increasing pressure to deliver accountable performance across every channel,” said Melissa Burdick, President and Co-founder of Pacvue. “As programmatic and commerce media converge, they need a unified way to plan, execute, and measure across the full funnel. Our integration with The Trade Desk enables advertisers to move beyond siloed optimization and drive more coordinated, incremental growth across the customer journey.”

“Marketers need a holistic view of their media investments to drive growth,” said Jeff Cohen, Chief Business Development Officer at Skai. “As the industry shifts to a more agent-driven model, our integration with The Trade Desk helps brands connect upper- and lower-funnel strategies while bringing data into a consistent structure that supports real-time analysis and action across the entire funnel.”

With the services offered by Pacvue and Skai, brands and agencies can:

  • Centralize campaign execution by managing programmatic campaigns from The Trade Desk alongside retail media investments within a single platform
  • Access cross-channel reporting to evaluate performance across awareness, engagement, and conversion in one platform
  • Optimize budget allocation and pacing with improved visibility across media investments
  • Apply automation and governance at scale using rule-based controls and workflow tools within Pacvue and Skai
  • Increase operational efficiency by reducing fragmentation across platforms, teams, and retail media investments

As the retail media landscape continues to expand and converge with programmatic advertising, marketers are placing greater emphasis on unified measurement, operational consistency, and scalable activation. The Trade Desk’s integrations with the services offered by Pacvue and Skai reflect a shared commitment to helping brands navigate this complexity, better connect upper- and lower-funnel strategies, and work towards maximizing the incremental impact of their media investments.

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MarTech Interview With Jana Jakovljevic, SVP, Partnerships @ Cognitiv https://martechseries.com/mts-insights/interviews/martech-interview-with-jana-jakovljevic-svp-partnerships-cognitiv/ Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:19:26 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=399334 Jana Jakovljevic, SVP, Partnerships at Cognitiv discusses the impact of AI on modern advertising while taking us through the highlights of Cognitiv’s newest enhancement: AudienceGPT. Catch the complete Q&A:

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Hi Jana, take us through your time in martech and your role at Cognitiv?

I’ve spent more than two decades at the forefront of advertising innovation. First helping lead the adoption of programmatic across EMEA during its early emergence, launching programmatic at Spotify, to now helping marketers access AI-driven solutions to scale growth. I joined Cognitiv 8 years ago, at the time we were an early player in the deep learning space, with fewer than 10 employees. Joining a start-up is always a gamble, but I felt confident in the technology and the founding team and saw it as a rare opportunity to learn about AI.

Today as SVP of Partnerships, I focus on redefining how brands and media companies leverage deep learning AI to drive performance. In a media landscape that’s more complex than ever, that means building strategic partnerships that help publishers unlock new revenue streams while enabling brands to engage consumers in more meaningful, data-driven ways. I have developed strategic partnerships with major SSPs and DSPs to bring the industry’s most advanced AI-driven curation to media buyers.

We’d love to learn more about your new enhancement, AudienceGPT. Why should marketers pay attention to it?

AudienceGPT is a fundamental shift from reactive audience targeting to predictive, intelligence-driven marketing.

Traditionally, audience segmentation was manual, time consuming, static, and relied on outdated signals like clicks or page visits that didn’t tell you much about the actual stage of the journey a consumer was in.

AudienceGPT solves this by using Cognitiv’s deep learning advertising platform to develop synthetic consumer journey profiles that can then be found programmatically. The result is a more adaptive, predictive approach to audience strategy that aligns media delivery with true consumer intent. Audiences can be activated across web, CTV, social, and audio, meeting advertisers where they are.

Modern marketers manage different types of data and workflows today. What top best practices come to mind for those looking to optimize how they clean and use data to power better outcomes and customer journeys?

During my time at Cognitiv, I’ve evaluated probably 100 data providers across contextual, attention, measurement, and audience segments, so I’ve seen a wide range in data quality and approaches.

A few best practices really stand out. First is understanding the origin of the data, whether it’s deterministic or modeled. Deterministic data, especially in its raw form, tends to be more reliable and transparent, whereas modeled data can introduce assumptions that aren’t always clear or consistent.

Second is freshness and relevance. Marketers often overlook how frequently data is refreshed. An audience labeled as a “travel intender,” for example, is only as valuable as the recency and signal behind that classification. You have to ask: what behaviors actually qualified this user, and how recent were they?

Finally, validation is critical. At Cognitiv, we’re fortunate to test data directly by running it through our models offline to see whether it actually improves predictive accuracy. That kind of rigorous testing helps separate data that sounds good in theory from data that truly drives performance.

Ultimately, the best outcomes come from combining transparency, recency, and real-world validation, rather than relying on labels or assumptions alone.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Max Groth, CEO at Decentriq

What’s the most exciting thing about how AI is leading to a shift in marketing processes and standards as well as a shift within marketing teams in terms of how teams are structured today?

AI is reshaping marketing in a way that feels very similar to the early days of programmatic, but at a much faster pace.

From a team perspective, the traditional silos between media, data, and analytics are starting to break down. We’re seeing hybrid roles emerge, people who understand both the strategic and technical sides of marketing, and are usually proficient in deploying and working with AI.

From a process standpoint, there’s a tendency to think about AI primarily as workflow automation. And while it can help with that, the bigger opportunity lies in real-time prediction and decisioning. That’s where the biggest performance gains will come from.

Five thoughts on the future of AI and martech?

1. Audience targeting shifts towards moments of intent: The combination of contextual signals, real-time behavior, and understanding of content will outperform audience segments. This goes beyond assigning someone to a segment, to predicting their likelihood to act in that moment based on live inputs.

2. Data quality becomes the true differentiator: The future will be built on better data—deterministic where possible, transparent in methodology, and validated against outcomes.

3. AI shifts from automation to intelligence: Today, AI in marketing is primarily focused on automating execution, not redefining strategy. The next phase will move beyond efficiency gains to deliver real intelligence—powering better decisions rather than just optimizing the manual levers we’ve relied on.

4. Personalization will scale without manual effort: AI will enable truly individualized experiences without the operational complexity that used to limit scale.

5. CTV Moves from awareness to performance: CTV is a great channel for reach and scale but we’ll increasingly see it used as a medium to drive performance. The ones who win in CTV will go beyond content targeting.

Some top martech innovations and martech innovators that you’d like to shout out to in this conversation?

Two martech innovators I want to shout out are Magnite and Index Exchange – specifically Paul Zovighian, VP, Marketplaces at Index Exchange, and Zach Pucci Global, Enterprise Sales at Magnite. Both are helping push real-time curation forward in a way that’s shifting intelligence to the sell side and accelerating innovation across the ecosystem.

Real-time curation turns live data signals into actionable inputs for AI, allowing for accurate, real-time predictions. This drives improved performance for buyers in the moment, not after the fact.

Cognitiv is a leading advanced performance partner powered by deep learning. Leveraging cutting-edge AI technology and data science since 2015 to more accurately predict consumer behavior and understand nuance, Cognitiv connects brands with their customers in more precise, relevant, impactful moments at scale. Cognitiv’s Deep Learning Advertising Platform provides marketers with unprecedented flexibility, activating as a Dynamic Deal run through the DSP of your choice, as a managed service DSP, or through its industry-first ContextGPT product. Cognitiv is on a mission to bring intelligence to advertising.

About Jana Jakovljevic

Jana, SVP of Partnerships at Cognitiv, brings two decades of experience driving innovation across the advertising industry. Before joining Cognitiv, Jana was the Global Head of Programmatic Solutions at Spotify, where she successfully launched the company’s programmatic arm and pioneered the first Private Marketplace (PMP) for audio ads. At Magnite (formerly Rubicon Project), Jana held various management positions, building out international buy-side partnerships and playing a foundational role in the company’s journey from start-up to IPO. Known for landing at companies that are at the forefront of the media landscape, Jana is now focused on leveraging AI to propel the ad industry forward. Her dedication to disruption and passion for constant improvement make her a key agent of change, unafraid to break the status quo in the name of innovation.

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Comcast’s Universal Ads Makes Linear TV Self-Service, Bringing Incremental TV Reach to Advertisers of Any Size https://martechseries.com/sales-marketing/programmatic-buying/comcasts-universal-ads-makes-linear-tv-self-service-bringing-incremental-tv-reach-to-advertisers-of-any-size/ Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:20:36 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=399225

Universal Ads Logo

Brands can now advertise on premium Comcast Linear TV inventory alongside streaming through Universal Ads for the first time

Universal Ads, Comcast’s self-service ad platform that enables brands of any size to create, buy and measure ads across premium TV, announced the addition of linear television inventory to its platform. Universal Ads now gives brands seamless, self-service access to premium, Comcast-owned linear inventory to unlock new audiences alongside streaming campaigns from one unified platform, while maintaining the control, quality, and performance they have come to expect from modern advertising platforms.

“Viewers don’t think in terms of linear versus ‘streaming.’ Advertisers should not have to think about it either,” said James Borow, General Manager, Universal Ads. “With this launch, Universal Ads is delivering on its promise to bring the simplicity and sophistication of digital media buying to premium TV, backed by incredible scale, premium inventory, and industry-leading data capabilities.”

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Max Groth, CEO at Decentriq

Universal Ads can reach up to 90% of U.S. households through Comcast’s nationwide footprint and an expanded network of premium publishers, distributors, and streaming platforms. This broad, high‑quality reach allows advertisers to run impactful TV campaigns with greater brand safety and consistent measurement across both linear and streaming environments—making advanced TV more accessible to brands of all sizes.

The newly available linear TV inventory is accessible through Universal Ads’ Performance+ campaigns, which continuously optimize delivery to help brands achieve their objectives—whether that’s incremental reach, efficient frequency, online sales, app installs, or call volume.

“Enabling our clients to effectively engage audiences across both streaming and linear TV has always been core to our strategy, but measuring true incrementality using existing technology platforms can be challenging,” added Brian Leder, President at Ramp97. “Having access to Comcast linear inventory through the Universal Ads platform to help find new audiences and better manage reach and frequency in premium environments creates significant value by helping our clients to connect with audiences that were previously difficult to target.”

Key benefits include:

  • Reach people across TV and streaming at once: Run ads on both linear TV and streaming services together, all in one place, to reach more people than streaming alone.
  • Target the right audiences: Use data and familiar targeting tools to reach specific viewers, instead of just buying ads based on TV schedules.
  • Optimize as you go: Track performance while the campaign is running so you can adjust quickly and spend money more effectively over time.
  • Safe, high‑quality content: Ads appear next to well‑known, trusted TV programming that meets premium brand standards.

Universal Ads plans to further expand access to linear inventory for advertisers of any size as part of Universal Ads’ product roadmap to reshape how TV advertising is both bought and sold. With a new wave of major distribution and device partners joining the platform in December, the Universal Audience Network now includes more than 20 premium publishers, delivering extensive reach, flexibility, and ease of access to the biggest screen in the home.

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Marketing Architects Adds Reach Index Optimization for Smarter TV Buying https://martechseries.com/tv-advertising/marketing-architects-adds-reach-index-optimization-for-smarter-tv-buying/ Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:48:56 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=399209

Marketing Architects Logo

TV agency Marketing Architects announces a new media-buying capability that automatically directs media dollars toward TV placements with the highest concentration of a brand’s target audience.

TV advertising agency Marketing Architects announces Reach Index Optimization (RIO), a new capability built directly into Annika®, its proprietary media-buying AI.

“TV works because it reaches people at scale. This is about making sure every dollar is working toward the right scale,” says Catherine Walstad, Marketing Architects’ Chief Media Officer. “This is audience-driven buying the way it was always meant to work.

Powered by third-party audience composition and reach data, the index gives Annika a real-time view of where a brand’s target audience is most concentrated across linear TV networks and dayparts. It accounts for how a brand’s buy is currently delivering in-market, the unique reach being achieved across inventory sources, and where the next dollar spent will have the greatest impact. Annika uses that data to automatically optimize media investments toward content with the highest density of target audience viewers, maximizing both current and future reach.

TV campaigns run across hundreds of network/daypart intersections. At that scale, even small inefficiencies in audience targeting compound quickly. Without a systematic way to score placements by audience concentration and reach potential, buying decisions rely on historical patterns and manual analysis. RIO changes that by making audience composition, saturation levels, and predictive reach data a continuous, automatic input within the buying process.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Max Groth, CEO at Decentriq

The feature scores linear TV placements based on the concentration of a brand’s ideal audience. A higher score means a greater predicted share of that audience will watch there so that the next dollar invested delivers the most unique reach possible. Annika factors those scores into buying decisions continuously, prioritizing placements where the target audience is present and most likely to grow.

Buying against historical data alone means chasing audiences after they’ve moved. Predictive reach signals let Annika stay ahead of audience shifts so budgets follow viewers rather than lag them.

“Knowing where your audience watches has always been foundational to effective TV buying,” says Joe Ackerman, Senior Director of Media Solutions at Marketing Architects. “RIO takes the analysis we’ve always done and automates it within Annika, so every placement is assessed based on where a brand’s audience is most concentrated, where current reach is strongest, and where the next dollar spent will drive the greatest unique reach.”

“TV works because it reaches people at scale. This is about making sure every dollar is working toward the right scale,” adds Catherine Walstad, Marketing Architects’ Chief Media Officer. “This is audience-driven buying the way it was always meant to work.”

Reach Index Optimization is available now to Marketing Architects clients and reflects Marketing Architects’ continued investment in building technology that gives TV advertisers a measurable media advantage.

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Clinch Brings AI-driven Creative Personalization to Pause Ads Through OpenGlass Partnership https://martechseries.com/tv-advertising/clinch-brings-ai-driven-creative-personalization-to-pause-ads-through-openglass-partnership/ Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:41:41 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=399105 Clinch’s certification with OpenGlass unlocks real-time personalization for Advanced TV formats, scalable to 600M+ monthly impressions, across their premium publisher network, closing an operational gap in CTV’s highest-attention formats.

Clinch, the operating system for autonomous advertising, and OpenGlass, the first SSP built for advanced CTV advertising, announced that Clinch’s ad-serving tags have been certified to run within OpenGlass’s Advanced CTV Formats, beginning with pause ads, across publishers like Paramount, Tubi, TiVo, DirecTV, Sling/Dish, Philo, Xumo, and Plex. The certification gives advertisers a single operational path to deliver personalized, data-driven creative via one of streaming’s highest-attention formats.

“Advanced CTV experiences, specifically pause ads, already deliver some of the strongest performance numbers in CTV. What’s been missing is the ability to optimize and personalize these unique creative with a single platform, in real time, at the publisher-agnostic scale buyers need,” said Jason Higgins, Co-Founder of OpenGlass. “Pairing our programmatic enablement with Clinch’s creative serving capabilities closes that gap.”

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The average dwell times for Pause ads exceeds two minutes, a duration virtually unmatched in any other digital ad format. Since its recent inception, the Pause Ad format has historically been contracted publisher-by-publisher, each requiring their own managed media buy, creative builds and campaign set-up process. That fragmentation made creative personalization operationally impractical at scale. Clinch’s certification with OpenGlass collapses that fragmentation into a single tag running across a single deal across their entire publisher network. With creative versioning, ad serving, and optimization managed through Clinch’s Flight Control platform.

“The pause moment is one of the most valuable ad opportunities in CTV. The screen belongs entirely to the brand, and the dwell time creates an environment where relevance compounds,” said Charel MacIntosh, Global Head of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Clinch. “By pairing Clinch’s dynamic creative and personalization capabilities with OpenGlass’s pause ad inventory, we’re giving advertisers the ability to make every one of those seconds count with a message tailored to the household, the moment, and the context.”

The timing reflects a broader shift in how CTV is bought and measured. According to a February 2026 study from TiVo Ads and Convergent TV World, 40% of industry professionals now deploy CTV across the full marketing funnel, and 46% rank sales or conversions as a primary CTV outcome. The same research found 32% of CTV buyers are actively prioritizing less interruptive formats, including pause ads and home screen placements, while 36% cite measurement as the top barrier to non-standard CTV investment.

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OpenGlass’s pause ad inventory has already demonstrated strong baseline performance, delivering a 79% lower cost per store visit for Ulta Beauty relative to other streaming TV partners, and a 276% lift in QR code scans for Zales compared to prior campaigns. The Clinch integration adds real-time personalization and cross-device attribution on top of that baseline.

Through the certification, advertisers can serve pause ad creatives that adapt in real time based on location, weather, time of day, audience segments, product availability, pricing, and behavioral signals. Clinch’s CTV attribution links pause ad exposure to downstream actions on secondary devices, including QR code scans, site visits, and purchases, giving buyers closed-loop measurement of the format for the first time. Flight Control’s reporting surfaces which creative elements and personalization strategies drive the strongest outcomes, enabling continuous optimization throughout the flight.

Campaigns are activated programmatically through PMP/Deal IDs within the advertiser’s existing DSP, with full buyer control. Deal IDs can be provisioned within 24 hours.

Clinch’s dynamic creative personalization for OpenGlass pause ads is available immediately, with support for Home Screen and Livestream Overlay slated for a future release. Campaigns can be activated through OpenGlass Deal IDs on the advertiser’s partnering DSP, or directly through the OpenGlass platform.

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EDO Unlocks Free TV Ad Intelligence for Ad Agencies Ahead of 2026 Upfront https://martechseries.com/sales-marketing/programmatic-buying/edo-unlocks-free-tv-ad-intelligence-for-ad-agencies-ahead-of-2026-upfront/ Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:37:35 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=399017

Agencies granted no-cost access to ChatEDO’s investment-grade TV data — equipping brands with greater competitive and historical insights before an unpredictable Upfront season

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OpenX Advances Intelligent SSP Strategy with Key Leadership Appointments Across Product, Partnerships and Curation https://martechseries.com/tv-advertising/openx-advances-intelligent-ssp-strategy-with-key-leadership-appointments-across-product-partnerships-and-curation/ Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:10:49 +0000 https://martechseries.com/?p=398901 OpenX

OpenX, The Intelligent SSP, announced the appointment of Lior Charka as VP, Product, alongside the promotions of Joseph Worswick to SVP, Global Partnerships, and Erika Loberg to VP, CTV and Curation. These leadership updates reflect OpenX’s continued investment in simplifying advertising by bringing greater intelligence to the supply side.

To deliver on this strategy, OpenX is strengthening its leadership across partnerships, CTV, and product to reduce ecosystem complexity, making it easier for brands to find and reach their audiences without sacrificing user privacy or performance.

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Joining OpenX as VP, Product, Charka will lead the continued innovation of OpenXSelect™, with a focus on simplifying complex curation workflows through AI. By building intelligence into every stage of the curation process, OpenX aims to help customers achieve higher quality and performance while reducing the effort required to activate and optimize campaigns. Charka joins OpenX with more than 15 years of experience in digital advertising and product leadership, including key roles at Outbrain and Teads.

“Lior brings a deep understanding of product innovation and a strong track record of building solutions that drive real business outcomes,” said Joel Meyer, CTO at OpenX. “As curation becomes increasingly central to programmatic performance, his expertise in building intelligence into the curation process will simplify access to high-quality media and data to drive performance.”

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In his expanded role as SVP, Global Partnerships, Worswick will lead OpenX’s global partnerships strategy across agencies, brands, and strategic partners, including data providers, AI-driven companies, and retail and commerce media platforms. Since joining OpenX in 2023, Worswick has been instrumental in building OpenX’s global SPO and commercial agreements practice and will now focus on unifying partnership efforts across the business to accelerate collaboration, break down silos, and drive stronger outcomes across all sides of the ecosystem.

Loberg, who has been promoted to VP, CTV and Curation, will build on her success scaling OpenX’s CTV business to lead the company’s broader curation strategy across all formats. Under her leadership, OpenX has established a leading position in CTV with TV by OpenX, delivering high-quality inventory and audience addressability in biddable environments. In her expanded role, Loberg will focus on advancing OpenXSelect and OpenXBuild™, helping buyers leverage supply-side targeting to drive measurable performance and unlock greater value from programmatic investments.

“Joe and Erika have each played a critical role in shaping our business and delivering meaningful impact for our partners,” said Tyler Romasco, EVP, Commercial at OpenX. “Joe’s leadership in building our global partnerships foundation and Erika’s success in scaling our CTV and curation capabilities have fueled growth at OpenX. As we continue to evolve, their expanded roles will help us move faster, operate more cohesively, and deliver even greater value across the ecosystem.”

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