FreeWheel empowers all segments of the streaming advertising ecosystem, providing a comprehensive platform for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels. Its recent launch of a first-of-its-kind Context Engine leverages AI-driven contextual targeting globally across premium video, setting it apart in the ad-tech space. As a Comcast Company, FreeWheel has built credibility through strategic acquisitions like Beeswax, strengthening its buy-side capabilities and reinforcing its position as a trusted partner for convergent TV and video advertising.
FreeWheel Advertiser Suite empowers you to unlock streaming video’s full potential.
FreeWheel Publisher Suite helps you easily sell your premium video inventory across all screens.
FreeWheel's Curation Hub helps you shape premium inventory, activate first-party IDs, and enforce rules to maximize curated supply value.
FreeWheel published a blog post advocating for supply-side curation at the ad server level to improve programmatic buying in streaming. The article highlights how executing curation at this stage enables differentiated, data-rich packages using premium inventory, unique metadata, and unified decisioning for advertisers. FreeWheel cites benefits such as more efficient access to inventory, precise audience targeting through normalized identifiers, and streamlined efficiency by reducing intermediaries.
FreeWheel's Viewer Experience Lab, in collaboration with MediaScience, released research indicating that while ads themselves do not reduce program enjoyment, poor ad experiences such as latency, unnatural ad breaks, and slate negatively impact viewer perception of content, ads, and brands. The study, which is the third report from the Viewer Experience Lab, highlights that nearly 80% of viewers are bothered by ad latency and 71% by unnatural ad breaks. FreeWheel plans to announce new tools to address these issues, including enhancing creative approval, managing ad frequency, and reducing blank ads.
Wurl launched BrandDiscovery, a GenAI-powered CTV advertising solution designed to precisely match ad creatives with the emotional sentiment and context of programming in real-time. This solution offers scene-level contextual targeting across over 300 premium CTV publishers, including FAST channels and streamers, with 60 billion monthly available ad impressions. Early campaign results with Media.Monks, activated through FreeWheel, showed significant lifts in aided brand awareness and purchase intent for a financial services client.
FreeWheel's Viewer Experience Lab research indicates that disruptive ad breaks in streaming content lead to negative viewer experiences, with 71% of viewers bothered by unnatural ad breaks and 39% significantly so. The study also found that brands appearing in disruptive ad breaks experienced 14% lower unaided recall and 15% lower aided recall, along with a 5% decrease in perceived brand quality. FreeWheel suggests AI and machine learning can help identify optimal cue points for ad breaks to mitigate these issues.
FreeWheel is marketing its Buyer Cloud product, a demand-side platform (DSP) formerly known as Beeswax. The product, part of the FreeWheel Advertiser Suite, is designed for programmatic ad buying with features including access to premium CTV inventory, flexible turnkey or customizable buying environments, and integrated identity resolution. The platform also offers transparent analytics with log-level data for measurement and optimization.
