雅虎香港財經 Comcast's (CMCSA) FreeWheel Unveils Live Streaming Ad Products
Comcast CMCSA-owned FreeWheel, a leading ad tech platform for television, is rolling out new enhanced capabilities to allow advertisers to transact programmatically on live streaming video events like the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. The move comes as major live broadcasts increasingly shift to streaming platforms and audiences expect more personalized ad experiences.
The new product suite from FreeWheel aims to solve key challenges around programmatic ad delivery for marquee live-streamed events that attract huge and concurrent viewership. With millions tuning in simultaneously, there is little room for failures or latency issues in getting ads properly served.
The new FreeWheel live streaming ad capabilities include expediting programmatic ad activation, expanding access to more advertisers, anticipating viewer surges to scale server capacity and adjusting ad pacing to maintain a seamless experience during high peaks. Benefits touted include increased reliability, higher fill rates for publishers, more advertiser diversity via programmatic pipes and less ad repetition for viewers.
FreeWheel's research shows that the enduring appeal of live content stems from it being timely, engaging viewers for longer periods and having a communal viewing element. U.S. households watch 23 hours of live sports per month on average. As live events transition to streaming, FreeWheel's new ad server capabilities aim to unlock more programmatic opportunities while preserving the premium viewing experience.
The launch coincides with FreeWheel's new report, It's Only Live Once, which examines how streaming is impacting advertising around live events. With the growth of streaming, FreeWheel believes that advanced ad tech is required to replicate the successful traditional TV model for the digital realm when it comes to live programming.
Comcast Corporation Price and Consensus
Comcast Corporation price-consensus-chart | Comcast Corporation Quote
Comcast Bolsters Efforts to Boost Ad Sales Amid Stiff Competition
Comcast is making a major push to strengthen its advertising technology capabilities and drive higher revenues from its ad platforms as more TV viewership shifts to streaming. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CMCSA’s 2024 revenues is pegged at $123.16 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 1.31%. The consensus mark for earnings is pegged at $4.21 per share, which has remained unchanged over the past 30 days. The estimated figure indicates year-over-year growth of 5.78%.
The new suite of products unveiled by FreeWheel reinforces Comcast's increasing prioritization of its advertising business as a key revenue growth engine. While the company still derives most of its profits from broadband Internet and cable TV subscriptions, it has been investing heavily to build out an advanced advertising arm that can better monetize streaming viewership.
Comcast's expansion of its Audience Addressable advertising solution, as recently announced by Effectv, to local and regional markets represents a major offensive in the battle for advanced TV ad dollars.
However, Comcast is not without its competitive challenges in this lucrative but increasingly crowded market. Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have plunged 15.8% year to date compared with the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s decline of 1.2% due to tough competition. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Comcast faces intense competition in its advertising technology ambitions from a range of formidable rivals. Streaming giants like Netflix and Disney DIS are rapidly building their own data-driven ad capabilities, with Disney boasting a wealth of consumer touchpoints across streaming, linear networks, theme parks and more. Traditional media companies like Paramount Global PARA and Warner Bros. Discovery WBD are also making aggressive pushes into addressable advertising by unifying their ad stacks across streaming and linear networks to showcase their premium video inventory. Ad tech players like The Trade Desk are working to create interoperable standards for unified cross-screen campaigns. Even device makers and streaming platforms are angling to insert themselves into the addressable supply chain.
In this fiercely competitive landscape, Comcast will need to continually innovate and leverage its position as a one-stop shop for premium addressable video inventory across its multiple consumer channels to defend its advertising technology leadership.
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